A bad time to be a fool (was Re: [UA] 1930's UA )

[Tim Toner]

I was thinking about something I wrote in my
recollection of the Adventure! game this past weekend.
 Thomas Fitzgerald is called a 'moron' and various
calls are made to sterilize the 'mentally defective'
population.  This is a time when eugenics and social
darwinism is quite in vogue after all.  We even have
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Chief Justice of the Supreme
Court, saying, "Three generations of imbeciles is
enough."  Is this evidence of a war on The Fool, one
of the most successful of archetypes?  What's
interesting is that the laws continued unchecked in
the US until 1942, when Skinner v. Oklahoma cast much
of the law into murky waters.  Why is it interesting? 
Well, Bugs Bunny, the very emodiment of the 'clever
fool' in culture who seldom experiences setback
(unlike The Little Tramp and Buster Keaton's
characters), was unofficially born in 1940.

tt

=====
"As democracy is perfected, the office of president represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people.  On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart's desire at last and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron." - H.L. Mencken, 1920