-- G.K. Chesterton, Four
Faultless Felons (1930)
-- © 2012 WDJ. All rights reserved.
 |
| The Umbrella Man at Dealey Plaza, 22 Nov 1963 |
At the time, he was a mid-level operative in the League of Just Men, a front group for the Riemann
Association. His job was to signal the man on the grassy knoll.
Then that idiot in the book depository up and spoiled everything.
The Counterespionage Directorate of the World of Dr Justice is working feverishly to elucidate the connection with this man:
 |
| Your coffee might taste bitter tonight… |
Connection if any with the Paschal Scandal had not been established at press-time.
(Stay tuned for more… if I am spared…)
~
Historical footnote:
The
Kennedy-assassination Umbrella Man has been explained (away) as being a
harmless gentleman exercizing symbolic speech by brandishing the
shameful symbol of Neville Chamberlain:
 | ||
| Just feed him the Sudetenland, there's a good lad; | then no doubt he'll take a nap |
Though
why JFK, who after all launched an anti-Communist invasion at the Bay
of Pigs, and later faced down the Russkies during the Cuban Missile
crisis (and who ran for President using phoney assertions of a “missile
gap”) should be seen as an accomodationist, baffles credulity.
(Supposedly the Umbrella Man was directing his protest rather at JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy, a notorious appeaser of the Nazis; a few decades too late.)
(Supposedly the Umbrella Man was directing his protest rather at JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy, a notorious appeaser of the Nazis; a few decades too late.)
[Update 27 V 2012] At this site, concerning the sinister figure at the side of the Holy Father, pictured above,
an astute reader comments:
Le
majordome de Benoit XVI, le majordome de Mad. Bettancourt, Il y a
vraiment des professions dont il faut se méfier!!!!!!! Je vais vite
licencier le mien.
Yet in another reader, the umbrella-butler finds a defender:
Qu'un
brave majordome et ses éventuelles complices soulèvent de si peu le
couvercle de la marmite, qui n'a cessé de bouillonner depuis près de
deux milles ans, et révèlent les immondices qui s'y trouvent, c'est tout
à leur honneur …
~
~ Recommendation posthume ~
“Si j’étais encore en vie, et
que je désirais un bon whodunnit,
que lirais-je?"
(Je suis Victor Serge, et j’ai
approuvé ce message)
~
[Flash update!] Our crack cryptanalysts here at the Research Division of WDJ (headquarters: Geneva) have managed to trace a rainwear link uniting all the shadowy Umbrella Men of history: none other than the notorious “Foreign Excellent Trenchcoat Company”, Leopold Trepper’s front for the Rote Kapelle ! A pity you are not Cleared for this !
 |
| We also deal in "galoshes". What is your size? We realize that this question is very personal. |
[‘Nother update] Moscow demonstration by the jihadi-istishhadi group “Slaves of the White Umbrella”:
 |
| Looks like rain |
[Yeta ‘nother update] The rival red-umbrella gang:
For history buffs --
The Bulgarian umbrella is the name of an umbrella with a hidden pneumatic mechanism which shot out a small poisonous pellet.
-- Wikipedia, “Regenschirmattentat”
 |
| Георги Марков |
The method has been used in numerous assassinations, including one scheduled for tomorrow.
[Historical footnote] Connoisseurs of the subterranean sources of this vast
conspiracy will be interested to
know that, according to his friend and biographer, Sigmund Freud had “a special
aversion to umbrellas. “He once
told my wife that all an umbrella did
was to keep its stick dry.”
(Ernest Jones, Freud: Years of Maturity (1955), p. 393)
*
Für psychologisch
tiefgreifende Krimis,
in pikanter
amerikanischer Mundart,
und christlich gesinnt,
klicken Sie bitte
hier:
*
Arthur Koestler, on the attitude of himself and his
companions in cloudcuckooland, up to the shock of September 1939, when they
finally realized that the time of postponements and appeasements had finally
passed:
They had lived so long under the
sign of the Umbrella,
that they found it difficult to
believe
that the age of the Sword had come.
-- The Scum of the Earth
(1941, 2nd. edn. 1955)
~
Possibly part of the same mythic complex, possibly not: Tiresias; Rumpelstiltskin; the Yellow Card Man.
[Update 16 mars 2014, centennial of the assassination of
Gaston Calmette]
We have seen how useful an umbrella can be, in concealing an
instrument of murder. Likewise, that article of femine warmth and
coquetry ... the muff:
[Historical footnote]
Not only the sword, but the distaff side, can wield an umbrella to deadly effect. The following recalls the stormy events
of September 1848:
Henriette Zobel, die 35jährige
Ehefrau eines Bornheimer Lithographen, wurde kurz nach dem Septemberaufstand
verhaftet. Sie galt als Rädelsführerin des Komplotts gegen die beiden
Abgeordneten Auerswald und Lichnowsky, die im Laufe des Aufstands von einer wütenden
Volksmenge umgebracht worden waren. Mit
ihrem Regenschirm soll die Zobel noch auf den schon schwerverwundeten
Lichnowsky eingedroschen haben. Der Schirm wurde daher als corpus delicti zu
den Gerichtsakten genommen und befindet sich heute im Besitz des Frankfurter
Historischen Museums. Es ist ein einfacher schwarzer Regenschirm. Die
Zeichner, die die Ermordung Lichnowskys dargestellt haben, haben den Schirm der
Zobel jedoch gern rot koloriert - entsprechend der „extrem-demokratischen“
Gesinnung der Revolutionärin.
http://www.sabinehock.de/publikationen/tagespresse/archiv/tagespresse_032.html
[Update 29 September 2014] The umbrella army invades Hong Kong.
.
[Update June 2020]
Just recently, the term “Umbrella Man” has popped up again, once more in
a mysterious context, but with no reference to Chamberlain. E.g.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carlieporterfield/2020/05/30/who-is-umbrella-man-mystery-vandal-at-minneapolis-riot-spurs-conspiracies/
Examples of earlier American use, where Chamberlain was the
allusion:
Lyndon Johnson running against Coke Stevenson for Senator,
in 1948:
“Isolationist” was another word he [i.e., LBJ] drummed into his
listeners -- until he started using a stronger word: “appeaser”. Stevenson, he said, “is an umbrella man. … He talks Chamerlain talk … He wants another Munich.”
-- Robert Caro, The Years of
Lundon Johnson: Means of Ascent (1990), p. 254
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