Set forth below is the text of a comment that I recently put to the Goon Central board:
I think John would have had the decency to attend and just listen to their honored guest like everyone else. I think it’s fair to say at least half of the once DynamicDuo had at least a smidgen of decency. Alas, not the Rob “Hocus” Bennett half!
I would have put Old Saint Jack on the Hot Seat, Yip. You sure got that one right.
If he gave good answers to the questions, I would have applauded him and written it up at my blog.
If he evaded the questions, I would have drilled and demanded clarity. Relentlessly.
If he acknowledged his mistakes, I would have praised him as a Hero to the Middle Class.
The suggestion in your words is that you know darn well that he cannot give good answers to the questions and so you consider it “rude” to ask them. The implication is that he is 100 percent corrupt and we all should be doing what we can to cover up his corruption.
This I do not buy.
There’s a chapter in my book titled “Jack Bogle Started Out as a Little Boy.” There was a day when Old Saint Jack dreamed of coming up with an investing strategy of one-tenth the power of Valuation-Informed Indexing. The man is responsible for dozens of hugely important contributions. I love him enough to think that he is entitled to see that dream come true in his Autumn years.
The guy is not dead yet, Yip. These should be the years of Bogle’s greatest accomplishments, the years he corrects the terrible mistakes he made in his First Draft Effort and sets things right and finally gets to put his name on a strategy that really does make stock investing simple and profitable for the middle-class investor.
I intend to shake him up with some hard and pointed questions. That part is so.
You think he is corrupt. You think he is incapable of caring about the millions of people whose lives he has ruined with his mistakes. That’s 50 times worse.
No. It’s 500 times worse.
I want to shake him up because I want to bring out the good that I know must be inside him for him to have accomplished all the great things he truly has accomplished. You want him to go down in history as the person primarily responsible for putting the United States in the Second Great Depression, an economic collapse that could well end up being bad enough to bring on a third world war.
You’re a great friend, Yip! A true and fine Boglehead! Dues all paid up!
God spare me from friends like you, Yip.
Bogle deserves better than friends like you and the other LIndauerheads, Yip. Lots better. You have delayed my efforts, but I intend to see that he gets lots better.
Here’s Elvis:
If you don’t believe me, baby, why don’t you just count the days that I’m gone?
Mystery Train.
Rob
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