It's Boston Corbett Day! Named for USA's greatest eunuch

(775 words)

You won’t see it anywhere in the news today. There will be no stirring memorials. Congress won’t pause to honor the actions of the man who should be by unanimous consent be acclaimed as  America’s greatest eunuch.

All hail, Boston Corbett, the man who killed the man who killed President Lincoln! It happened 151 years ago this very morning.

Really, can you even name a single other great American eunuch?

I can’t.

I guess we’re all stumped.

And so are the eunuchs, but in a much more literal way.

A eunuch is a man who undergoes deliberate removal of his testicles for any number of offbeat cultural reasons. Throughout history, eunuchs have served royals as courtiers, harem servants and trusted guardians of virginal princesses

Some have even willingly become eunuchs so they could serenade a discerning king with a treble voice of unmatched loveliness.

It sounds extreme, but I’m surprised no one’s tried it yet on American Idol. I guess in these days of instant fame, making a real sacrifice for the sake of art is no longer fashionable.

Of course, Corbett makes each of those motivations seem like pikers by comparison.

Born Thomas P. Corbett in London in 1832, he eventually moved to Boston, where he picked up a nickname with slightly more dash than if he’d have moved to say, Passadumkeag, Maine.

In 1858, at the age of 26, is when things got interesting. Fired with the religious passions, he grew his hair long in an attempt to imitate Jesus.

Then he did Jesus one better. Two better, to be precise.

The history books say he was so consumed with lust for Boston prostitutes he resorted to dire remedies. So one night he took a pair of rusty scissors, dropped his trousers and -- snip! snip! -- cut off his troublesome testicles.

That’s taking safe sex practices to a whole other realm.

The he sat down and had a nice dinner and attended a Methodist prayer meeting before finally staggering off for medical attention.

Amazing. For literary purposes it would be great fun to discover that the entree was meatballs, but the menu is lost to history.

The man is testament to the fact that it doesn’t take real balls to be a real man.

In April 1861, he enlisted as a private in the New York Militia, was honorably discharged after his three-month commitment, then re-enlisted to fight again. He was taken prisoner in 1863 and was captive for five months in the notorious Andersonville prison before being freed in a common prisoner exchange. He would later testify for the prosecution in the death penalty trial of doomed prison commandant Capt. Henry Wirz.

After again re-enlisting, it was Corbett on this day in 1865 at the Garrett tobacco barn near Port Royal, Virginia, who against orders shot the bullet that struck John Wilkes Booth in the back of neck, about one inch from where the dastardly Booth slew Lincoln on April 14.

“Providence directed me,” he said when asked why he’d disobeyed orders.

Then, like today, you can get away with a lot if you can convince believers that God whispered in your ear, “Pssst, hey, buddy . . .”

Corbett’s post-war life became increasingly erratic, perhaps, because of exposure to mercury when he worked as a hatter in New York and Boston. Because of his fame, he was appointed doorkeeper of the Kansas House of Representatives, where he pulled a pistol on some men who he’d caught yawning about the morning prayer.

He was sent to an insane asylum, escaped and lived for a while in a hole that www.allaboutbikes.com today lists as the No. 1 scenic attraction in Kansas.

It may be a big state, but I’ll drive hundreds of miles out of the way if I can avoid a state where the most scenic site is Corbett’s hole.

He is believed to have died along with more than 400 others in the Great Hinkley Fire that consumed hundreds of acres of Minnesota forest where he’d built a cabin and was living when the fire spread on September 1, 1894.

His story is the reason I never fail to engage airplane seat mates about their lives.

I’m sure he shared many stagecoach rides with men and women too engaged in their 19th century iPad equivalents to hear the stories of this fascinating eunuch who killed the man who killed the president.

So, to honor America’s greatest eunuch, I suggest we all cut the work day short.

Please don’t feel the drastic need to cut off anything more significant.

And just to be safe, stay clear of the prostitutes in Boston. 

Related

Tom Brady & the Boston Corbetts

Change Patriots name to Boston Corbetts

“Civil Wargasm” for Gettysburg re-enactors

Re-Run Sunday: "Boston Corbett, America's Greatest Eunuch!"

I’m delighted a Re-Run Sunday coincided with one of my favorite historical days of the entire calendar. It’s Boston Corbett Day!

