We were in London recently, spending a great deal of our time hiding from our friends there whom I had confidently predicted the last time we were there that there was no way on earth he would be elected president. I am surprised they let us back in. Then again, since the last trip, the English have had their own cross to bear, what with the Brexit vote, so this could explain why very few locals brought up the present resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue this time. After all, I am sure they did not want to deal with my rearing back in my fully pent up and mocked up outrage at being asked about he who is in office, with a mighty "Oh yea?"...
Of course, why would the subject of he who is the so called leader of the free world come up when the locals could ask me about United Airlines dragging customers semi-conscious, yet kicking and screaming from the planes for having the audacity of taking seats they had actually purchased. I was asked about United so many times you would have thought I was the chairman of UAL. I started practicing looking in the mirror in the hotel room and saying, "He brought this on himself". Alas, my undergraduate degree is not in business, but in American Civilization, which is to say that I can tell you approximately when most older buildings in colonial Virginia were built, when an old bottle found in the woods was made, and the words to most old folk songs nobody bothers singing anymore. I cannot, however, issue decrees making coach seating on most commercial flights small enough to make a munchkin uncomfortable, and then kick them off the plane if they take umbrage. Being an attorney, however, I am qualified to tell you on behalf of my clients that he brought this on himself; therefore, practicing in front of the mirror did achieve a business purpose. Maybe I should try to deduct the trip as a business expense.
But, as Gail Collins would say, I digress...
While a degree in American Civilization did not make me a history scholar, it did require me to have a certain level of knowledge of the history of this country, even if that knowledge was at a rudimentary level that most eight year olds would know. The fact that I got my degree from the same Ivy League university he did is, to put it mildly, a bit disconcerting. I may not have studied the abolitionist movement all that closely -- all right, I fell asleep during half the lectures -- but I did not need any prompting to know that Frederick Douglass unfortunately did not survive to his one hundred and seventy-fifth birthday, and therefore will not be helping us blow out the candles when he turns two hundred in February next year. I may not be a Civil War scholar, but I am reasonably confident in saying that the Civil War did not happen in spite of the best efforts of Andrew Jackson to stop it, even putting aside the fact that he died fifteen years before the first shot was fired, and as family members have pointed out elsewhere, he may have theoretically tried to stop the war simply so he could maintain ownership of his slaves.
So as a public service to the president, I offer these kernals of wisdom in case the subject comes up some time in the future, and if he ignores these pearls, I would ask my alma mater to strip him of whatever degree was conferred upon him.
1. The new world was not discovered by Captain Jack Sparrow.
2. The charge of the Rough Riders up San Juan Hill was not led by Millard Fillmore.
3. Zelig aside, if you are looking for Woody Allen in a team picture of the 1927 Yankees, you can stop looking.
4. Speaking of sports, the Black Sox scandal of 1919 was not caused by people wearing bermuda shorts hitched slightly above their naval.
5. Moby Dick is not a venereal disease.*
6. Elephants are not indigenous to Oklahoma; therefore, unless there was a breakout at the Tulsa zoo, when you hear an Oklahoman sing "the corn is as high as an elephant's eye", they are not singing about something they actually saw.
7. Speaking of Oklahoma, Will Rogers may have never met a man he did not like, but then again, he never met you, especially considering he died about eleven years before you were born. Then again, maybe he met Andrew Jackson and joined him in the heroic effort to stop the Civil War.
8. William Henry Harrison did not have a really good first hundred days, especially after the thirty-first.
9. It has been conclusively determined that the guy standing in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square is not presently working as a traffic zebra in La Paz. Bonus point -- La Paz is a city in Bolivia. Second bonus point -- Bolivia is a country in South America. Third Bonus Point -- South America is not anywhere in the United States located south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Fourth Bonus Point -- the Mason-Dixon line is... oh never mind...
10. I have it on good authority, even if I was not there at the time, that "Ivana" was not the actual response your first wife gave when you proposed.
I offer all this as a public service.
No charge
*I must confess. This one was on the wall in the locker room of my high school track team. Aside from the fact that Moby Dick is, in fact, not a venereal disease, this is still my all time favorite graffiti.
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