Thursday, June 19, 2025

Moon Shot

 One of my hobbies is listening to old radio shows on the internet. I particularly like The Great Gildersleeve, a wholesome family comedy from the 1940s and 1950s, a time when we still had wholesome families.


Just kidding! I know your family is wholesome...


Anyway, the shows were live then, and many times they were interrupted by important news bulletins about World War II. Listening back to them today, the juxtapositioning of Throckmorton P. Gildersleeve's crazy madcap adventures raising his niece and nephew while serving as water commissioner in the mythical town of Summerfield and dating every single single woman who crossed his path with the invasion of Anzio was a contrast, for sure. The announcer would cut in, deliver the breaking news, and then go back to the program as, surely, millions of Americans with family in the service said an extra prayer.


My thought today is that, in those days, when people like Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite came on with news, you could believe what they said. Today, one must be more judicious, and evaluate what you read and hear, because of things like this... 


Dan Driscoll, the U.S. Secretary of the Army, was on some channel called Fox News (correct me if I got their name wrong) last week, hyping the upcoming military parade in Washington, D.C. 


Here is a direct quote from the man who runs your Army:


 “As young Americans across the country get to see all of the amazing things that the army has done, whether it’s helping with floods in North Carolina or wildfires in California, or, we talked to an astronaut yesterday who’s on the moon who’s a soldier.”




OK, listen, I know the schools are closed, so Sis and Junior can't ask Ms. O'Hoolahan about it, so let me assure you that no American has been on the moon since Eugene Cernan walked on the green cheese in 1972. I look at it every night and see no one trucking around.


So we are left with the big question: Was someone left behind when Apollo 17 came home? Does Driscoll know more than he lets on? If someone is up there, how will they calculate his overtime pay? Or was there a recent moon shot, possibly when one of Elon's rockets didn't blow up?





Driscoll, who will be played in the inevitable movie by Gary Busey, might have been thinking about Jonny Kim, who is not a soldier and is not on the moon, but is a former Navy SEAL on an eight-month mission aboard the International Space Station (ISS). He's been sky high since April 8 and is expected back on earth this fall.

Unless Driscoll knows something he's not letting on....



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