Chamblee54

This content was originally published May 1, 2016. … After the ADHD WHCD, the Washington Post published The single best joke told by every president, from Obama to Washington. It was easier than finding anything coherent said by Kamala Harris.
The pickins are surprisingly slim, especially for the modern era. When everything you do is recorded, something has to be funny. Three recent Republicans show a liberal capacity for humor.
George H.W. Bush, 1989 Gridiron Club: “People say I’m indecisive, but I don’t know about that.”
Richard Nixon, in Ms. magazine, 1971: “Let me make one thing perfectly clear. I wouldn’t want to wake up next to a lady pipefitter.”
Herbert Hoover “Blessed are the young, for they shall inherit the national debt.”
Warren Harding was a dog. … “referring to his penis, which he named Jerry, in a 1915 love letter to his mistress Carrie Fulton Phillips: “Jerry — you recall Jerry, whose cards I once sent you to Europe — came in while I was pondering your notes in glad reflection, and we talked about it.”
You have to go back over a hundred fifty years to get a serious laugh.
Andrew Johnson “Washington, D.C., is twelve square miles bordered by reality.”
Abraham Lincoln “If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?”
Franklin Pierce about duties after leaving office: “There’s nothing left. . . but to get drunk.”
Zachary Taylor when suggested that he run: “Stop your nonsense and drink your whiskey!”
John Tyler on his death bed: “Doctor, I am going. Perhaps it is best.”
James Madison on his death bed: “I always talk better lying down.”
I found a quote once about Alexander Hamilton, by John Adams. “His ambition, his restlessness and all his grandiose schemes come, I’m convinced, from a superabundance of secretions, which he couldn’t find enough whores to absorb!” A google search for verification led to a reddit page, Fake Founder Quotes, starring John Adams. Apparently, Mr. Adams said something similar to that in a letter to Dr. Benjamin Rush, sent January 25, 1806. According to this source, the letter was a satire of Jonathan Swift’s Tale of a Tub
George Washington in a 1788 letter congratulating the Marquis de Chastellux on his recent marriage: “Now you are well served for coming to fight in favour of the American Rebels, all the way across the Atlantic Ocean, by catching that terrible Contagion — domestic felicity — which like the small pox or the plague, a man can have only once in his life: because it commonly lasts him (at least with us in America — I don’t know how you manage these matters in France) for his whole life time.” Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. The social media picture was taken in summer 1938. “Tobacco workers. Florence County, South Carolina.” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah

This content was published March 31, 2017. … The first time I had to pause S-Town was some time in #1. There is a break in the weirdness for a Blue Apron commercial. For some reason, this struck me as funny … a yuppie food delivery outfit, advertising on a show about Shit Town, Alabama.
S-Town is an NPR podcast. An earnest young reporter leaves his wife behind in New Yuck and goes to Alabama. Supposedly, there has been a murder in Bibb County, Alabama. John B. McLemore lives in the county, and is showing the reporter around. The southern accents, and southern gothic atmosphere, are no doubt amusing to the latte sipping trendsters who binge listen.
The second time I had to pause the show is at 8:11 of episode #2. There is a conversation. “It is racist, and non-nonsensical, and has multiple uses of a terrible word.” Let the hand wringing begin. After a minute or so of this … the man is saying something about paying taxes to support young ladies on welfare … the reporter mentions that his girlfriend is black. This rantlette has little to do with the rest of the story. It may have been included as a bit of picturesque racism, for the pearl clutching enjoyment of the listening audience.
John B. McLemore is a piece of work. He is a horologist, skilled at repairing antique clocks. He built a hedge maze on his land, with 64 gates to change the course at will. John B. has a lot of opinions, which he generously shares in profanity seasoned offerings. John B. is forty nine years old, single, and lives with his aging mother. There is an assumption about men like this, which is covered, in a bit more detail than required, in episode #6.
SPOILER ALERT The second show ends with news of a suicide. John, the rural eccentric, killed himself. There are five more episodes to the story, so this is not the end of the story. The next pause-the-show moment is at 36:11 of episode #5. John is dead. Some cousins appear out of nowhere. People start to fight over John’s assets. It is getting ugly. Rita, the Florida cousin, wants John’s nipple ring. She can’t understand how someone can do an autopsy, “you’ve cut him from neck to private, and you can’t get a nipple ring off? Cut his nipple off, he’s dead.”
Episode #5 and episode#6 come and go. The town sucks, the town isn’t so bad. John had friends, and possibly lovers, but drove them off. Then, in episode #7, we learn that the local rich family has bought John’s property. The new property owners have a lumber yard, K3 Lumber. KyKenKee, Inc. got it’s name honestly. “In 1980, after having been in business many years as I.L. Burt and Sons, the family decided to change the name. Having named us, Kyle, Keefe and Kendall, she took the first syllables of each name and rearranged them until they fit just right, Ky Ken Kee.”
This is not good enough for Brian Reed. “I did get a chance to ask him, if there is a double entendre with a certain white supremacy group?””I’m assuming you’re one of those left wingers we upset with the election.” “He said he doesn’t have a problem with the name K3.” Mr. Reed does not mention the origin of the name. It might be a joke, that is not a joke. The Burt family probably knew what it was doing. The spell check suggestion for KyKenKee is Yankee.
The show ends with episode#7. Outside of a few upcoming court dates, there is not much left to report. In the end, there are few sympathetic characters in the story. Life in small town Alabama goes on. Meanwhile, in booming Atlanta, the main interstate through the northeast part of town has been shut down indefinitely. We are screwed. Pictures today are from The Library of Congress. Marion Post Wolcott took the social media picture in September 1938. “Coal miner (Italian) takes a drink of wine in front of his home after coming home from work late in the afternoon. “The Patch” Chaplin, West Virginia” ©Luther Mckinnon 2026 · selah