He’s the eunuch who killed John Wilkes Booth. It happened 150 years ago today.

This is my third most popular post ever and continues to enjoy robust readership. 

You won’t see it anywhere in the news today. There will be no stirring memorials. Congress won’t pause to honor the actions of the man who should be acclaimed as America’s greatest eunuch by unanimous consent.

All hail, Boston Corbett, the man who killed the man who killed President Lincoln! It happened 145 years ago this very morning.

Really, can you even name a single other great American eunuch?

I can’t.

I guess we’re all stumped.

And so are the eunuchs, but in a much more literal way.

A eunuch is a man who undergoes deliberate removal of his testicles for any number of offbeat cultural reasons. Throughout history, eunuchs have served royals as courtiers, harem servants and trusted guardians of virginal princesses

Some have even willingly become eunuchs so they could serenade a discerning king with a treble voice of unmatched loveliness.

It sounds extreme, but I’m surprised no one’s tried it yet on American Idol. I guess in these days of instant fame, making a real sacrifice for the sake of art is no longer fashionable.

Of course, Corbett makes each of those motivations seem like pikers by comparison.

Born Thomas P. Corbett in London in 1832, he eventually moved to Boston, where he picked up a nickname with slightly more dash than if he’d have moved to say, Passadumkeag, Maine.

In 1858, at the age of 26, is when things got interesting. Fired with the religious passions, he grew his hair long in an attempt to imitate Jesus.

Then he did Jesus one better. Two better, to be precise.

The history books say he was so consumed with lust for Boston prostitutes he resorted to dire remedies. So one night he took a pair of rusty scissors, dropped his trousers and -- snip! snip! -- cut off his troublesome testicles.

That’s taking safe sex practices to a whole other realm.

The he sat down and had a nice dinner and attended a Methodist prayer meeting before finally staggering off for medical attention.

Amazing. For literary purposes it would be great fun to discover that the entree was meatballs, but the menu is lost to history.

The man is testament to the fact that it doesn’t take real balls to be a real man.

In April 1861, he enlisted as a private in the New York Militia, was honorably discharged after his three-month commitment, then re-enlisted to fight again. He was taken prisoner in 1863 and was captive for five months in the notorious Andersonville prison before being freed in a common prisoner exchange. He would later testify for the prosecution in the death penalty trial of doomed prison commandant Capt. Henry Wirz.

After again re-enlisting, it was Corbett on this day in 1865 at the Garrett tobacco barn near Port Royal, Virginia, who against orders shot the bullet that struck John Wilkes Booth in the back of neck, about one inch from where the dastardly Booth slew Lincoln on April 14.

“Providence directed me,” he said when asked why he’d disobeyed orders.

Then, like today, you can get away with a lot if you can convince believers that God whispered in your ear, “Pssst, hey, buddy . . .”

Corbett’s post-war life became increasingly erratic, perhaps, because of exposure to mercury when he worked as a hatter in New York and Boston. Because of his fame, he was appointed doorkeeper of the Kansas House of Representatives, where he pulled a pistol on some men who he’d caught yawning about the morning prayer.

He was sent to an insane asylum, escaped and lived for a while in a hole that www.allaboutbikes.com today lists as the No. 1 scenic attraction in Kansas.

It may be a big state, but I’ll drive hundreds of miles out of the way if I can avoid a state where the most scenic site is Corbett’s hole.

He is believed to have died along with more than 400 others in the Great Hinkley Fire that consumed hundreds of acres of Minnesota forest where he’d built a cabin and was living when the fire spread on September 1, 1894.

His story is the reason I never fail to engage airplane seat mates about their lives.

I’m sure he shared many stagecoach rides with men and women too engaged in their 19th century iPad equivalents to hear the stories of this fascinating eunuch who killed the man who killed the president.

So, to honor America’s greatest eunuch, I suggest we all cut the work day short.

Please don’t feel the drastic need to cut off anything more significant.

And just to be safe, let's all steer clear of the prostitutes in Boston at least for today.

Related . . .

Change name of New England Patriots to Boston Corbetts

Marching on Gettysburg with daughter, 12

Of humdingers & sockdologers

Tasteful/tasteless re-enactments on Lincoln/Titanic anniversaries

(670 words)

You won’t hear it in many of the more somber observations today, but Abraham Lincoln died laughing.

