Waiting for Godot to Leave

Charlie Johnston is from Belleville. If you come from St. Louis, that's all you need to know. Charlie is the kind of guy you'd meet in a bar in Belleville, Illinois - a working class community across the river from St. Louis, where I'm from.  Guys from Belleville - and from all over Southern Illinois - are characters.  They come up with tall tales and you sit on a bar stool listening to them and you take everything they say with a grain of salt because they're from Belleville. Charlie Johnston is a liar.  Or a teller of tall tales.  Take your pick. He says an angel is giving him secret messages.  He says, among other things, that the last normal Christmas was Christmas of 2013, and if you didn't notice how abnormal Christmas of 2014 and Christmas of 2015 were, that's not his fault.  He says that his angel has told him that Obama will not finish his term; that he will convert and that the 2016 elections will be suspended.  He says that the V...

Ye shall know them by their fruits. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles?  Even so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit.  A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit.  Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them. ( Mat. 7:16-20 )  Loren Copp. The Riverfront Times ran an article in December that was very sympathetic toward a St. Louis businessman who claimed to be helping troubled teens, Loren Copp.  Copp, it turns out, has now been arrested on child abuse charges, and the evidence against him is said to be a video of him having sex with a 12-year-old girl, a girl that he had taken under his wing and was "caring for".   The RFT is now reporting that Copp's supporters, including his attorney, have suddenly abandoned him, in light of the evidence that ...