3 October—Exclusive to The Monitor on the job front, directly from the U.S. Department of Labor: A man walks into the Hiring Office in the West Wing. “I’d like to apply for a job with the administration,” he tells the clerk. So the clerk gives him an application to fill out.

The applicant comes to the question: “Are you circumcised?” So he asks the clerk, “Is this question really necessary?”

The clerk replies, “I’m sorry, sir, but if you’re circumcised you can’t be employed by this administration.”

“What possible difference could it make if I’m circumcised?” the bewildered applicant asks.

“It’s quite simple, sir” the clerk replies, “To work for the Trump administration you have to be a complete prick.”

On that subject, the world learned only yesterday from the Hearst Republican-American that Donald Trump must have been among the first people to have contracted COVID-19. It had been thought that the dreaded viral disease first appeared in China in 2019. But when an unimpeachable source like Hearst tells us that Trump had been infected with it all the way back in 2010, it’s safe to assume that epidemiological history needs to be rewritten.

Here’s the actual announcement from the HRA’s “Today in History” panel:

The accuracy of the Hearst announcement is confirmed by the absence of a correction in today’s Waterbury rag. Remdesivir, a so-called broad-spectrum antiviral, would have been new to the market in 2010 and the unspecified experimental drug cocktail administered to Trump must be the same one that was administered to hamsters and monkeys. Did those poor creatures make out as well as Trump?

And Trump likely was referred to as president in 2010, six years before Hillary Clinton got him elected, only because he was president of the Trump Organization.

In closing, then, the bad news is that after 177 years, Hammacher Schlemmer is going out of business, killed by the same sort of financial predation that has infected and corrupted capitalism the world over. HS will be missed, just like all the other great companies that are now dead or might as well be . . .