It was 150 years ago tonight at 10:15 p.m. in Ford’s Theater that Lincoln was slain by the dastardly charmer John Wilkes Booth.

The actor deliberately timed his fatal shot to coincide with one of the biggest laugh lines from “Our American Cousin.” I’m only vaguely familiar with the play and have absolutely no idea how it ends.

It may be the only thing me and Honest Abe have in common.

Booth hoped the roars from the delivery of the line — “You sockdologizing old man trap!” — would cover the noise from the fatal pistol blast.

I find his reasoning delusional. It wasn’t like no one was going to notice that someone had fired a bullet in the president’s head and the assassin was just going to tippy toe off to a hero’s welcome down in Dixie.

I wonder if they’re going to pause in the performance at Ford’s Theater tonight at 10:15 to commemorate the killing of the man who may be the greatest American ever. It’d be tasteful and certainly fitting.

If they do, it’ll be during a performance of “Freedom’s Song: Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War.” I’m sure it’s a very moving and patriotic show, but am surprised they’re not for obvious historical reasons presenting “Our American Cousin.” 

If I owned the theater, I’d tonight be staging the play complete with reenactments of Lincoln being shot and Booth leaping on the stage from which he yelled, “Sic semper tyrannous!”

The phrase is Latin for, “Tonight’s play was brought to you by Geico!”

I jest.

It is, of course, Latin for “Thus Always To Tyrants.”

Did you know that was and is still the Virginia state motto?

That Virginia takes its motto seriously is the only reason I can figure tyrannical Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder chooses to reside in neighboring Maryland.

Historical reviews of the actual play say it’s a bit dull. Those reviews would be dramatically different if the assassination and its immediate aftermath were incorporated into any modern performance.

It’d be riveting.

Guaranteed, no one would embark on a quick pee break at 10:12.

I’d think audiences would temper their ovations for the actor portraying the J.W. Booth character at the end. It’d be a great role for an actor who’d enjoy playing against type. I’m thinking Tom Hanks.

But imagine the cheers if an actor who’d played the blood-stained Lincoln strolled onto the stage to take a grand bow.

It’d be like our greatest president had risen from the dead.

Tasteless?

I don’t think so. 

Every year millions of Christians around the world gather to watch Passion Plays that feature the gory crucifixion and — speaking of rising from the dead — resurrection of Jesus Christ, one of the few men even biased pro-Union historians would say achieved more than the Great Emancipator.

Of course, the bigger and likely truly tasteless re-creation is on course to take place on this day in 2017.

That’ll the the voyage of Titanic II and, no, Titantic II isn’t a sequel to the blockbuster James Cameron movie.

It’s the brainchild of billionaire Australian businessman Clive Palmer who in 2013 announced his plans to construct a full-scale re-creation of Titanic, which stuck an iceberg this very day at 11:40 p.m. in 1912. He expects the ship to be ready to launch in Fall 2016.

In an eerie echo of past hubris, Palmer declared, “Titanic II will be the most safe cruise ship in the world when it launches.”

What could go wrong? 

Experts say a year-round theme boat will have limited appeal, the business models are all wrong and it goes against steadfast seafaring tradition that maintains you never name a ship after one that’s already gone to the bottom of the ocean.

The confluence of promotion and superstition gives me a sinking feeling tastefulness won’t be the only Titanic casualty. 

Related . . .

Of humdingers & sockdolagers

Marching on Gettysburg with daughter, 12

Glory! Glory! Hallelujah! A Gettysburg success

Not going down with the ship

Boston Corbett: America’s greatest eunuch

“Civil Wargasm” for Gettysburg re-enactors

Change Patriots name to the Boston Corbetts

(635 words)

I don’t want the Patriots to win, but if they do I hope someone sneaks onto the field and replaces all the Gatorade with vats of boiling oil.

I tweeted that last week and an alarmed reader wrote that, gee, a guy as nice as I couldn’t possibly harbor such malicious thoughts.

The exchange shows there’s a growing gap between my on-line persona and the one that sneaks out when its animal instincts are provoked.

It’s like the title line from great Robert Earl Keen song, “I only use my guns whenever kindness fails.”

