Tea and Vitriol

Titus Oates was an English clergyman who, in the late 17th Century, claimed that he was privy to a Popish plot to assassinate King Charles II. He accused all sorts of Catholic noblemen and prominent persons, including Charles's queen, Catherine of Braganza, and his brother James, Duke of York (the future King James II), of being in on the plot. While England was virulently anti-Catholic at the time, not too many prominent Protestant politicians really believed Titus but, as they were opposed to Charles in Parliament, allowed Titus to rouse the mob to stick it to the king, which resulted in numerous prominent Catholics fleeing to exile, being imprisoned and even being beheaded. Eventually, Titus's supporters got tired of him, and he spent the remaining twenty years of his life facing spells of imprisonment, being defrocked and dying in 1705, an object of derision to all. Fast forward to the 21st Century in Rochester, New York. Jarrod Jones, a Black Rochester firefighter with 14

The old saying goes: "Be careful what you wish for. You might get it." In 2021, a large percentage of voters wanted to remove Lovely Warren from the mayoral throne and were not particularly fussy about the character of the person who would succeed her. They got their wish and elected Malik (Mahweak) Evans as mayor. Despite the media blitz to create a positive persona in order to sell the public on Mahweak, it never really took off because the reality of his political history was pretty dismal and too many people knew it to be taken in by all of the hype that now surrounded him. Still, enough people came to believe that their "creation" had the answers to all of their questions and the solutions to Rochester's serious problem of crime, poverty and a failing school system. Only it soon became evident that Evans really had no solutions to anything, which quickly produced a sense of "buyers' remorse" among people who were once his cheerleaders. My only