Solid Citizen or Horse Thief?

[Excaliber]

This story has been around for awhile, thought some of you might not have seen it. Seem's appropriate with all the "spin" we see around these here parts...

Written on the back of the mans picture:
'Remus Reid, horse thief, sent to Montana Territorial Prison 1885, escaped 1887, robbed the Montana Flyer six times. Caught by Pinkerton detectives, convicted and hanged in 1889.'


Rumor has it he's related to Congressman Harry Reid (or Bush, or Obama, just pick any politician at random), who had this to say about that.


"Remus Reid was a famous cowboy in the Montana Territory . His business empire grew to include acquisition of valuable equestrian assets and intimate dealings with the Montana railroad. Beginning in 1883, he devoted several years of his life to government service, finally taking leave to resume his dealings with the railroad. In 1887, he was a key player in a vital investigation run by the renowned Pinkerton Detective Agency. In 1889, Remus passed away during an important civic function held in his honor when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed."

...and thats how you do spin control!

[bart]

as a Montana resident, that right there is some funny stuff!

[Joe Wicked]

LOL, that is funny. Pretty accurate spin that would come from any of our politicians.

[Ron61]

Ernie,

Now that was funny and as Joe said, pretty accurate.

Ron

[Wayne Maybury]

Ernie

That proves that you have to read between the lines to understand what is actually going on.

Great story, by the way.

Wayne

[Bill Bess]

Good Spin! It's not hard to polish a turd and make it apper like diamond...you just have to be a blinded fool to think it's true just because it is in print.

ie. $4500 for your clunker, free money from heaven..........such a successful program...little cost to you the tax payer and is helping many with bad credit stay further in debt, along with helping govenment owned car companies to sell.

[Wayne Maybury]

Originally Posted by Bill Bess

Good Spin! It's not hard to polish a turd and make it apper like diamond....

It's called making chicken salad out of chicken $h!t.

Wayne

[427sharpe]

It's still funny...

[Excaliber]

sharpe, I know! I've seen it around a few times over the years. When I recently saw it again, it STILL made me chuckle. It's a classic.

[Ronbo]

You've probably never heard about Abraham Lincoln's land grabs either...

As I heard it him and Gen Dodge were involved in quite a few swindles back in his lawyerin' days. There's a house called "the spite house" in Omaha I believe that was built to piss off Dodge.

Kennedy's actions during the PT109 days were somewhat different that what history records, at least according to some of the crew.

Want a real shocker, look up John Wayne's past during the WWII years...

[Fordzilla]

FOUND THIS ON THE IINTERNET:

Was John Wayne a draft dodger?
July 10, 1998
Dear Cecil:

In your book The Straight Dope you were asked whether John Wayne had ever served in the military. You said no--that though Wayne as a youth had wanted to become a naval officer, "during World War II, he was rejected for military service." However, it may be more interesting than that. According to a recent Wayne bio, for all his vaunted patriotism, Wayne may actually have tried to stay out of the service.

— Virgiejo, via AOL

Cecil replies:

John Wayne, draft dodger? Oh, what delicious (if cheap) irony! But that judgment is a little harsh. As Garry Wills tells the story in his book John Wayne's America: The Politics of Celebrity (1997), the Duke faced a tough choice at the outset of World War II. If he wimped out, don't be so sure a lot of us wouldn't have done the same.

At the time of Pearl Harbor, Wayne was 34 years old. His marriage was on the rocks but he still had four kids to support. His career was taking off, in large part on the strength of his work in the classic western Stagecoach (1939). But he wasn't rich. Should he chuck it all and enlist? Many of Hollywood's big names, such as Henry Fonda, Jimmy Stewart, and Clark Gable, did just that. (Fonda, Wills points out, was 37 at the time and had a wife and three kids.) But these were established stars. Wayne knew that if he took a few years off for military service, there was a good chance that by the time he got back he'd be over the hill.

Besides, he specialized in the kind of movies a nation at war wanted to see, in which a rugged American hero overcame great odds. Recognizing that Hollywood was an important part of the war effort, Washington had told California draft boards to go easy on actors. Perhaps rationalizing that he could do more good at home, Wayne obtained 3-A status, "deferred for [family] dependency reasons." He told friends he'd enlist after he made just one or two more movies.

The real question is why he never did so. Wayne cranked out thirteen movies during the war, many with war-related themes. Most of the films were enormously successful and within a short time the Duke was one of America's most popular stars. His bankability now firmly established, he could have joined the military, secure in the knowledge that Hollywood would welcome him back later. He even made a half-hearted effort to sign up, sending in the paperwork to enlist in the naval photography unit commanded by a good friend, director John Ford.

But he didn't follow through. Nobody really knows why; Wayne didn't like to talk about it. A guy who prided himself on doing his own stunts, he doesn't seem to have lacked physical courage. One suspects he just found it was a lot more fun being a Hollywood hero than the real kind. Many movie star-soldiers had enlisted in the first flush of patriotism after Pearl Harbor. As the war ground on, slogging it out in the trenches seemed a lot less exciting. The movies, on the other hand, had put Wayne well on the way to becoming a legend. "Wayne increasingly came to embody the American fighting man," Wills writes. In late 1943 and early 1944 he entertained the troops in the Pacific theater as part of a USO tour. An intelligence bigshot asked him to give his impression of Douglas MacArthur. He was fawned over by the press when he got back. Meanwhile, he was having a torrid affair with a beautiful Mexican woman. How could military service compare with that?

In 1944, Wayne received a 2-A classification, "deferred in support of [the] national . . . interest." A month later the Selective Service decided to revoke many previous deferments and reclassified him 1-A. But Wayne's studio appealed and got his 2-A status reinstated until after the war ended.

People who knew Wayne say he felt bad about not having served. (During the war he'd gotten into a few fights with servicemen who wondered why he wasn't in uniform.) Some think his guilty conscience was one reason he became such a superpatriot later. The fact remains that the man who came to symbolize American patriotism and pride had a chance to do more than just act the part, and he let it pass.

— Cecil Adams