Mike Wilbon of ESPN, one of the few non-meathead network voices I respect, said the Patriots should have to forfeit the game. I think he was being hyperbolic, but I love it that serious commentators share my excessive hatred.

Others have said either Belichick or Tom Brady should be suspended.

That, too, seems extreme. Unlike the Patriots, most of us want to see a game where a fair-and-square winner is determined.

But if it is proven they are guilty of cheating — and sensible fans like me and the millions of others who root for the Pittsburgh Steelers and all that’s good and moral in the world — there needs to be some lasting consequence.

Here it is: the New England Patriots should be ordered to change their names.

So what would we call them?

The New England Cheaters? That’s too blunt and would alienate what is a strong fan base, albeit a misguided fan base that for the past 14 years has been cheering for cheaters anyway.

The New England Deflaters? That would likely inspire a slew of dandy mascots, but it wouldn’t sell jerseys and that’s what the NFL these days is all about.

You can think of pejorative options all day and not beat the one I hereby bestow.

Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you The Boston Corbetts!

This is so joyfully deft, so situationally perfect, it can’t be beat.

See, a Corbett isn’t a thing. It’s a real man.

Well, he was for the first 26 years of his life.

Born Thomas P. Corbett in London in 1832, he eventually moved to Boston, where he became forever synonymous with the city he loved.

Corbett didn’t deflate his balls.

He severed them! With rusty scissors!

I’ve never examined the document, but I have to imagine Roger Goodell addresses the infraction in the NFL player code of conduct.

But let’s not get all snippy.

Corbett is the man who killed the man who killed Abraham Lincoln. He’s maybe my favorite oddball historical character. He grew up with two obsessions: Jesus Christ and Boston prostitutes.

And because the two could not abide, he castrated himself to eliminate corporal temptation from his life. He eventually joined the Union Army which, I guess, was years away from implementing Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell.

The full story (first link) was for years my most popular post and it gives all the gory details. I expect it’ll enjoy a burst of popularity April 26, the 150th anniversary of the day Corbett killed Lincoln assassin John Wilkes Booth.

Now, Corbett had been ordered to not shoot Booth, but Corbett said he disobeyed because God told him to. And for this Corbett was hailed as a hero across the nation.

I’d love to see the reaction if Brady says that’s why he did it.

It’s looking like he and the Patriots are going to weasel out of any real punishment for what is looking more and more like a significant infraction.

And if that happens I propose another name change, this one for Roger Goodell and his precious shield he’s all about protecting.

It should be the National Eunuchs League.

Because if he doesn’t punish the Pats, Goodell will be the one without any balls.

Related . . .

Boston Corbett: America’s Greatest Eunuch!

Civil War-gasm for Gettysburg re-enactors

Pro football’s a bore; here are five ways to save it

NFL not rich enough: needs throw-forward jerseys

America needs an all-gay NFL team

The Baltimore Rays & the NFL’s ongoing disgrace

Of humdingers and sockdolagers

I wonder if Abraham Lincoln died confused.

The thought occurred to me this weekend as I was reading aloud what happened in Ford’s Theater on April 14, 1865, just moments before J.W. Booth’s bullet hit bone.

I’m probably the only father on earth who can call his 11-year-old daughter a “sockdologizing old man-trap” and know she’ll understand what sounds to modern ears like nonsense.

Those were the last words to ever enter the conscious ears of the great Lincoln.

And I can’t believe that trivia’s evaded me until now. I don’t remember reading the words in all the Civil War/Lincoln assassination books I’ve read over the years until I read Jay Winik’s outstanding book, “April 1865: The Month That Saved America.”

Or maybe I dismissed them as gibberish after failing to find “sockdologizing” in any of my dictionaries.

Either way, two things have happened in the meantime: One, I have subscriber access to the world’s humdinger dictionary: The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) which, by the way, defines “humdinger” as a remarkable or outstanding person or thing.

The dictionary defines more than 600,000 words, many of them long since dropped from common usage. By comparison, my sturdy and still useful American Heritage Dictionary includes 155,000 entries, and studies show the average American uses and understands about 10,000 words.

So if I want to know what the heck “sockdologizing” means I know exactly where to look.

But what would cause me to do so?

