Anyone familiar with daily WSJ book reviews knows they can always be found in the same part of the paper; first section, right hand page before the editorials. I go there right after the front page A-Hed piece.
Monday's book review carried a piece about "Anansi's Gold" by Yepoka Yeebo. The review is by Frank Gannon who was an assistant to the president in the Nixon White House. This has no bearing on the content, but it probably means Frank and I remember the same presidents.
Anansi's Gold is about a consummate con man John Blay-Miezah, who in the mid-1970s was living very well promising people he knew where secreted Ghanaian gold was located in a Swiss bank, he having been at the deathbed of the dying first president of Ghana, Kwame Nkrumah, who confirmed to his ears that there was a boatload of cash, diamonds and 30,000 gold bars plundered from the country sitting in a Swiss bank. The dying president gave John Blay the account numbers and passwords he would need to claim the money.
John Blay, not wanting to keep this all to himself—what fun would that be?—offered partnership shares to whomever would listen to him and put up some money so John Blay could retrieve the booty.
John Blay travelled in rarefied circles, and no less than Shirley Temple Black, (Yes, Good Ship Lollipop Shirley Temple.) the U.S. ambassador to Ghana saw through him and tried to warn others, notably in a 1975 cable to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger that John Blay was a fraud.
It is not always a bridge someone is trying to sell you. And even if isn't true that a sucker is born every minute, it is true you may not have to look for long to find one. (And certainly more than one.)
It's a great tale, with the name Anansi coming from the author Yepoka Yeebo comparing John Blay to the mythical Ghanaian trickster.
Enter the former U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell, who Frank Gannon describes as being "on his uppers" after release from prison in 1979 who could be counted as one of the many who were hoodwinked.
On his what? His "uppers?" What the hell are they?
Anyone approaching my age will remember the famously long trial in a New York Federal court of John Mitchell and Maurice Stans, the Commerce Secretary, two of the many people caught up in the Watergate scandal vortex. That trial had legs. Our outgoing mail supervisor was on the jury and pretty much disappeared from his family's life and our workplace during that trial. After a ten week trial and an acquittal, our outgoing mail supervisor's dog probably didn't know him.
In another trial for conspiracy, obstruction of justice and perjury, John Mitchell was convicted in 1975, entered prison in 1977 and was released in 1979. Legal defense costs money, even when you lose. No doubt Mr. Mitchell had trouble rubbing two nickels together after all this.
Having to look up the phrase "on his uppers", I found it apparently means someone who is broke, pitifully broke, walking around in shoes so worn that the only thing left to them are "the uppers."
It will remain to be seen if this phrase will someday apply to a former president.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
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