Stevieslaw: Scott Pruitt’s Cone of Silence

Our local newspaper, the CDT, picks up all of its non-sports stories now from News Services, like AP. There is usually one top story and a bunch of stories from the AP bargain rack. Today we learned that Scott Pruitt, the evil head of the EPA, has changed the locks and had his office swept of bugs—at taxpayer expense.

Scotty apparently did not watch much TV in the sixties or he would have jumped at the chance to install Cones of Silence throughout the agency. The Cone of Silence, as anyone my age will recall, is the plastic bubble device Max Smart and The Chief would use for the their top, top secret conversations. The show, Get Smart, which featured Don Adams as Maxwell Smart—inept secret agent, and Barbara Feldon as Agent 99 was written by Mel Brooks and Buck Henry.

The joke was that the Cone of Silence allowed everyone outside the Cone to hear exactly what was said inside, while prohibiting those inside from hearing each other. Or as Secret Agent Smart might say,” I asked you not to tell me that.”

I’ve written to Scott to suggest he might pick up some surplus Cones of Silence at CBS. It might really help the public if he used them.