Apr. 18 - “My uncle was eaten by cannibals,” said the totally lucid and in-control president who’s fit as a fiddle. (And smart as one, too, by gum!)
And that’s no joke, Jack!
Okay, those weren’t his exact words, but come on:
Amazingly enough, the claim that his uncle was eaten by cannibals—the insinuation, if you insist—wasn’t even the worst part of this riff.
The worst part was his repetition of the lie that Donald Trump had called American war veterans “suckers and losers”:
...(he said) they were all suckers and losers. I'm not makin' that up. The staff who was with him acknowledged (unintelligible) ... suckers and losers... (unintelligible) ... commander in chief of my son...
Even Snopes had to concede that it was impossible “to independently verify the claim,” despite their almost desperate attempt to do so.
That snippet is an almost perfect distillation of everything wrong with the current president: he tells a stupid made-up story, mumbles unintelligibly, tells a disgusting lie about his political adversary, assures his audience it’s no joke, mumbles a little more, mentions his son, and that’s that.
(To be a perfect distillation he’d have to fall down.)
He’d be great fun at the nursing home, but there’s no greater danger facing America right now than the vacancy of its Oval Office.
Listen My Children and You Shall Hear...
It was a tense April in Boston in 1775. The colonists were simmering with resentment toward the motherland, on account of King George III having strewn the colonies with excessive tacks, painful to step on and bothersome to horses. Furthermore, British cabbies had refused to unionize and the colonists were adamantly opposed to taxis without representation.
King George III tried to assuage the riled colonists by sending them boatloads of tea. (King George III was, it should be noted, insane.) The colonists dressed up like Indians and poured all the king’s tea into Boston harbor, proving they could be insane without any help from the king.
Meanwhile, a network of colonists had been secretly meeting for some time. They reasoned that since they preferred coffee to tea, liked salad before rather than after their entrees, and couldn’t make any sense whatever of cricket, they were obviously no longer British. Perhaps they had become French, or Portuguese. Finally they took a vote, which proved they were in fact American.
The king’s colonial representatives overheard some of these secret discussions and decided to arrest as many of these malcontents as possible—or maybe just kill them.
On April 18, 1775, Paul Revere got wind of the British officers’ plan to arrest John Hancock and Sam Adams in Lexington that evening—arrests that would have been calamitous to the colony’s fledgling insurance and beer industries.
Anticipating colonial unrest, British officers had deployed "Regulars" on all the key roads between Boston and Lexington. (The Regulars had previously proved effective even where the Irregulars and Extra Longs had failed.)
Revere told some friends to hang two lanterns in Boston’s Old North Church, in order to signal his wife that he’d be late for dinner, and immediately set out for Charlestown. Once there, he mounted a horse and began the ride to Lexington.
He found himself almost immediately pursued by Regulars, whom he eluded by means of wily Boston riding tactics: he took a series of lefts from the right lane and a series of rights from the left, utterly confounding his pursuers, who were anyway accustomed to riding on the other side of the street and still weren’t sure what to do at blinking red lights. One of the Regulars rode straight into a fruit stand and ended up covered in produce. Another rode through a big plate glass window that two workmen were carrying across the road. It was pretty funny.
Just before midnight, Revere arrived at Jonas Clarke’s Lexington home, where he breathlessly informed Adams and Hancock that the British were coming. This confounded Adams and Hancock, who, like Revere, were themselves British and already there.
Once the confusion was cleared up, Adams and Hancock fled for safety while Revere and two others rushed on to Concord. Many memorable and important historical events ensued, such as the American Revolution, but by then it was April 19th and therefore no longer appropriate to this Almanac.
On April 18, 1480, Lucrezia Borgia was born in Rome, the illegitimate daughter of Pope Alexander VI. The Borgias were one of Rome’s great families, establishing a tradition of treachery, intrigue, and deceit that has rarely if ever been surpassed—although not for lack of trying.
On April 18, 1923, Yankee Stadium opened in the Bronx, exactly 148 years after Paul Revere rode from Charleston to Lexington to warn Massachusetts colonists that the British were coming. Coincidence? They’d like you to think so.
April 18 is the birthday of Conan O'Brien (1963), Eric Roberts (1956), Hayley Mills (1946), Leopold Stokowski (1882), Clarence Darrow (1857), and Lucrezia Borgia (1480).
It’s Health Day in Kiribati and Independence Day in Zimbabwe.
I’ll be on the road from tomorrow through Monday, so enjoy the weekend!
© 2024 The Moron’s Almanac