An email from a reader gave me a good reason to look into the pedigree of this story which this blog has posted on below. Come to think of it, it also provides insight into the quality of their (one sided) scholarship of a Le Monde writer.
The latest revival of the story (for which Le Monde does not provide any hint of the origin of) dates back to 1997 and an anonymous writer in Connecticut. The yarn made the ‘big time’ in February of 2000 (just as is was becoming obvious that George W. would be the Republican party candidate.) Oddly enough the FEB-2000 story seems to have vanished from the Washington Post online archive.
Vanished! Who smells a conspiracy?
There is, however, an even murkier swamp to this département: the Larouche cult has been parroting it throughout the 90s. This fun loving bunch has been known to promote conspiracy theories involving the British Royal Family being part of an illuminati, and when George H. W. Bush came along, added him to their decades-long hissy-fit of improbably huge secrets.
All of their efforts have one thing in common – they are selected to stoke up gullible 16-25 year olds who don’t know enough about history to realize that the long-winded Larouchistas aren’t flattering them with big, serious looking words that would lead a dim reader to think that we found the secret to sounding smart.
It’s why on finds in their marches and gatherings a lot of adolescents who, by virtue of their great percentage, end up “growing out” of the scam well after it cost them every weekend of their college years. Guiding these naïfs waif is always a small core of the least accomplished “40 and up” types you will ever meet.
Their current fixations include racist conspiracies (reflecting their inability to find non-white supporters,) and Dick Cheney who seems to have a special place in their hearts.
As for Le Monde – they ate the whole tub or kool-aid, taking questionable stories in college papers as a source. The entire thing hinges on a parenthetical note in a letter written in 1933 about Geronimo’s head having been said to be stolen by an officer named Bush, and the suspicion that a 1933 photograph shows him with Geronimo’s head.
The letter emerged in the fall of 1983. I suspect that the only reason any such story emerged was because George H. W. Bush was the vice president and the time with an election in the following year, and to the shame of some, he was not Jimmy Carter.
Senator Prescott Bush served in the US Army between 1917 and 1919. Another history of Geronimo (which Le Monde cites) states that his grave was not identified until 1918, while Prescott Bush was stationed in Europe.
The whole story has about the same relevance as the following statement: Jimmy Carter was the first US president to have a boy’s name.
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