the list of 9 for february 16, 2006:
NINE PRESIDENTIAL RUMORS
In honor of America's upcoming "Presidents' Day" holiday, and in the midst of my country's currentscandal-plagued presidential administration, I thought I'd list nine of the more interestinglegends involving our past heads of state. Some are rumors, some are guarded secrets, some aremysteries never to be solved. I'm making it a point to avoid sex scandals, as they are far toonumerous to mention.
- James Garfield, not killed by his assassin? Of the fourU.S. presidents who were officially assassinated, it seems that Garfield (who was both inauguratedand killed in 1881, making for a very short term in office) would have survived Charles Guiteau'sgunshot if it weren't for his terrible surgeons, who infected his wounds. (Garfield actually livedon, mostly in a conscious, working state, for eighty days after the shooting.)
- Chester Arthur, the illegal president? Garfield'slittle-known successor was, historians believe, actually born in Canada, which would have made himineligible to become president of the U.S. under constitutional law.
- James Buchanan, the gay president? Buchanan, presidentfrom 1856 to 1860 (right before Lincoln), never married; his "first lady" was his niece.Washington wags had him tied to Franklin Pierce's vice president William R. King, anotherbachelor, who Andrew Jackson nicknamed "Miss Nancy."
- Abraham Lincoln, an atheist? Even while some are claimingnowadays that Honest Abe was himself gay, what's more likely is that he was an atheist. Many ofhis letters support this claim. In any event, he wasn't religious - nor were several otherpresidents, from Madison to Taft, who blasted Christianity on many occasions. Hard to believenowadays, when most of our recent presidents fall over themselves trying to prove how pious theyare. (George W. Bush is the most egregious example, but unfortunately we liberals have theborn-again Jimmy Carter to blame for setting the trend.)
- Warren G. Harding, murdered? The unpopular Harding,elected in 1920, had one of the most scandal-plagued presidencies of all - and that included hisown death by food poisoning in 1923. Was he murdered? If so, by whom? Al Capone's hitmen?Harding's own wife? (He'd carried on a long affair with another woman under her nose.) This, alongwith incessant gossip that he had African-American blood running through his veins, will forevercloud his legacy.
- Franklin Roosevelt's many rumors. We all know now that thepolio-stricken FDR was confined to a wheelchair during his presidency, but a sympathetic presscorps (imagine that!) chose not to document it at the time. What's slightly more debatable arethings like wife Eleanor's sexuality (many believe she was a lesbian), how she was related toFranklin (it's often falsely stated they were first cousins; they were, in fact, fifth cousinsonce removed), and his lifelong affair with Lucy Mercer. These days, some simply tie all therumors together by saying that Eleanor had her girlfriend, Franklin had his girlfriend, and theirmarriage, after 1920, was merely a legal and political partnership.
- John F. Kennedy and Marilyn Monroe? Okay, I had to includeone sex scandal, since this one is especially legendary. But who really knows anything?We know that Rat Pack member Peter Lawford, who was friends with MM (and was the last personofficially known to talk to her before she died), married JFK's sister Patricia. We know that MMfamously sang "Happy Birthday" to JFK during one of her last public appearances. But what else?Did they have an affair? Did he order her killed? Anybody who could have told the whole story is now dead.
- Were the founding fathers pot smokers? It's well knownthat hemp - which begets marijuana, among many other things - was widely grown back in the earlydays of our nation. Washington, Jefferson, and other founding fathers all grew hemp and supposedlywrote about the delights of certain strains of it. Unfortunately, if you check the Internet formore information, most of these claims are written by potheads, so it's hard to find a trulyobjective opinion about this.
- George Washington hated being President. This one is fact,one that I have seen with my own eyes after reading several of Washington's handwritten letters ata museum. Coaxed to serve as president by the infant Congress of the United States, the father ofour country utterly loathed his job, constantly complaining about it to friends. (He was a realbummer of a guy, to judge by his letters.) It was with extreme reluctance and heavy heart that heserved a second term; his colleagues' rationale was that the nation was too young and fragile tosurvive a potentially divisive presidential election so early on.
|