Sunday, January 13, 2019

The Ballad of Thomas Otis Bigelow



Authenticity means there can be no moral imperative to deceive for selfish gains.
Deseret News


A file clerk, once in state employ,
a steady income did enjoy.
In Salt Lake City he did toil
(though never burning midnight oil.)

His name, if you must have it so,
was Thomas Otis Bigelow.
He shuffled papers into drawers,
along with other mundane chores.

Receipts and memos, bills and lists,
made up his normal workday trysts.
A lonely job, no other folk
to visit with or crack a joke.

So Thomas, in his reverie,
dreamt much of bigger things than he
could e'er accomplish at his job
(which sometimes made him give a sob.)

One day, just like a fairy tale,
he filed away a piece of mail --
but noticing its contents dire,
his soul began to catch on fire.

The letter was a stern rebuke
to someone by the name of Luke
who had exceeded budget curbs
in buying candy, nuts, and herbs.

"If I release this to the Press"
he thought "I'll be a big success!"
To make it even more intense
he added to the mild expense.

Then Thomas took his phony scoop
down to a wild newspaper group;
he waved the letter all about
and gave a mighty righteous shout:

"Corruption at the highest levels!
Taxpayer money spent on revels!"
Reporters ate it up with glee,
and Bigelow made history.

A whistle blower now supreme,
he carried on his faulty dream;
deceiving one and all with files
as phony as free flyer miles.

He reasoned that the good he did
outweighed the awful lies he hid.
Ruining lives, creating scandal --
he was now a media vandal.

But finally a journalist
began his stories to untwist
and found them all to be untrue
and thus exposed his ballyhoo.

Now Thomas Otis Bigelow
has naught for all his fame to show.
He lost his clerking job, of course,
and really has no income source.

But do not fear for his daft sake;
there's always someone loves a fake.
It won't be long before discussion
begins of his Talk Show -- in Russian.


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