Dear President Trump,

When I saw the news midday that Paul Manafort pleaded guilty and will cooperate with the Mueller investigation in exchange for less prison time the taunt “liar, liar pant’s on fire” popped into my head. I was thinking about you, of course, and how you must be feeling the heat now that your previously brave, loyal guy is not willing to tough it out for you after all, and is probably going to expose a whole bunch of your lies. The other thing that popped into my head is the refrain from “Oh Happy Day” by the Edwin Hawkins Singers. After a bunch of “oh happy day”s, you may or may not know that the song talks about how Jesus washed the narrator’s sins away. I don’t think Paul M’s sins will be washed away, but he may be able to temper his awful karma somewhat by coming clean about “his participation in and knowledge of all criminal activities” (from the WP). You caught that last part, right? “…..knowledge of all criminal activities.” This means any money laundering he knows you or yours were engaged in, any Russia collusion, any anything. Oh happy day, indeed!

I want to go back to the “liar, liar pants on fire” bit, though. I was curious where the phrase came from and what it means since it doesn’t make any sense. I found a post about it on the Atlas Obscura blog. It pieces together what is known (and isn’t known) about the phrase’s origins, but first it talks about a similar phrase that’s pretty interesting and quite apropos. The phrase was first recorded in 1400 and is “liar, liar, lick dish!”, a reference to how some people will “lie as fast as a dog will lick a dish”. Isn’t that awesome? It fits you to a “T” – I don’t think anyone in recorded history has lied as quickly and easily (or as frequently) as you. Getting back to the pants on fire version, though, some time in the 1930’s this variation was recorded “Liar, liar / pants on fire / nose as long as a telephone wire!” the post goes on to explain that a few clever contemporary people have tried to pass off old-timey sounding passages to explain what was behind the taunt, but they were all unmasked as fakes. It’s actually pretty funny that the taunt is about lying and they were lying about it. It all fits together nicely and circles back to how you lie and then lie about your lies and how you are being unmasked as a lying fake.

May we all be safe from liars.
May we celebrate happy days when they come our way.
May no voters ignore the unhealthy deceitful shit you’ve been pulling.
May you not start a war.

Sincerely,
Tracy Simpson