Maya Angelou Leads Women

List of American Political Insults

In the late 90’s, I was called a whore and a prostitute by someone I’d never met.  He was a wealthy conservative who lived 5 miles from my house.  Angered by a Letter to the Editor I had written for The Tennessean, he blasted me with baseless vulgarities.  

The letter I had written was a simple defense of our then First Lady, Hillary Rodham Clinton.  It simply stated that the style of the woman’s hair was being overly covered by a small minded press.  I was shocked at the written outburst.  My husband, being the hot tempered Irishman he is, paid Mr. Nasty a visit.  Nasty never answered his door, but had turned out to be the first of many Nastys.

 

Last week, I wrote a satirical piece on gas saving tips.  I got the business end of the liberal bat which I once brandished.  I am slowly finding out that both parties have a taste for blood when it comes to dishing out insults.  At one point in my philosophical development, I was certain Conservatives were far more childish in their attacks.  Clearly this is not the case.  One person of a similar species to humans actually said, “WAH! WAH! WAH! WAH! WAH!”  I was no doubt dealing with a professional. 

 

After being thoroughly maligned by both sides of the isle, I became curious as to the history of political insults.  I’ve found hundreds of them dating back to our Founding Fathers.  In the beginning, the insults sounded like a group of men who were trapped in the same room for too long.  They have quickly evolved from name-calling to being dangerously irresponsible.   Political insults dished over the past twenty years are particularly violent and hard to read.  Public insults were once, “he’s mean and petty.”  They soon became, “'imperfect enough to work with a former domestic terrorist.”

 The following are insults made my first list of Political Insults: 

~John Adams regarding Alexander Hamilton:  “He’s the bastard brat of a Scotch peddler.  A man devoid of every principle.”

~ Alexander Hamilton regarding John Adams:  “He is petty, mean, egotistic, erratic, eccentric, jealous natured, and hot tempered.”

~ John Quincy Adams regarding Andrew Jackson: “A barbarian who cannot write a sentence of grammar and can hardly spell his own name.”

~ Millard Fillmore regarding James K. Polk:  “May God save the country, for it is evident that the people will not.”

~John Sherman (U.S.  Senator) regarding James Buchanan:  “The Constitution provides for every accidental contingency in the executive ---except a vacancy in the mind of the president.”

~HARPERS MAGAZINE regarding Abraham Lincoln:  “Filthy storyteller, despot, liar, thief, braggart, buffoon, usurper, monster, ignoramus Abe, old scoundrel, perjurer, swindler, tyrant, field-butcher, land-pirate.”

~Ulysses S. Grant regarding Andrew Johnson:  “I have never been so tired of anything before as I have been with the political speeches of Mr. Johnson . . . I look upon them as a national disgrace.  He is such an infernal liar.”

~ William Claflin (Governor of Massachusetts) regarding Ulysses S. Grant: “Early in 1869 the cry was for “no politicians,” but the county did not mean “no brains.”

~ Theodore Roosevelt regarding William Howard Taft: “A flub-dub with a streak of the second rate and the common in him . . . A fathead and a puzzle wit.  Taft meant well, but he meant well feebly.”

~ Dorothy Parking regarding Calvin Coolidge:  (After being told of Coolidge’s death.)  “How could they tell?”

~ General George S. Patton regarding Franklin D. Roosevelt: “Thousands of pictures were taken, and none for the glory of the troops; all for the glory of FDR.”

~ Barry Goldwater regarding John F. Kennedy:  “I sincerely fear for my country if Jack Kennedy should be elected president.  The fellow has absolutely no principles.  Money and gall are all the Kennedys have.”

~ John F. Kennedy regarding Richard M. Nixon:  “He’s a cheap bastard; that’s all there is to it.  He is a filthy, lying son of a bitch, and a very dangerous man.”

~ Lyndon B. Johnson regarding Gerald Ford:  “Jerry Ford is so dumb that he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.  He’s a nice guy, but he played too much football with his helmet off.”

~ Lester Maddox (Governor of Georgia) regarding Jimmy Carter:   He’s cold, cunning, cruel, and will destroy anyone who stands in his way . . . . He’s a typical politician, the type of person I have always detested in campaigning or in public office.”

~ Bob Dole regarding George Herbert Bush:  “He’s never had to do a day’s work in his life.”

~ H. Ross Perot regarding Bill Clinton:  “Nobody likes to be called a liar, but to be called a liar by Bill Clinton is really a unique experience.”

~Christopher Hitchens (Journalist) regarding George W. Bush:  “Unusually incurious, abnormally unintelligent, amazingly inarticulate, fantastically uncultured, extraordinarily uneducated, and apparently quite proud of all these things.”

~ Sarah Palin regarding Barack Obama:   "I am just so fearful that this is not a man who sees America the way you and I see America, as the greatest force for good in the world. I'm afraid this is someone who sees America as 'imperfect enough' to work with a former domestic terrorist who had targeted his own country."

How Did Our Founding Fathers Die?

         

Curious to know about the last days of each American Founding Father, I went on a three day search.  What I discovered was unpleasant and sometimes unimaginable.  Often the maladies people suffered from in the Eighteenth Century were not as painful as the cures.  This I expected to find.  In a few instances the death of a Founding Father was treated with indifference and even disrespect. This I did not anticipate, but I will name names of the villains involved. 

