The 5 Least Smangable First Ladies in American History

With no official duties, salary, or elected position, the First Lady of the United States is first and foremost the hostess, or ho-stess, of the White House. Nevertheless, the First Lady of the United States plays an important role in the Executive Branch, handling everything from official ceremonies of state to the Senate Majority Whip, if you know what I mean (looking at you, Lady Bird Johnson). Sometimes, Presidents’ wives will even be entrusted to handle such politically divisive issues as child obesity and literacy, at least when the Vice President is too busy.

Yet for all of America’s Mrs. Presidentress’ accomplishments as powerful women, celebrities, activists, and interlopers, some of the First Ladies in the annals of history were just downright dogs. What follows is the list of the top five First Ladies that not even JFK would bang.*

Florence “The Machine” Harding

5. Florence Harding
Popularly referred to as The Duchess, Florence “Flo Rida” Harding was quoted as saying, “I know what’s best for the President. I put him in the White house. He does well when he listens to me and poorly when he does not.” Although the circumstances of President Harding’s sudden and untimely 1923 death remain unclear, rumor has it that Warren’s balls had been irreparably busted by his wife. That’s what you get, after all, when you ask your wife for some Teapot Dome after a long day of corruption work in the Oval Office.

4. Ida McKinley
What else can you expect from a woman who’s main devotion in life was crocheting slippers? After losing two daughters in childbirth and a devoted husband to an assassination, Ida most certainly was not DTF. The epilepsy didn’t help either.

Not terribly interested in her husband’s “Old Rough and Ready”

3. Margaret Taylor
Described by others as “a fat, motherly looking woman,” Margaret Taylor’s physical appearance wasn’t nearly as bad as her demeanor. After praying for her husband Zachary to lose the Presidential election of 1848, and still smarting from Free Soil candidate Martin Van Buren’s political smear campaign that Zachary Taylor’s wife “Haveth a Total Butterface,” the First Lady spent much of her time cloistered in the second floor of the Presidential mansion, composing erotic fan fiction about the exploits of Whig Senator Daniel Webster. She did, however, once accidentally walk in on Millard Fillmore’s “personal time” in the mural room, an event that subsequently ruined all men for the First Lady.

2. Pat Nixon
Surprisingly, Pat Nixon never really caught on to the whole “deepthroat” thing.

Surprisingly, “Mary Todd Lincoln” is only the third least appropriate name of a First Lady to shout out during coitus.

1. Mary Todd Lincoln
Mary Todd was crazy. Not the good kind of crazy — the kind of crazy that results in Abe trying to explain away how he was found blindfolded and handcuffed to William Seward in the base of the Washington Monument — but rather the “I had to endure a marriage through the most stressful period in American history and witness my husband’s assassination and I buried my son Tad and I’m addicted to chloral hydrate and I think there’s a wandering Jew trying to steal my purse and now I’m pretty sure my son Robert is trying to kill me” kind of crazy. Abe Lincoln may have been the Rail Splitter, but he certainly wasn’t going to tap that any more than necessary.

——————————————————————————————————————————
*LOL JFK

Things That Rock: Republicans

Good to see you again. Sorry that it’s been so long since I last made you laugh, but I’ve had a tumultuous couple of weeks. You see, ever since I stole away from my monastery in the middle of the night (no, that ‘Brother’ in my name isn’t random) armed only with a box of tagalongs Peanut Butter Patties and a pair of hook swords, I have been mercilessly pursued by a cadre of cyborg zombie ninjas hell-bent on forcing me back to the monastery where I would be forced to eat beets and contemplate Godel Escher Bach alongside the other monks for the rest of eternity. Hell no. But now that I’m safely holed up in a top-secret bunker located miles beneath Ayers Rock, I’m free to write another article!

I'll miss this woman.

Luckily for all you raging optimists, this one is about something that’s awesome, as opposed to something that’s terrible. Even better, it’s about a ‘diamond in the rough’ sort of awesomeness that can be hard to appreciate if you take it too seriously.* In other words: this year’s Republican presidential primaries.