This content was posted February 22, 2025. … Andy Warhol is quoted as saying that “in the future, everyone will be famous for fifteen minutes.” If a celebrity is getting tiresome, people will wonder when their fifteen minutes will be up. After hearing about fifteen minutes my entire life, I began to wonder if Drella really said that. If you can’t be cynical about Andy Warhol …
Wikipedia is a good place to start. “In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes” … appeared in the program for a 1968 exhibition of his work at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm, Sweden. Photographer Nat Finkelstein claimed credit for the expression, stating that he was photographing Warhol in 1966 for a proposed book. A crowd gathered trying to get into the pictures and Warhol supposedly remarked that everyone wants to be famous, to which Finkelstein replied, “Yeah, for about fifteen minutes, Andy.” Nat Finkelstein was a sketchy character, in the Warhol tradition. His version is suspect. The Swedish museum part is real.
“Andy Warhol’s first European museum solo show took place at the Moderna Museet in Stockholm from February through March 1968. Pontus Hultén curated the exhibition together with Olle Granath. The exhibition came with a catalogue that was, like the show, named ‘Andy Warhol’. Kasper König, who worked for the Moderna Museet as an intern of sorts in New York, developed a basic concept for the book. … After Warhol had given his approval to this first proposal, König proceeded to create a dummy. … When König returned his dummy to the Factory, Warhol scrutinized it carefully but made only a small number of changes. Contrary to what Warhol wanted to be popular belief, those who produced input at the Factory were carefully monitored. … The final edits on the dummy were made in Stockholm by Olle Granath. He compiled a small selection of Warhol quotes and aphorisms from a stack of books and clippings collected by Hultén and placed them in the book as an introduction before the image sections.”
““Sometime in the autumn of 1967, Pontus Hultén called and asked me if I (Olle Granath) could help him and the Moderna Museet to organize an Andy Warhol exhibition that was due to open in February…. An important part of the exhibition was the production of a book. It was not supposed to be an analytical catalog of Warhol’s work, but a book that conveyed his aesthetics without heavy texts. … One day, Pontus brought me a box, almost the size of a Brillo box, and told me that it contained everything written by and about Andy Warhol (today the equivalent would probably be two truck loads). My job was to read it all and present a proposal for a manuscript with Swedish translations. After a couple of nights of reading and taking notes I delivered a script to Pontus and awaited his reaction with great anticipation. ‘Excellent,’ Pontus said when he called me, ‘but there is a quotation missing.’ ‘Which one?’ I said. ‘In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes,’ Pontus replied. ‘If it is in the material I would have spotted it,’ I told him. The line went quiet for a moment, and then I heard Pontus say, ‘If he didn’t say it, he could very well have said it. Let’s put it in.’ So we did, and thus Warhol’s perhaps most famous quotation became a fact.”
“The exhibition in Stockholm attracted a relatively small number of visitors, due to the extremely cold winter, but also to the fact that leftist radicalization increasingly drove the Museets public to mistrust anything American or consumerist. There was no space yet for a more complex reading of Warhol’s relation to consumption. The book, however, became very popular: its enormous edition allowed it to be distributed in nightclubs and record stores, not only museums. A timeless update on the latest from New York, it first became a cult object, then a collectors item.”
Did Andy say that? Probably, but not definitely. Andy was shot by Valerie Jean Solanas on June 3, 1968, a few months after the show in Sweden. Andy survived, and had fifteen more minutes. Pictures today are from Pictures are from The Library of Congress. The 1927 pictures were taken at “California Beauty Week, Mark Hopkins Hotel, July 28 to Aug. 2, auspices of San Francisco Chronicle.”