That’s where my sockdologizing daughter comes in.

She’s nuts about the Lincoln assassination. It is one of two historical topics that rivet her young imagination.

The other is Titanic. And in her mind she can’t think about one without the other since I told her both happened on the exact same day. Lincoln was shot on April 14 and died the next day; Titanic struck the iceberg on April 14, -- anniversary alert! -- 1912, and she sunk the following day.

So last night we’re poring over the details of Lincoln’s final moments when I discover another historical coincidence: the third last word Lincoln ever heard was exactly what doomed the unsinkable ship.

Titanic was sunk by a sockdolager!

The OED says “sockdolager” is a heavy or knock-down blow.

The word was a key line in the play “Our American Cousin,” which the Lincolns chose to attend so they could decompress following the Confederacy’s announced surrender.

And you have to wonder how history would be different if they’d have opted to just stay in and order a pizza.

Was Lincoln aware of the word’s meaning? How many participants in the high-brow Sunday talk shows would know how to respond if someone tossed sockdolager into the conversation?

The scoundrel Booth deliberately timed pulling the trigger to the sockdologizing line hoping the laugh getter, one of the night’s biggest, would muffle the blast.

We all know what happened after that. Lincoln died, Booth escaped only to be shot by Boston Corbett, America’s greatest eunuch.

But what happened to sockdologizing?

OED differs from other dictionaries in that it sleuths out word birthdays, the exact year when a word’s usage becomes widespread enough to earn inclusion.

For sockdolager, the year was 1830.

The last year its usage was cited -- and this is key -- was 1892.

How did this historically significant word drop so swiftly out of sight?

You’d think SportsCenter would find sensible reasons to use it at least once a show, sporting events being full of momentous sockdologizers.

Yet in a day when literacy was rare and news dissemination limited, this fancifully formed word -- much like flabbergast or ballyhoo -- stood up, marched straight into history and faded as quickly as the echo of a gunshot.

This should not stand. The anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination is fewer than four years away.

We need to muster a movement to increase sockdolager usage so the in-the-know crowd -- readers of this blog -- will nod sagely whenever we hear sockdolager and then get that little smarty-pants jolt of satisfaction when we inform listeners about sockdolager’s historic significance.

Oh, I can tell Josie’s going to be obnoxious about this.

I wonder where she gets that.

Alas, I tried to think of a really great sockdolager with which to conclude this post. I could not.

So the story that mentions 16 sockdolagers, probably more than in any other story written in the past 150 years, ends without one.

Boston Corbett, America's Greatest Eunuch

You won’t see it anywhere in the news today. There will be no stirring memorials. Congress won’t pause to honor the actions of the man who should be acclaimed as America’s greatest eunuch by unanimous consent.

All hail, Boston Corbett, the man who killed the man who killed President Lincoln! It happened 145 years ago this very morning.

Really, can you even name a single other great American eunuch?

I can’t.

I guess we’re all stumped.

And so are the eunuchs, but in a much more literal way.

A eunuch is a man who undergoes deliberate removal of his testicles for any number of offbeat cultural reasons. Throughout history, eunuchs have served royals as courtiers, harem servants and trusted guardians of virginal princesses

Some have even willingly become eunuchs so they could serenade a discerning king with a treble voice of unmatched loveliness.

It sounds extreme, but I’m surprised no one’s tried it yet on American Idol. I guess in these days of instant fame, making a real sacrifice for the sake of art is no longer fashionable.

Of course, Corbett makes each of those motivations seem like pikers by comparison.

Born Thomas P. Corbett in London in 1832, he eventually moved to Boston, where he picked up a nickname with slightly more dash than if he’d have moved to say, Passadumkeag, Maine.

In 1858, at the age of 26, is when things got interesting. Fired with the religious passions, he grew his hair long in an attempt to imitate Jesus.

Then he did Jesus one better. Two better, to be precise.

The history books say he was so consumed with lust for Boston prostitutes he resorted to dire remedies. So one night he took a pair of rusty scissors, dropped his trousers and -- snip! snip! -- cut off his troublesome testicles.

That’s taking safe sex practices to a whole other realm.

The he sat down and had a nice dinner and attended a Methodist prayer meeting before finally staggering off for medical attention.

