Flapper

As described by Jonathan Swift in "Gulliver's Travels":

"I observed, here and there, many in the habit of servants, with a blown bladder, fastened like a flail to the end of a stick, which they carried in their hands. In each bladder was a small quantity of dried peas, or little pebbles, as I was afterwards informed. With these bladders, they now and then flapped the mouths and ears of those who stood near them, of which practice I could not then conceive the meaning. It seems the minds of these people are so taken up with intense speculations, that they neither can speak, nor attend to the discourses of others, without being roused by some external taction upon the organs of speech and hearing; for which reason, those persons who are able to afford it always keep a flapper (the original is climenole) in their family, as one of their domestics; nor ever walk abroad, or make visits, without him. And the business of this officer is, when two, three, or more persons are in company, gently to strike with his bladder the mouth of him who is to speak, and the right ear of him or them to whom the speaker addresses himself. This flapper is likewise employed diligently to attend his master in his walks, and upon occasion to give him a soft flap on his eyes; because he is always so wrapped up in cogitation, that he is in manifest danger of falling down every precipice, and bouncing his head against every post; and in the streets, of justling others, or being justled himself into the kennel."

Today's politicians and people of great power have surrounded themselves with layers of servants who act as "flappers." They may be called secretaries or administrative assistants or some other high sounding title, but their duties are the same - to decide what the great person they serve may or may not hear or see. When in their opinion something is worthy of notice or a response, instead of flapping the great one's ears with a balloon tied to a stick, they send a memo or e-mail or, in rare cases, actually arrange a meeting with the great one. Otherwise, the great ones never hear or see much of anything, isolated as they are in their offices and estates.

The latest "trick" of the high and mighty for 2015 is to employ a "Facebook Flapper." This is an automatic system that either the Great One, or his Flapper-in-Chief Facebook Page Flapperette, sets Facebook controls to ignore citizens who make comments that the Flappers consider "undesirable." You can see examples of this in action on the Facebook pages of Lester Taylor and his Property Maintenance/ Code Enforcer, Dwight Saunders, as well as Third Ward Councilwimp Ted Green to a lesser degree. It's rather like the Emperor in the Hans Christian Andersen story, who, instead of acknowledging that perhaps he really is naked, has the small child who is calling him out silenced, so no one else will know the truth. So if you go to the aforementioned Facebook pages, you will find none of my crying out about how exposed and pathetic these "great ones" actually are.

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