A Lesson in Modern Controversy
How stupid can politics get?
Here's a quick question for all you folks out there reading this who, like me, came from Ohio. Can you name a President that also was born in Ohio?
If you're like me, you vaguely remember from grade school that we did have a bunch of them. If you're also like me, you know it wasn't any of the important ones like Washington or Lincoln but beyond that...why should we care?
Well, back in the 1890s gold prospectors in Alaska were busy mostly not striking it rich, and one guy in particular wandered out of the vast forest with a tale of the tallest damn mountain he'd ever seen in Alaska. Under the "white man gets to name anything he sees" philosophy of the time, he ignored what the local native tribes called it (Denali) and named it for a favorite politician of his, President McKinley from Ohio.
Now, McKinley had never been to Alaska, never did he step foot there in his life, and had no interest in mountains. He was assassinated during his second term. Yet all this time, the Interior Department refused to rename it back to what everyone who lived there called it. Those were Indians, you see, and this was a President.
Now to the controversy. Pres. Obama is getting ready to visit Alaska and - you guessed it - our department of "What the hell is that called?" is officially fixing this little problem. And, predictably, Ohio Republican congressmen are having a collective conniption fit. How dare Obama take the name of an Ohio President off a mountain and replace it with the traditional native name!
And thus our political discourse is reduced to such petty imagined insults.