Make Room Mt. Rushmore?

by Bob Sparrow

rushmore

“My lips are sealed”

This week we will, or already have, decided who will be our next president, or perhaps more accurately, decided who we want to keep from being our next president. In a desperate move to help us all to feel better about our new president-elect, I thought I would look at the ‘character’ of some of our past presidents, who had the huge advantage of not living in this era of ‘social media’ where everyone carries a camera and bad news travels at the warp speed of the Internet.

  • As it turns out our founding fathers weren’t without their flaws, both Washington and Jefferson owned slaves, in fact Jefferson was more than a groper, he fathered six children with slave, Sally Hemings – that would have been a little difficult to keep off the TMZ network today!
  • Lincoln, who is often revered as our best president, seemed to think of himself above the law as he single-handedly suspended habeas corpus (the principle that someone under arrest can’t be held for long without being brought before a judge), shut down opposition newspapers and jailed their editors, conspired to establish a
    tr

    Teddy the Elephant Killer

    military government in Washington DC and used military force to keep the Maryland legislature from meeting so that it couldn’t vote on secession.  I suspect that WikiLeaks would have had a field day with old ‘Honest Abe’.

  • Teddy Roosevelt’s lust was of a different sort, he lusted for war. His imperialism and racism can be summed up with the following quote from him, “All the great masterful races have been fighting races,” he claimed. To fellow Anglo-Saxons, he said, “It is wholly impossible to avoid conflicts with the weaker races,” and added, “The most ultimately righteous of all wars is a war with savages.” I’m guessing that Hitler was a big fan of Teddy.

OK, that takes care of Mt. Rushmore, but there is plenty more . . .

  • Benjamin Franklin was careless with secretive documents that ended up in the hands of the enemy – a British
    fdr

    Lying Franklin

    secret agent. But he swore that those documents only contained information about how he was going to fly a kite to invent electricity and Chelsea’s wedding.

  • Franklin D. Roosevelt was known to lie a lot (What? A politician lying!!!) He was in terrible health, which he kept from the public, he was said to have liked Stalin too much and he had Soviet spies in his cabinet and didn’t really care, family members enriched themselves by his being in office, the New Deal actually slowed the recovery from the Great Depression and, among other things, he was accused of trying to seize control of the Supreme Court. Gosh, he could easily get elected today!
  • The list of sleazy presidents is too long for this blog, but here’s a few of the all-stars:
    • John Tyler – fathered 15 children with two different wives and had several more with his slaves; in November 1836 he became the Whig’s party president ‘erect’.
    • Andrew Jackson invited prostitutes to the White House Christmas party – I’m sure he just wanted to make sure that there were plenty of Ho Ho Hos to go around!
    • clintonlewinski

      Bill & Monica

      While Jack Kennedy and Bill Clinton are considered modern history’s best-know presidential horn-dogs, Lyndon Johnson,  who called his naughty bits ‘Jumbo’, was worse than either of them.  Both Grover Cleveland and Warren Harding were also known to have a number of dalliances while in the ‘oval orifice’.

      kennedy

      Marilyn & Jack

    • It is well known that FDR and Eisenhower (at least while a general in the army if not while president) had mistresses while serving in ‘pubic’ life.

There’s more, lots more, but I think you get the point. So while you may think that we’ve reached new lows with this year’s two candidates, it’s actually just politics as usual, so we’ll be just fine. There now, don’t you feel better? Yeah, me neither!

Even if this didn’t make you feel better, why not SHARE it, maybe it will help a friend with pre or post-election blues.

On This Day in History

by Bob Sparrow

I’m starting a new feature here at From A Bird’s Eye View, which will occur whenever we haven’t traveled anywhere or we temporarily run out of other things to write about. This feature will recount some historical events that actually took place on the days of this week, along with my illuminating comments of little know facts.

Monday, May 25th

1803 – Ralph Waldo Emerson, an American poet and philosopher was born and lived in Massachusetts, but later in life, health issues caused him to move to South Carolina, then he moved to Florida, then he moved to . . . well, they don’t exactly know where, and thus the game ‘Where’s Waldo?’ was born.

1925 – In the ‘Monkey Trial’, John T. Scopes was indicted for teaching the theory of evolution in a Tennessee classroom. Within the state the event was more commonly referred to as the ‘If-I-Divorce-My-Wife-Is-She-Still-My-Sister Trial’.

oprah1997 – At age 100, Senator Strom Thurmond retires as the oldest serving senator in U.S. history; he had actually passed away three years earlier, but the first ‘Do Nothing Congress’ thought he was just sleeping at this desk again.

2011 – After 25 years, Oprah Winfrey, weighing in at 223 pounds, aired her last TV show as she finally ran out of fad diets to promote.

Tuesday, May 26

1936 – The House Un-American Activities Committee begins its first session of searching for subversives in the U.S. and had to go no further than their own congressional chambers to find some.jackson

1946 – A patent was filed in the United States for the H-bomb.  Later, when ‘Hell’ was more readily accepted into the American lexicon, it was replaced by the ‘F-bomb’.

1994 – In what turned out to be a ‘Bad’ ‘Hunka Hunka Burnin’ Love’, Michael Jackson weds Elvis’ daughter, Lisa Marie Presley.

Wednesday, May 27

1927 – After 15 million cars, the Ford Motor Company ceases manufacture of the ‘Model T’ and begins to retool plants to make way for the car that will change Ford’s history, the Edsel.

1941 – U.S. President, Franklin D. Roosevelt declared an “unlimited national emergency”. Yes, in May not on Dec 7th. Conspiracy theorists say that when no one really paid attention to Roosevelt’s declaration, he staged Pearl Harbor.

jones1997 – The U.S. Supreme Court rules that Paula Jones can pursue her sexual harassment lawsuit against President Bill Clinton while he is in office. Unfortunately she had to get into a line that stretched for a half a mile down Pennsylvania Avenue.

Thursday, May 28

1952 – The women of Greece are granted the right to vote. Yes, in 1952!!!  Sixty-four years later in 2016 Saudi Arabia put the ‘woman’s vote’ up for consideration, but it was voted down – BY AN ALL MALE ELECTORATE!

The ‘all male’ voting rule also exists today in Vatican City, which only allows cardinals under the age of 80 to vote and since canon law does not allow women to be ordained as priests, there are no women cardinals and thus they have been able to both age and gender discriminate with one simple law.

Quayle1972 – White house ‘plumbers’ break into the Democratic National HQ at the Watergate Hotel and while searching through George McGovern’s room, find a poster of Bernie Sanders above his bed.

1987 60th National Spelling Bee: Stephanie Petit wins spelling ‘staphylococci’ – she beat out future Vice President Dan Quayle, who just barely missed the spelling of ‘potato’.

Friday, May 29

1916 – To get a pre-season ‘patsy’ game win under its belt and warm up before entering World War I, the U.S. invades the Dominican Republic

1919Einstein’s theory of relativity (the light-bending prediction part, my personal favorite) in 1916 is confirmed by Arthur Eddington; I’m sure you’re more-than-familiar with this simple formula below.einstein

1942Bing Crosby records Irving Berlin’s White Christmas and it becomes the best-selling single in history. Today he would have to also record  Black Christmas, Brown Christmas and Rainbow Coalition Christmas.  In a separate, but related story, in an effort not to slight the Smurfs, Elvis records Blue Christmas.

1953Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tenzing Norgay become the first people to reach the summit of Mount Everest where they find the world’s first Starbucks.

I hope these events will help you feel a little more connected to this week and get you through it with a smile.