By Scott Sullivan
Editor
Trumping the Shark
There’s go big or go home, then there’s stealing a shark out of an aquarium. Three sharknappers did so in San Antonio last month, smuggling it out in a baby stroller.
Viewers’ knee-jerk reaction to coo at babies led some, looking twice, to weigh words more carefully. “What adorable, er … teeth.”
On first reading I thought the report said the shark was 16 feet long. Picture stuffing that in a stroller and explaining to guards while exiting, “We brought Junior to search for his birth parents.”
“Have a nice day,” they’d say.
Turns out the horn shark, Miss Helen, was 16 inches. The three amigos who made off with her didn’t get far. Surveillance footage recorded their truck’s license plate, they were busted and Helen returned to her home aquarium.
What’s not to love about baby sharks? “I know you’ll shred me when we take swim lessons, but for now you’re so cute …”
Why steal one? Because it’s there? You can justify anything that way. Lepto-maniacs swipe butterflies, septo-maniacs septic tanks, pepto-maniacs Pepto Abysmal …
Crime doesn’t pay, except when it does. When police arrived at the culprits’ home it was hard to miss the huge pool inside filled with sharks and more fish.
Antone Shannon, 38, and his accomplices face theft charges. Shannon ahowed officers a receipt they could tell was doctored. Then off to their tanks he and Helen went.
I was heartened to hear justice — here, at least — was served. Decriminalize fish-stealing, only non-criminals will steal them. “The Constitution gives me the right to bear sharks,” I’d tell police.
“Where?”
“The 28th Amendment.”
“There are just 27.”
“So it’s pending.”
While I sat in the tank next to Shannon, Miss Helen would join us. “What are you doing here?” I’d ask the shark.
“We school off the west coast of California. President Trump says I’m an illegal immigrant.”
“Then you deserve to be split from your family. Left of California?”
“No, I left from there.”
“Calm down,” Shannon would say. “I have six past convictions. I know how to get us free again.”
“How?”
“Claim whatever we’re charged with is ‘fake news.’”
“What if police can document facts?” the shark would ask.
“Say it’s a conspiracy. Liberal or conservative, whichever your audience wants to believe.”
“Facts are facts. They’re neutral.”
“Not if you cite just select ones.”
“So you’re a lawyer?”
“You’re sharp for a shark,” he’d say.
Who’s better suited to be a lawyer? A human born innocent or a predator fish that hunts nights for crustaceans, whose shells they crush with their jaws, then extract their prey’s innards using suction?
Far be it from me to compare our President with a Piscean whose pectoral fins aren’t fused to its head. Lots of things don’t connect with Trump’s head. Still worse are the things that do.
When we’re freed, Helen, Shannon and I will go home to our private prisons knowing nothing inspires repentance like getting caught.
Don’t look for “jumping the shark” in the OED. Oxford dons who compiled it weren’t hip to the 1970s TV series “Happy Days,” in particular the episode where Fonzie donned water skis … you can guess the rest.
That’s when “Happy Days” crossed the storyline from its original intent to become a self-parody. Instead of reviving the show’s flagging ratings, the stunt marked its last plunge into irrelevance.
I can think of political examples. Remember Howard Dean’s 2004 Presidential bid? After leading Democrats in the polls, he placed third in the Iowa caucuses, then tried to rally supporters with a bizarre speech ending when he cried, “YEAH!”
Dean jumped the shark with his “I Have A Scream” speech, just as Democratic frontrunner Gary Hart did 17 years earlier when he challenged the press to follow him and prove he was having an affair. They did and he was. Photos surfaced quickly of Hart with a young blonde mistress on board the 83-foot luxury yacht “Monkey Business.” He withdrew from the race soon after.
“Trumping the Shark” marks a change. Not that our current President is the first whose alleged and real affairs have caused folks to say tsk-tsk outwardly while boosting his popularity.
How is Bill Clinton more liked today than his seemingly-faithful wife is? Trump’s shouts and daring the media to prove he has lied, which they promptly do, make him more popular with his followers.
In Trumping the Shark Land if a guy’s a rogue, he’s guy. If a lady is, she is still a tramp. As a guy, do I benefit? Or do double standards negate each other so none are left?
Want to steal a shark? Hearts? Power? ”The line forms on the right, babe,” sang Bobby Darin in “Mack the Knife.”
Are those adorable teeth, or what?
