1 Happy St

Did you ever notice that certain sides of particular arguments are always trying to inaccurately label historic figures in an attempt to expose hypocrisy?

First there was a movement to insist that Jesus was black. This was undoubtedly an effort to make all them southern racist Christians square their faith against the possibility that their Savior was one of the people they hate. This was obviously a preposterous theory since Jesus was from the Middle East. Jesus was no more a black man than Conan O'Brien.

Then we heard theories that Hitler was part Jewish, as if that made his annihilation of 6 million Jews any less of an atrocity. This strikes me as sort of like saying, "See? He's one of YOU GUYS! You brought it upon yourselves!"

Over the last 10 years or so, we've been hearing that Abraham Lincoln was gay. Clearly, the intention here is to devalue the patron saint of the Republican Party by portraying him as a homosexual, as if that's supposed to make Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity march through the streets of San Francisco with rainbow flags.

All this got me thinking about what theory we'll hear next. Here are my predictions:

• George Washington was a compulsive liar.
• Charlton Heston is a vegetarian.
• William Shakespeare was dyslexic.
• Orson Wells was bulimic.
• Mr. Rogers beat his kids.
• Hugh Beaumont was a polygamist.
• Ronald Reagan's favorite color was red.
• Burt Reynolds pees sitting down.