Brigid Daull Brockway is technically a writer

Brigid Daull Brockway is technically a writer

A blog about words, wordplay, and etymology, with slightly more than occasional political rants.

Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Hail to the chief

I'm feeling presidential today, for no reason really, so I'm going to lay some president facts down on you:
  • The president who holds the record for longest inaugural address is Harrison at something like 4 hours. 
  • The Gettysburg Address is only 268 words long. I wonder if people were offended by that fact at the time. Like, you know, your kid just got slaughtered, and the president talks for 2 minutes, and then that's it? Of course, he couldn't have said it better had he spoken for four hours. 
  • So Regan used Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA in his campaign, even though the song's not really a song about love of country at all. The speaker went to Vietnam and lost his brother in that war. He feels he was fighting for nothing, and when he comes home he's worse off than ever before, career-wise. It's not a celebration, it's an indictment. Listen to his tone on the chorus sometime; you'll hear rage and grief, but not pride.
  • Ben Stein, he of Bueller... Bueller... Bueller... was a speech writer for Nixon. Also kind of a butt.
  • The town of Delightful, Ohio, is so called because a president, Cleveland, I think, said the place was delightful. That's the story, anyway.
Not my most inspired post; sorry kids.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The guy who spoke before Lincoln at Gettysburg spoke for something like 90 minutes or 2 hours. I'm guessing people were relieved that with a warm up act like that Lincoln was terse.

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