Here's a distasteful take on July 4. Parade magazine is holding an online poll "Who Is Our Sexiest Founding Father?" They wrote: "Before there was George and Brad, there was George and Ben -- just two of America’s frolicsome founding-fathers causing a kerfuffle in the 1700s. Who is the sexiest of them all? Read on, then vote!"
Frolicsome founders? Unsurprisingly, in the lead is George Washington. They explained: "George Washington had two horses shot from beneath him in battle, but the bruiser had a soft side, too: He named one of his hunting dogs 'Sweet Lips.'”
This is how they described Alexander Hamilton, who's a strong second, apparently because he was a handsome adulterer:
Devastatingly handsome and, according to one historian,“brimming with libido,” Alexander Hamilton was the -nation’s first public figure to be -embroiled in a sex scandal. The good news: He confessed to the -misdeed. The bad news: Instead of offering a simple apology, he -described his -indiscretions in what was termed -“almost picaresque detail,” making -colleagues squirm.
And Ben Franklin:
Centuries before the word cougar became part of the vernacular, Ben Franklin offered a pal eight reasons why he should take an older mistress. Among them: “Because there is no hazard of Children, which irregularly produc’d may be attended with much Inconvenience.”
This is taking the whole popular-history thing a little too much down a tabloid path.