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By Drew Millard
Look: this column is actually a list, in column form. Every little note about these Presidents is true, or at least widely accepted to be a fact.
George Washington: Had wooden teeth.
John Adams: Suffered from bipolar disorder.
Thomas Jefferson: Fathered several children out of wedlock with a slave.
James Madison: Was short, talked like a girl, and had a wife inexorably more famous than he was.
James Monroe: Didn’t actually come up with Monroe Doctrine.
John Quincy Adams: Swam in the Potomac River whilst naked.
And
rew Jackson: His wife’s mother ran a brothel.
Martin Van Buren: Was known as the “Little Magician” because he managed to just make things happen.
William Henry Harrison: Died four weeks into office because he gave a four-hour long speech in a blistering snowstorm and subsequently caught pneumonia.
John Tyler: Was first President to marry whilst in office.
James K. Polk: Served only one term as a result of severe diarrhea.
Zachary Taylor: When in battle, wore a straw hat.
Millard Filmore: Had the coolest first name EVER.
Franklin Pierce: Was an alcoholic who was the first President born in the 1800’s.
James Buchanan: Lived with a man for most of his life.
Abraham Lincoln: Wife was later addicted to opium as a result of his assassination.
Andrew Johnson: Showed up drunk to Lincoln’s second inauguration, and though it was one of the few times he ingested substances, the incident earned him the reputation as a drunk.
Ulysses S. Grant: Had a reputation for great personal integrity, though his entire administration was extorting money behind his back.
Rutherford B. Hayes: Actually lost the popular vote, but won the Presidency anyway.
James Garfield: Was assassinated by a crazy man who was denied a government job in his first few weeks of office.
Chester Arthur: Had the most impressive facial hair of any President ever.
Grover Cleveland: Was the most boring man on earth.
Benjamin Harrison: William Henry Harrison’s grandson. The way his term went, it might have been better if he’d have caught pneumonia.
William McKinley: Always wore a white vest.
Teddy Roosevelt: While serving in the army, always had his uniforms tailored by Brooks Brothers.
William Howard Taft: Has the distinction of being both the fattest President ever, and the only man ever to serve as both President and Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
Woodrow Wilson: A highly religious man, he worked as President of Princeton College to “take the sex out of Princeton” and focus its young male student minds on only knowledge.
Warren G. Harding: Was the worst president ever. The level of his badness cannot be described by words.
Calvin Coolidge: Had an aversion to talking.
Herbert Hoover: Often confused for J. Edgar Hoover.
Franklin D. Roosevelt: Had an affair.
Harry S. Truman: Was born without a middle name, only an S.
Dwight Eisenhower: After serving as President, re-entered the Armed Services.
John F. Kennedy: One-upped FDR by having an affair…with Marylyn Monroe.
Lyndon B. Johnson: Often considered the most lewd, vulgar President ever.
Richard Nixon: Biggest regret: tape machine in Oval Office.
Gerald Ford: Liked to fall.
Jimmy Carter: Lusted in his heart.
Ronald Reagan: Was the Gipper.
George H. W. Bush: Vomited on the Prime Minister of Japan, hated broccoli.
Bill Clinton: Played golf.
George W. Bush: Gave C-Students everywhere hope.
By Drew Millard
Everywhere I look at Governor’s School, there are art students, with their tortured souls, unique personal quirks, and realizations that in ten years, they’ll be penniless. These people love art so darned much, and it’s going to break their little sensitive hearts when they read what I have to say. Care to know why? Because I hate art.
Art is dead. For those of you keeping score, my vendetta against art begins now.
People like to claim that art is pain, but in my opinion, art is just a lazy person’s way of avoiding a real job. Now I know that I’ve made an exaggerated, bold (and undeniably ignorant) assertion, but undeniably, the concept of art oozes pretension and exclusion.
My thesis statement, for those looking for more concrete arguments than generalizations, goes something like this: People use the term “art” as a blanket statement to cover anything so perplexingly avant-garde that it becomes boring, from urinals to wheels on chairs to a photo of pandas defecating on the Burmese flag. Proponents of this type of art stress the importance of appreciation; “appreciation,” if I may opine, is code for “rationalization.”
Suppose I cut out the corner of my bed with a chainsaw and proclaim it ART. Now suppose you look at my art, and say that it’s no good. I can retort by simply saying that you don’t appreciate its esoteric nature inherent in the underlying metaphor of the motivation behind the art, and are therefore not intelligent enough to truly understand my tortured soul. This happens every day in the world, and it seems that the people who submit corners of beds are winning the argument more and more often.
And don’t get me started on performance art. Essentially, the claim is that anything can be performance art, as long as it is performed and has a message that should be understood by the viewer. When Yoko Ono debuted “Cut Piece” — a piece of performance art that essentially involved her cutting off all of her clothes with scissors — in 1965, that wasn’t art. It was a striptease. There is no way, other than through the consumption of very powerful drugs, that a woman, however homely and/or untrustworthy, disrobing in front of a crowd could be construed as anything other than this. And yet people paid to see this woman get naked in the name of art, and astonishingly, they didn’t throw dollar bills at her. I don’t know what her stated message was. I don’t think it matters, because she ended up with John Lennon and broke up the Beatles.
There once was a time when art had standards. If da Vinci ever turned in a painting of blue, naked, deformed women like Picasso did, they’d send him out on his ear until he could display something that showed some effort. The Last Supper. Now that’s a painting I’d buy. A little expensive, but still.
But now, it seems that society has grown bored with aesthetic perfection. These days, we feel compelled to look to the more abstract notions of human thought. Artists are expected not just to pour paint onto their canvas, but to pour their souls as well. Brush strokes now represent suppressed anger. When art wasn’t insane, brush strokes represented the fact that the artist was using a paintbrush and not, say, a Magic Marker.
I’m not calling for a cessation of all artistic activity, but I am calling for a return to artistic design. I want art to recall to the days when buying a piece of art meant buying something beautiful. I want the obvious brilliance of artists focused towards improving Art, not undercutting itself through unintentional self-parody.
I guess what I’m really saying is that I’m probably the least-cultured person at Governor’s School East, and kind of proud of it.
By Drew Millard
