“Newt threatens to skip debates if crowds can’t cheer” — headline
“Gosh!” you’re probably thinking. “A new low in the history of American public figures! No one could possibly have been more childish and unprincipled than Newt Gingrich.”
And I would agree with you, except that my Researcher Elves — yes, I’ve got some — have dug up a batch of little-known facts about other famous Americans.
Lay some examples on us, Researcher Elves!
Paul Revere almost missed his famous ride.
“One if by land and two if by sea!”
The first horse he tried had an undersized saddle which, said Revere, “makes my butt look big.” The second horse was “too horse-faced.” The third horse threw him. The fourth horse also threw him, but by that time Revere had managed to warn a few people and, anyway, the pubs had opened.
And what he actually yelled was: “The British are coming! That is, the British from Britain, as opposed to us colonists, because we’re British too at this point, although if the Revolution succeeds — damn, I’ve forgotten the rest of my speech.”
Meanwhile …
Or maybe later (the elves aren’t reliable with dates), Thomas Jefferson was refusing to write the Declaration of Independence until James Madison stopped calling him “‘the Honorable Virgin from Virginia.”
George Washington didn’t want to be President but said he’d serve if the job came with a dental plan. However, no insurance company would accept him because of his pre-existing wooden teeth. It was his wife who persuaded him to become, in her words, “the numero uno head honcho.”
Wait. Martha Washington spoke Spanish? Oh dear. I think the elves might be drinking again.
Never mind, let’s keep going
When an aide asked him to write the Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln said, “Look it up in the phone book” and laughed like a loon. He was fond of bad jokes and also cherry trees, perhaps in repentance for having cut one down. He was also violently anti-Catholic. He once began a speech as follows: “With malice toward nuns, with cherry trees for all…”
As a condition of serving his country, Herbert Hoover demanded to have “some damn thing named after me.” He wanted a building, but people took him literally so what he got was a dam.
Like, wow, man…
Millard Fillmore also wanted something named after him “so people will remember I was President.” But according to a recent poll, 83% of San Francisco’s baby boomers believe that Fillmore Street was named after the Fillmore Auditorium, “where I dropped some bitchin’ acid at a Jefferson Airplane concert in ’66.”
Franklin Delano Roosevelt could walk perfectly normally and, in fact, often raced around the White House grounds at night accompanied by his pit bull, Sucker Punch, while Eleanor timed him on a stop watch. FDR wanted people to think he was handicapped “just to mess with their heads.”
Okay, wait a minute
I happen to know that FDR’s dog was a Scottish Terrier named Fala. And are those the Elves giggling in my wine cellar?
Yes. Blind drunk, the lot of them. I’m afraid we must question the veracity of the other “facts” they unearthed. So feel free to consider Newt Gingrich the most childish and unprincipled American public figure. Though it must be admitted, there’s a lot of competition.
Jefferson Airplane poster, Fillmore Auditorium, 1966: By Bill Graham Uploaded by We hope at en.wikipedia [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
