Fables for the president - The Emperor's clothes.....A Boy cried wolf!

UNDYING VALUES ON THE QUALITY OF AMERICAN LEADERSHIP TODAY – (it is no laughing matter when thousands of American and Iraqui lives have perished so far.)

The Emperor’ New Clothes, and a Boy who cried wolf!

Many years ago, there lived an emperor who was full of himself and was always thinking of his own interests and little of his people. Thus, his people were trazined to be governed by this egotistic emperor in this manner. They had no choice but to obey, let they be punished severely. The emperor who cared much about his appearance was particular on the clothes he wore.

One day he heard from two swindlers known in his kingdom approached the emprror and told the gullible emperor that they could make the finest suit of clothes from the most beautiful cloth. This cloth, they said, also had the special capability that it was invisible to anyone who was either stupid or not seeing the truth. They made the emperor believe their yarn that he “ordered” that majic clothes

Being a bit nervous about whether he himself would be able to see the cloth, the emperor first sent two of his trusted men to see it. Of course, his subordinates aware of their emperor’s big ego, neither would admit that they could not see the clothes and even praised it as truly beautiful. And the emperor was proud of it. All the townspeople had also heard of the situation and were therefore interested to learn how it was to view their emperor wearing these “clothes.”

The emperor propelled by his ego then allowed himself to be “dressed in the clothes” for a public procession through town.

The egotistic emperor was obviously stupid to realize that what he was wearing was nothing but he was not afraid that his subject would agree to that he was supposed to be wearing – a beautiful attire.

When he paraded downtown, of course, all the townspeople properly briefed, wildly praised the “magnificent clothes” of the emperor, afraid to admit that they could not see them. This went along until a small child as candid as any child could be cried out loud enough to be heard by everyone hearby.

"But he has nothing on!"

The brief silence of shock from the remark was soon followed by everyone in the crowd liberated by an innocent child who saw the truth and began shouting that the emperor had nothing on. The entire crowd took up the remark and continued to shouot “He has no clothes on!” And followed it with laughter.

The humiliated emperor heard it but did not show his feelings but instead held his head high and did not finish the procession taking refuge inside his spirit broken by the sad truth from the eyes of a child.

This story of the little boy puncturing the pretensions of the emperor's court has parallels from other cultures, categorized as Aarne-Thompson folktale type 1620, although the tale itself has no identified oral sources.^[1]

The expressions The Emperor's new clothes and The Emperor has no clothes are often used with allusion to Andersen's tale.

Most frequently, this story is a metaphor concerning a situation where the overwhelming cowed popular willingly share in a popular trend despite individually recognizing the absurdity.

“The Emperor Has No Clothes" is often used in political and social contexts for any obvious truth denied by the majority despite the evidence of their eyes, especially when proclaimed by the government.

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The Boy Who Cried Wolf is the fable of a bored boy who entertained himself by calling out "wolf". At first, nearby villagers came to his rescue because wolves were destroying the sheep which was the source of livelihood of the community. But the boy enjoyed fooling the villagers who rushed to his cry when they found that the alarms were false and that they'd wasted their time. After several of the false alarms, the disgruntled villagers disliked the boy and spread the word that the boy was not doing good by this act. Later, when the boy was actually confronted by a real live wolf, he once again cried frantically but no one came since the villagers did not believe his cries anymore for help . The boy continued to shout until he was already hoarse and still no one came until the wolf ate his entire flock of sheep. The lesson learned in this fable is:

"when political leaders are proven to be regular liars it becomes difficult for people to believe they are telling the truth, and therefore even then they are no longer believed. The liar will lie once, twice, and then perish when he tells the truth." The battle created by America in Iraq is a good example of this fable. Soon many begins to doubt how real or truthful the reason behind the war is.