The Legend of Gammie Harding

I figured since this book is really strange, why not make a blog post to match. I think that's a great idea. Let's delve right in, shall we?

So which 1 of the many intriguing topics in this book do we talk about first? We could take a quick swing at Jes Grew, but that's too obvious. We gotta dig deeper. I mean really dip. To places where your mother shielded your eyes from when you were a kid. You know what we're talking about. That's right, it's the Warren G. Harding presidency. Yup. I'm back at it again with more president talk. Now you might ask "Clark why are you writing about the Warren G. Harding presidency and not Jes Grew or Atonism or Osiris or something actually worth our time", but I say screw you it's a free country. Also I feel like since he was president during the era discussed in Mumbo Jumbo, he is a very relevant figure in the novel despite not playing the largest role. Anyways, now that I have the hecklers out of the way, let's get started.

So Warren G. Harding. The man of the hour. I'm pretty sure there's like 3 people I've known ever to talk about him. Those 3 people being me, Ishmael Reed, and whoever wrote the Wikipedia article for Warren G. Harding. But that's alright. He did some things. Apparently the G stands for "Gamaliel". So let's just call him Gammie. Anyways this Gammie guy was kind of up to no good, even though he didn't exactly know that he was. He was involved in numerous scandals, but was still greatly appreciated by the public before it all ended. 1 of the bigger scandals, and 1 which actually found its way into Mumbo Jumbo, is the "Ohio Gang" scandal. Basically what happened is that he got into office, and then appointed a bunch of his friends to all of these high up federal jobs. Some of them actually did what they were supposed to do, but a lot of them became very corrupt and Harding didn't exactly do anything to stop it. They're called the "Ohio Gang" because they became close with Harding while he was a Republican delegate for the state of Ohio.

These guys were responsible for ole Gammie's biggest scandal of his time: The Teapot Dome scandal. Now, despite this being a kind of dumb name for a scandal, this was a pretty big deal. It was named this because of where the scandal took place. Of course, it took place at the well known Teapot Dome Oil Fields. Now why were these oil fields named something as ridiculous as "Teapot Dome Oil Fields"? Well, there's a rock nearby called Teapot Rock. Why anybody would think this rock looks anything like a teapot is still a mystery to me, but i guess you had to be there.

Does this look like a teapot to you? Does it? Thought not. 

Anyway let's get back to the matter at hand. TEAPOT DOME. As I was saying, this thing was a big deal until Watergate came along and everyone forgot about it. So what happened was this: There was this guy called Albert Bacon Fall (cool name, pretty shite individual) who was appointed Secretary of the Interior by Gammie because they were pals, and he did some bad things. The Department of Interior had many jobs, 1 of them being to manage their oil reserves. The reserves were supposed to be kept so that when the navy needed some oil for their ships, they could get it without having to pay some billionaire huge amounts of cash all the time. But of course that's not what happened. Initially the Navy Department had control of the reserves but of course Mr. Bacon had other ideas and convinced his buddy Warren G. to hand over control to him via executive order. Once Bacon Fall had control, he leased the reserves to a private oil company called Sinclair Oil. This was technically legal, but everybody found it kinda strange that there was no competitive bidding for it, he just gave the company the lease. People also found it kinda odd that after this lease that should've just brought more money in for the government, old Bacon was starting to live a much wealthier lifestyle. So then some senator dude named Thomas J. Walsh called for an investigation, and found out that Bacon Fall had been bribed for the reservations, and had received over $400,000 from this private oil company. So of course they threw him in jail and that was that. And even though Harding didn't do anything wrong here, his reputation was screwed because that was 1 of the friends he put to power. And this "Ohio Gang" kept having little scandals like this for awhile, landing a bunch of them in jail, and causing some to even commit suicide. Don't you just love politics?

But all of these mistakes were thrown under the rug and forgotten on August 2, 1923, when Warren Gamaliel Harding died while still in office. All of a sudden journalists were saying incredible things about him and how he died for his country, and the people for the most part went along with it. So despite all of the problems with Harding's career, the public made him seem like an incredible dude at the end.

So there's a lil' history lesson for you. I hope you liked it. Maybe you learned something new. Also I just read an interview and apparently people were calling Ishmael Reed a prophet because he compared 1970s America with 1920s America and then Watergate broke out right after his book. Maybe that's a topic for another blog though. Is Ishmael Reed a prophet? Moses reincarnate? The world may never know.