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Presidents' Day
19 February 2018
We don't use that apostrophe in "Presidents' Day" carelessly. This federal holiday, still officially known as Washington's Birthday, is a rather open-ended one, careless about which president you celebrate.
But make no mistake, it involves at least two of them. Washington and Lincoln, both certainly worth celebrating.
In fact, we have tended, in the past, to do just that (mostly anyway) as our sidebar links to past essays on this day demonstrates.
But we live in interesting times. The Year of the Dog, in fact.
We find it disturbing to think the current resident of the White House will one day be included among the pantheon of presidents on this day. Perhaps an asterisk is called for. You know, to indicate cheating.
The man, after all, cheats at golf. And while one can say many disreputable things about a person, none quite surpasses that as demonstrable proof of a lack of character.
But then when has he not cheated?
It rather defines his marriages and business dealings. And don't his tantrums in his present employ simply show his frustration that he can't now break the rules when it suits him?
That behavior has been described generously as infantile.
And when leadership is called for to protect students from assault weapons or voters from the subterfuges of foreign adversaries or assist fellow citizens who have been without aid months after being devastated by a natural disaster, what do we get?
We get a man who takes a poll among members of his Mar-a-Lago resort on what he should do about gun control. We get his continual denial that Russia had anything to do with his Electoral College victory. We get him tossing a roll of paper towels to the citizens who came to meet with him at his photo opp.
Which makes one suspect we are, today, without a president. Oh, someone holds the office, certainly. But no one is carrying out its duties.
We won't leave you on that note, though.
We woke up to Michael Kaplan's enjoyable Five Masters of Presidential Photography. Whatever the faults of those mere mortals, they didn't cheat at golf.