The GOP candidates (or as I like to call them, Mitt & Friends) have been so ubiquitous in our culture these last few months that I’m sure your mind was assailed with a flood of images and quotes and feelings as soon as you saw those words. Maybe they’ve made you angry or sad or scared for the future of America. But hell, they were entertaining, weren’t they?

Yes they were. Especially once it became clear that turds like Michele Bachmann had no chance of making the cut, it was fun to kick back and watch Rick Perry metaphorically poop himself on live TV or listen to Herman Cain quote the Pokemon movie after his past as a serial rapist was revealed.

Here’s how I parlayed the possible terror of these primaries into something enjoyable: Imagine you went in for a routine dentist checkup. You expect it to be as routine and uneventful as it always is when you go in for these appointments every four years, but surprise! Your dentist finds deep rot in some of your teeth. A root canal’s the only thing for it. Shit, you’ve got a nonrefundable one-way ticket to of the most infamously painful procedures ever conceived by doctors. Begin the nervous freakout.

What else to say about the awesomeness of the GOP primaries?

That root canal diagnosis (and the crippling fear that accompanied it on your part) was Bachmann winning the Ames Straw Poll, or perhaps Perry’s entry into the campaign as a veritable behemoth of money and charisma and prayer, plus former pizza CEO Herman Cain making the cover of Newsweek as the candidate to beat. Former pizza CEO! It sure looked like America was headed for an extremely painful procedure, wasn’t it?

But then a few days later, after you’ve spent several sleepless nights tossing and turning over your fate, you get a call from your dentist. He forgot to tell you: they’re going to knock you out for all of it. You won’t feel a thing. And painkillers being what they are these days, you’ll be right as rain within 24 hours.

For me, that brow-wiping ‘wheeeeeeeeeeew’ moment was the poll, one of the first after Cain and Perry and Bachmann had risen and fallen in the ratings like the figures on a merry go round (only if those figures were stupid clowns instead of the usual beautiful horses), that showed Newt Gingrich in first place. NEWT GINGRICH! FIRST PLACE! Good God, this man once impeached a president for infidelity while cheating on his second wife with a woman who ended up becoming his third wife, and later explained his extramarital affairs by saying that they were “partially driven by how passionately I felt about this country.” Yes! And he was in first place to be the Republican candidate for president! I had been almost scared to laugh at the primaries up to this point, like meeting a guy at a party who keeps nonsensically rambling about Clarence Thomas, only you don’t laugh because you can’t tell if he’s joking or drunk. But now Newt Gingrich was in first place! Turns out that guy was drunk and joking! Commence laughter!**

In a gold-in-the-sand kind of way, or perhaps in a we’ll-knock-you-out-for-the-entire-procedure kind of way, that subtle change in viewing the GOP primaries completely transforms the experience from frightening to hilarious. Once you don’t have to worry about finding a house in Canada (my personal Bachmann contingency plan), you can enjoy these video compilations of classic Bachmann quotes (complete with music!) and laugh at the complete absurdity of the existence of ‘classic Bachmann quotes.’ Once you don’t have to watch professional people seriously debate the 9-9-9 tax plan, you can enjoy the ceaseless stream of ridiculousness that is Herman Cain. Once Rick Santorum wins second place in the Iowa caucuses and opens the door to all sorts of Twitter-ready remarks about how Santorum is being spread in Iowa, it’s nothing but joy.

The man loves to get some tail.

I loved these primaries. From a comedy standpoint, there really was nothing better. How can you not love a primary campaign that spawned a website devoted to showcasing animals with Newt Gingrich?

Unfortunately, it looks like we’re going to be stuck with Romney vs. Obama for the next few months, two rational, intelligent, and capable men locked in learned debate. Being the heinous renegade monk that I am, I don’t really know what ‘learned debate’ means, but I’m guessing there will be fewer Pokemon quotes involved. I don’t know what I’m going to do for reality TV entertainment. I mean, maybe you can sit through an episode of the Steven Tyler American Idol, but I certainly can’t. But then again, you’re probably a better person than I am, as evidenced by the fact that you’re not currently on the lam from a cadre of cyborg zombie ninjas.

——————————————————————————————————————————
*Much like the cinematography of Wayne’s World 2.
**And the systematic destruction of any shred of decency that remained in Fran’s.