There once was an emperor by the name of Ed Graff, typical of those who governed in the imperial style in the locally centralized school districts of the (less than United) States of America (known as the USA in days of yore).
This ruler of the Minneapolis Public Schools was known as Emperor Ed, because though governing in the imperial style he maintained the affectation of a man of the people. Emperor Ed was surrounded by sycophantic couriers at his Davis Court, as was also typical in the public schools of the Land of USA. One day the MPS courtiers invited into the presence of Emperor Ed two clothiers who vowed to make him a fine silk suit that would abet the projection of an imperial image; and they also agreed to make him an array of T-shirts and sweatshirts for those times when he wanted to emphasize his man-of-the-people-ness.
Day after day the tailors worked at their loom in the office of Tanya Tennessen, the Communications Courtier who thought that the new clothes would be ever so delightful for the emperor’s projection of a fine public image. In those days it was the custom to under-educate African American males while celebrating their athleticism, so Communications Courtier Tennessen prevailed upon the tailors to include in their casual textile productions logos celebrating the football and basketball accomplishments of the North High School Serfs.
And so it went with the tailors. For two months they exhibited the habits of labor, coyly working behind a screen so as to, they said, keep everyone in suspense. They emitted all sorts of loud looming sounds with that sense of fawned fury so attractive to those accustomed to staring at computer screens, playing games during those many times that they did very little at all, or not very much of what they were really supposed to do.
At last the two months of contracted toil came to an end for the two clothiers. Unabashedly, they invited Emperor Ed behind their screen to attire himself in the fruits of their loom. Emperor Ed divested himself of his suit, tie, and footwear; the cloying clothiers even claimed that their sartorial productions had built-in undergarments, so in time Emperor Ed stood before them naked, awaiting his robing.
The clothiers made a great show of bestowing upon their contractor his newly spun raiment. They affected the robing of Emperor Ed from top to bottom, bowed, pulled back the screen, and presented the ruler of MPS for Courtier Tennessen and all of her attendants to see. Muffled gasps and stymied smiles filled the room.
Emperor Ed looked immensely proud as he commenced to trod a trail of crimson carpet that had been placed on that part of the Davis Palace leading to the assembly room. Emperor Ed made his way in projected dignity to his place among the members of the MPS Board of Education, who were just as stunned as all of those proletarians and peasants who had been admitted to this gathering for displaying the new accoutrement of their ruler. Scribe Raghavendran dutifully nodded and scribbled sentences attesting to the emperor’s new attire, for she knew this would satisfy her ingenuous editors among the senior scribes.
But just before Emperor Ed sat down, a familiar member of the crowd known to them as Messenger GMD, shouted out, “The emperor has no clothes!”
And so it was.
The tailors had counted on their long and expensive exhibition of laborious sound and fury having implicated so many people that their pretense would endure in perpetuity. They would, they thought, escape Davis Palace with their unearned emolument tucked into their own very real suit pockets. But they were snatched by the palace guard as a cry went out from the crowd, amid uproarious laughter:
“That’s right. That’s what our eyes told us, though we could scarcely believe:
Look: Emperor Ed Graff has no clothes!”
Emperor Ed soon thereafter became an education professor at Southern Mississippi University and tried his best to adjust socially and emotionally for the remainder of his days.
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