The Emperor's New Clothes
A very old fable, the moral of which is: Some things never change.
Two rascally con men came into town and told the emperor that they were skilled weavers of very special cloth. It was made from very special thread that they spun themselves, from a process that they had generated themselves, that was quite secret.

Naturally the emperor, a very vain and self centered person, who was always thinking of how he looked and indulging himself in the finest of clothing wanted to have this cloth for a new set of clothes. He would spare no expense.

So he had the men installed in the best guest suites at the castle overlooking his world renowned fish pond. They were given his credit card and told to charge what they needed to set up their workshop.

They had a blast. They ordered a spinning wheel and pretended to spin, while eating and drinking from the King's best provisions. When the King came to see what they were doing all he could see was an empty spinning wheel.

"What's this" he exclaimed. "There is Nothing on this spinning wheel."

Oh! "This is very special thread" they told him. "It has a very special quality" "It is very Distinctive." "Only those people who are worthy of their office and intelligent enough can see it."

"It is a beautiful irridescent shade of royal blue with beautiful earth tones running through it"

One of the men held up his hands with the imaginary skein.

"You Do see it don't you?" he asked in an incredulous tone to the King.

"Um, Oh yes indeed, I do see it!" the King said, not wanting to be thought of as unworthy of his office or stupid. "Of course I see it."

And the more he looked the more he imagined he could see it. "I like the purple and gold flecks, very Distinctive. I've never seen anything like it."

And he went and told his prime minister, his wife, his kids and the royal court all about these talented crafts people who were spinning this incredible threads to weave this incredible cloth.

After hanging around for several weeks, "spinning" the thread and amusing themselves at the king's expense, the rascally con men moved the "thread" to the loom and started to weave.

To save time in this retelling, I'll just skip over to the fact that everybody went to see for themselves and nobody wanted to admit that they saw Nothing, since that would mean they would be deemed unworthy and stupid. The more people who saw it, the more elaborate the descriptions of the cloth became, till eventually there was no adult in the kingdom who had not either "seen" the cloth first hand or heard the telling about it in the marketplace or in popular songs of the day.

In fact, the king had decreed since the cloth had the ability to tell if people were worthy or intelligent, it became a necessary prerequisite to hold office, to view the cloth and describe it. So there was a fairly steady parade of cabinet members and court officials visiting and complimenting the weavers on their work.

The rascally con men drug out their little pantomime as long as they could, putting the king off, postponing the time he would finally get to wear his new clothes.

"We've got an Advanced weaving system that will take some time. There is a lot of Self Expression that goes into tailoring. We need to take your measurements exactly. This is a very special work we are doing for you, etc, etc." Finally, after many adjustments, and repositionings and lots of free food and drink, the master weavers, allowed the King to try on his new clothes down to the hand monagrammed extra silky imaginary underwear.

"How do I look?" he asked his weavers.

"Oh, your majesty! You look Transformed!" one con man said. "Your court will really notice the difference in your highness." the other one said.

"How do I look?" he asked his Prime minister.

"I've never seen anything like it." his prime minister truthfully replied.

The King asked all his court, his wife, his children, his royal bakers, Everybody in the palace gave the highest compliments to the vain king.

"I shall parade down main street at 6'oclock so that my loyal subjects can see my wonderous new clothes. I declare this a New Age in finery." said the king in his most important Kingly voice.

And so he did, parade, in all the glory that God had seen fit to endow him with, with royal trumpeterss in front and royal knights behind.

The crowd murmered their admiration and approval, each one not wanting to be thought unworthy or stupid.

All except one little girl, who looked at the king with wonder and surprise and piped up with a clear, bell like tone that carried quite far into the crowd.

"Mommy, why is the King naked?"

Her mother was very embarassed and tried to hush her little girl, but she was a strong willed young lady and not easily put down.

"But Mommy!" She screamed even more loudly, "He is wearing Nothing at all."

Suddenly the crowd began to laugh and pass the comment to their neighbors and as if breaking from a trance, they all realized it at once.

"The child is right!"

"He is naked!" "Oh my gosh" And they started to laugh and point and wonder.

The King came to his senses, also, as if woken from a trance and realized that he had wasted untold amounts of money, and time at fittings, and was now standing in his altogether, being ridiculed by the populace.

"Bring me those weavers" he bellowed to his guards.

Ah, but it was too late, they had fled town hours before, crossing the river and sailing far away.

Laughing as hard as they could they travelled all the way along to another town, where they looked up the most self-centered, important citizen to start their scam all over again.