Ode To A Snake Oil Salesman...!!!

I grew up on TV westerns...black and white, of course...perhaps that is why to this day I still see issues in black and white...for you younguns, color TV had not yet been invented when I was a kid...my remarks have nothing to do with race at all...  

Now that we've proven that anyone, regardless of color, age, religion, or political ethic, can aspire to the highest office in the land, let's get on with our lives and forget playing the race card and move our great country forward...we are a nation in need of serious healing...no band aids, no snake oil, no mind games, no secret ointments will heal the wounds of our economy and our real estate market!  

I remember in those westerns the snake oil salesman would ride his wagon into town, usually parking it in an obscure but accessible place where he could work his spin, gather a nice crowd around his wagon, and begin talking the crowd into purchasing his fabulous 'snake oil' or other concocted remedies guaranteed to 'cure' all that ails society!  

Now, most of his wares were probably ointments designed to be used on horses, cows, and other farm animals with a little perfume added to appeal to the human nose!!!  

Of course, he needed to work his magic quickly before customers caught on to the sham ointments, and get out of town about as quickly as he arrived...  

God only knows how long between visits it would take for his customer base to forgive him for being a 'hack' and gather around his wagon once more to listen to his 'new spiel' on how his fabulous 'cure all' snake oil must be purchased...often the focus wasn't on the product(s) being touted and sold, but the comedy and magic acts designed to entertain his gullible audience between sales!!! The rabbit in the hat!!!  

And so today, we still have the ancestors of the snake oil salesmen in our midst...!!!  

No, they don't ride in on brightly decorated wagons, nor do they even own horses, nor do they even offer snake oil anymore, but nevertheless they exist, and they are alive and well...  

Oh, to be sure, they have evolved slickly, and have polished up their act so they are hardly recognizable, and they even have licenses and government authorizations to market their wares! But the smoke and mirrors are still their MO...and...  

They can still be heard spinning their lines, but with great sophistication, spreading their greed and tapping into any money source they can find...  

No, they are not the true professionals who work as if their careers and reputations depended on it, going from consumer to consumer with assistance, often without even counting the cost...  

They are still the scoundrels of the wild, wild west, and east, and north, and south...trying to appeal to the consumer as kind of 'ONE MAN BANDS'...  

That's right, they can still be recognized and identified, not by their transparency, but by those brightly colored catchy facades they still sport and have not been able to shed and disguise...!!! They lurk not in the prominence of the TOWN SQUARE but behind the bushes, in the back rooms, and in the nooks and crannies of 'good old boy' networks...  

You'll know them by their fruits...and their reputations...and their pitches...and their greed...and their spin...if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is...!!!