Thomas Jefferson was stricken with Prostate Cancer in the later years of his life.  A danger which developed as a result of the cancer was the inability to urinate.  Dr.Robley Dunglison discovered Jefferson had prostatic hypertrophy.  This was obstructing the flow of urine.  To treat his patient, Dunglison used flexible cylinders made of elastic gum which were pushed through the urethra and past the obstruction.  (I will pause here to allow men reading this to grimace with pain.)   Jefferson found immediate relief after this technique was used.   Unfortunately, this was a period in history when no one thought to ask, “Are those things clean?”   As a result bacteria traveled all over Jefferson’s lower extremities and set up a tent in his kidneys.  His last days were plagued with health problems including, kidney, nephropathy, uremia, diarrhea, and pneumonia. 

George Washington was said to have died from pneumonia at the age of 67.  If the witch doctors caring for him had said, “Let’s just let him rest,” he might have lived another twenty years.  As it was however, they killed him by draining nearly a half- gallon of blood from his ailing body.  This was referred to as “bloodletting” which historians feel possibly contributed to Washington’s death.  I am not a historian, but feel certain that in modern times these pricey doctors couldn’t get a job euthanizing cats in Istanbul.  So I am confident in saying the doctors attending Washington did kill the 1^st President of the United States.

Johns Adams died the same day as Thomas Jefferson (July 4, 1826).  It was exactly 50 years after the signing of the Declaration of Independence.  At the age of 90 John Adams died from Congestive Heart Failure.  This was not only a sad day for Americans, but also for the doctors who were attending him as they were unable to torture Adams in the same manner as the rest of our founding fathers.

Samuel Adams died on Oct. 2, 1803 at the age of 81. Now, why he died is a mystery.   There is no record of the cause of death and no one offers any plausible explanation.  Was he sick at his tummy?  Was there a stabbing pain in his head?  Did someone whack him with a poker?  He had a severe tremor, but that won’t kill you unless someone shoots you while you’re doing it.  Accounts of Adam’s death is that he died from natural causes, which means it’s not important enough to find out why an elderly person died even if he did lead the revolution that established  a new free world country called America!  Nice people, real nice. 

Benjamin Franklin did not die from Syphilis, so get your heads out of the gutter.  Many misinformed American’s think Franklin died from an S.T.D.  News Flash: It was not a roll in the hay that brought down this great man.  He actually died from Empyema.  Empyema is an infection between the lungs and the chest wall.  It was excruciatingly painful.  After coughing up a sizable amount of pus from his lungs Franklin went quietly in his sleep.  Please feel free to pass on this information when in the presence of someone who is demoralizing the character of this remarkable man in exchange for a cheap laugh.

Thomas Paine died in Greenwich Village in New York City at the age of 72.  The exact reason for his death is not listed, but was no doubt the result of years of alcoholism.   Paine died in poverty.  He was refused proper burial by American churches and the British Government.  This is unbelievable!  A founding father dies in New York City, the biggest city in America, and no one can find a shovel to dig a hole.  Not a shining moment in New York City’s history, is it?

John Hancock died in Boston, Massachusetts on October 8, 1793.  He died at the age of 56 from a long battle with Gout.  Samuel Adams, acting as Governor of Massachusetts at the time, declared the day of John Hancock’s funeral to be a state holiday.  I’ll just leave it at that because I can’t think of a worse way to die.

Alexander Hamilton had one of the most famous deaths of our Founding Fathers.  On July 11, 1804, a gentleman’s duel with Aaron Burr ended Alexander Hamilton’s life.  Hamilton was mortally wounded by a bullet to the abdomen.  His liver, diaphragm, and spinal cord were badly damaged.  Hamilton bled to death at his home.  Though Hamilton lived in New York the duel took place in New Jersey, because it was it was illegal to duel in New York and they weren’t very reliable when it comes to burying founding fathers.

John Jay (First American Chief Justice) was stricken with palsy.  It was thought to be caused by a stroke he suffered in 1825. He lived for three days, dying in Bedford, New York, on May 17, 1829. Jay requested he be buried in Rye, New York.  This was a man who had carefully thought through his final resting place.  In 1807, he had the remains of his ancestors transferred from the family vault in the Bowery in Manhattan to Rye, establishing a private cemetery. Today, the Jay Cemetery is an integral part of the Boston Post Road Historic District, adjacent to the historic Jay Property. The Cemetery is maintained by the Jay descendants and closed to the public. It is the oldest active cemetery associated with a figure from the American Revolution.  John Jay was 83 when he died, and one of the last hero’s of the American Revolution.

James Monroe died exactly 5 years after Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, on July 4th 1831 in New York City while visiting his daughter.  He was helping a family member move and suffered a fatal heart attack.  Let that be a lesson to us all.  Monroe survived Malaria, a severe gun shot wound at the Battle of Trenton, and the ravages of Tuberculosis, but he could not survive moving furniture.

Patrick Henry who claimed, “Give me liberty or give me death,” died on June 6, 1799 from an overdose of mercury medicine.  He was suffering from stomach cancer, and could no longer bare the pain.  He died on his plantation in Red Hill, Virginia at the age of 63.  He died as he had lived, on his own terms.  Thankfully Virginia buries their American heroes without complaining.