The funniest thing ever on Antiques Roadshow

The program was in Seattle several years ago. A woman brought what she said was a slave collar, given to her great-great grandfather during the siege of Vicksburg in 1863.

The Roadshow evaluator listened to the woman’s story and then said, “When I saw this, I racked my brain, trying to decide, ‘What is this?’”

His decision, reached after talking with other period experts was: “This is not a slave collar. It’s a dog collar.” The woman was shocked. The evaluator noted the collar was silver and that it bore the name of a known plantation owner in Vicksburg, but it was a dog collar.

And then the bombshell: “My colleagues and I have determined there is no such thing as a slave collar.”

Oh, but the Progressive Democrat Seattle resident was deflated. For lo these many years, she had been told a grateful black man, a former slave, had given as a gift to the white man who freed him, the collar he wore during his years of enslavement. Her look was probably the same as the night she learned Mrs. Clinton had been defeated, whipped, cast aside by enough votes from the Deplorables to make Donald Trump the top dog in town.

I laughed. And laughed.