Every autumn, I like to do two things: perform my annual October shitting and contemplate the size of my fortune. And as much as I enjoy the former, I enjoy the latter even more.
While reviewing my accounts recently, I noticed that withdrawals of $250,000 were being made at regular intervals. Imagine my rage when Standish told me that my business-managers, in order to improve something called my “public image,” had decided to give away some of my vast fortune each quarter for artistic philanthropy! I am not in the business of supporting every impoverished opera troupe, pantechnicon and magic-lantern-gallery in the Republic! Nor am I in the business of helping the coarser immigrants blather on about their lack of breeding. If the Irish need money, they can dig me another sub-way!
This was not always my position. Some time ago, I helped fund a German cultural group known as “The Bund.” They were proud to be Prussian—as am I—and, though possessing an unfortunate fondness for the operas of Wagner, they were well-organized, knew the value of a well-starched brown shirt, and were pursuing the admirable goal of achieving German purity. Yet a few years later, when I needed their support to retain my governorship of this state, they claimed to be busy with matters in Poland! I was so outraged, I have funded no-one since.
Yet here was Standish telling me that the Zweibel fortune was underwriting “the CTW,” some sort of play-time work-shop for children! I did not have to ask to know that these children were not working very hard. Indeed, from Standish’s description, it sounded like some un-holy marriage of McGuffey’s Reader and a homo-sexual Punch and Judy show. This wasteful work-shop also suckles at the teat of a foundation run by Henry Ford, another former supporter of The Bund, proving at least that I am not the only shrewd man taken in by these sycophants.
I intend to withdraw my support of this so-called children’s work-shop, unless it is converted into a seaming-house for the manufacture of textiles by children. My solicitor Beavers has advised me against this, saying that if were to cancel my checks, a neighborhood called “Sesame Street” might revert to slumhood, earning me the enmity of the nation. Of course, I could not care less. If even one letter of complaint comes to my news-paper, I shall set fire to the Eastern Sea-board.
T. Herman Zweibel, the great grandson of Onion founder Friedrich Siegfried Zweibel, was born in 1868, became editor of The Onion at age 20, and persisted in various editorial posts until his launching into space in 2001. Zweibel’s name became synonymous with American business success in the 20th century. Many consider him the “Father Of American Journalism,” also the title of his well-known 1943 biography, written by Norman Rombauer.
