Congress Moves to Repeal Presidents Day

copyright 2015 by Gary Pullman

Note: News parodies have become popular in recent years, as the Internet has allowed any and all to try their hands at the type of satire that, in the past, only a few, such as Mark Twain, Will Rogers, and Art Buchwald could inflict upon the public. While not claiming for myself a place among such august company, I thought I'd give the genre a try myself, with this parody piece. After all, not all essays about serious matters have to be serious in tone.

If the U. S. Congress has its way, this year's Presidents Day may have been America's last.

“Maybe George Washington and Abraham Lincoln deserve a holiday in their honor, but more recent presidents sure as hell don't,” Senator Nanny Pelosi bitched.

“I couldn't agree more,” her colleague, Senate minority leader Hairy Reed groused.

This is one issue, it appears, that has bilateral support.

“Like the good senators from Californicate and Nirvana, I'm all for doing away with Presidents Day,” Speaker of the House John Boner complained.

“Me, too,” Senate majority leader Bitch McConner pouted. “Let's scrub it.”

The disgruntled Congressmen (and woman) listed a long string of presidential “abuses,” including Dick Nixon's lying about the Watergate break-in, Bill Clinton's soiling of Monica (“The Mouth”) Lewinsky's blue dress (and the Oval Orifice) with his presidential spermatozoa, and Barack Obummer's “countless half-truths and complete falsehoods” over the past seven years, which, to both Boner and McConner “seem like seventeen—or seventy,” Boner whined.

Obummer, Senator John McCane charged, should be denied the holiday on his mispronunciation, as commander in chief, of “corps,” which Obummer pronounced as “copse-men.” The mispronunciation, in McCane's view, was “not accidental” and “suggested the president's disdain for American military personnel.”

Many of the nation's other chief executives' actions have brought disgrace on the country they serviced, the Congressmen (and woman) claim.

Presidents Day was originally Washington's Birthday, Pelosi pointed out, but the name of the holiday was changed, to steal the first president's thunder, when the Presidents Day was made a federal holiday so that “all presidents would be honored, whether they deserved it or not,” Boner explained.

Before and since the hijacking of Washington's Birthday, presidential misconduct has embarrassed and humiliated the American people multiple times:

• Ulysses S. Grant's tenure as president was rife with the Black Friday scandal, corruption in the Department of the Interior, and the Whiskey Ring.
• In addition to his involvement in numerous extramarital affairs, Warren G. Harding gave his countrymen the Teapot Some Scandal, among others.
• The Pentagon Papers proved that LBJ and JFK “systematically lied” to the American people as they secretly escalated the Vietnam War by illegally bombing Laos and Cambodia.
• Under Clinton, in the Filegate Scandal, the FBI provided secret dossiers on Republicans against whom administrative officials sought political advantages.
• During W's administration, hundreds of thousands of taxpayers' dollars were forked over to private right-wing media to promote the president's unpopular policies. W also eroded individual liberty by signing the so-called Patriot Act, which, among other tings, has resulted in airport strip searched of American travelers, including infants and elderly, wheelchair-bound men and women.

One of the most-scandal-ridden administrations in the nation's history, however, is that of the current president, Barack Insane Obummer, who is associated with, among many others:

• The Veterans Administration scandal, the Benghazi fiasco, numerous lies concerning the Affordable Health Care Act (aka Obummercare)
• The ATF Fast and Furious gunwalking scandal
• The Terrence Flynn scandal
• The all-expenses-taxpayer-paid Government Services Administration's four-day gambling spree in Las Vegas
• The IRS' illegal investigations of conservative political groups
• The Justice Department's unauthorized collection of Associated Press phone records and persecution of Fox News reporter James Rosen
• Attorney General Eric Holder's contempt of Congress charges
• The Pigford Scandal
• The Veterans Affairs two all-expenses-taxpayer-paid trips to Disney World
• Health and Human Services chief Kathleen Sibelius' violation of the Hatch Act
• The government-funding of the private company Solyndra (which later went bankrupt, costing taxpayers millions of dollars)
• Environmental Protection Agency official Lisa Jackson posing as “Richard Windsor” in writing secret emails
• Failing to prosecute the New Black Panthers for intimidating white voters during the 2008 presidential election
• Attacking Libya without Congressional approval
• Making questionable end-runs around Congress on many occasions.

“I'm half blind,” Reed said, “but it's clear, even to me, that presidents don't deserve to be honored by a special holiday.”

Reed has joined his colleagues in support of a bill to eliminate Presidents Day and to replace it with Congress Day, “ a day,” Pelosi says, “that will live in infamy.”