Amazing. For literary purposes it would be great fun to discover that the entree was meatballs, but the menu is lost to history.

The man is testament to the fact that it doesn’t take real balls to be a real man.

In April 1861, he enlisted as a private in the New York Militia, was honorably discharged after his three-month commitment, then re-enlisted to fight again. He was taken prisoner in 1863 and was captive for five months in the notorious Andersonville prison before being freed in a common prisoner exchange. He would later testify for the prosecution in the death penalty trial of doomed prison commandant Capt. Henry Wirz.

After again re-enlisting, it was Corbett on this day in 1865 at the Garrett tobacco barn near Port Royal, Virginia, who against orders shot the bullet that struck John Wilkes Booth in the back of neck, about one inch from where the dastardly Booth slew Lincoln on April 14.

“Providence directed me,” he said when asked why he’d disobeyed orders.

Then, like today, you can get away with a lot if you can convince believers that God whispered in your ear, “Pssst, hey, buddy . . .”

Corbett’s post-war life became increasingly erratic, perhaps, because of exposure to mercury when he worked as a hatter in New York and Boston. Because of his fame, he was appointed doorkeeper of the Kansas House of Representatives, where he pulled a pistol on some men who he’d caught yawning about the morning prayer.

He was sent to an insane asylum, escaped and lived for a while in a hole that www.allaboutbikes.com today lists as the No. 1 scenic attraction in Kansas.

It may be a big state, but I’ll drive hundreds of miles out of the way if I can avoid a state where the most scenic site is Corbett’s hole.

He is believed to have died along with more than 400 others in the Great Hinkley Fire that consumed hundreds of acres of Minnesota forest where he’d built a cabin and was living when the fire spread on September 1, 1894.

His story is the reason I never fail to engage airplane seat mates about their lives.

I’m sure he shared many stagecoach rides with men and women too engaged in their 19th century iPad equivalents to hear the stories of this fascinating eunuch who killed the man who killed the president.

So, to honor America’s greatest eunuch, I suggest we all cut the work day short.

Please don’t feel the drastic need to cut off anything more significant.

And just to be safe, let's all steer clear of the prostitutes in Boston at least for today.

Related . . .

Change name of New England Patriots to Boston Corbetts

Marching on Gettysburg with daughter, 12

Of humdingers & sockdologers

The Religious Wrong and the bravest man in America

The last time a crowd of otherwise law-abiding citizens transformed themselves into bloodthirsty mobs the way supporters of McCain-Palin do was at the trial that led to the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.

Now, I’m not saying McCain is Pontius Pilot or that Barack Obama is Christ, but when the crazy hyperbole gets flying it’s hard to resist joining in on the fun.

Nobody on the planet comes unhinged like the Religious Wrong. You’d think the disastrous Bush presidency would at least leave them open-minded to having someone they wrongly suspect to be a closet Muslim might be worth a try, but no. And again I’m left to wonder why a group that so vocally declares to have found one Messiah is always so restlessly seeking another.

Clearly, they haven’t found him in McCain, whose campaign is in the midst of what will be regarded as a historic meltdown. By any measure, this is one of the worst campaigns we’ve seen in the past 30 years. Just today, one of the leading conservative voices in the country (i.e. “enormous horse’s ass”) Bill Kristol urged McCain to fire his entire staff and start again.

With 22 days before the election! Yeah, great time to start all over in a campaign that’s been going on for two years.

The John McCain I’ve always admired finally resurrected himself last week when he proved he’s the second bravest man in America. He did this by standing up to his own frothing supporters to tell them that, contrary to what Palin’s been telling them, that Barack Obama’s a decent family, a proud American and that, no, we have nothing to fear with him as our president.

For this he was booed.

And now, for him, it’s too late. This election’s over. It’s destined to be won by the bravest man in America.

That’s Barack Obama.

Unlike McCain, he’s never had to duck a bullet, never gone into combat or had to crash land behind enemy lines.

But what he’s doing today is braver than anything any veteran’s done in those fearsome circumstances.

He’s standing near naked before crowds of 20,000 to 80,000 people knowing that there’s a well-armed and hate-filled fraction of America that wants him dead. We all know of bitter racists, deranged religious zealots, and Right Wing crazies -- sometimes all three in one -- and we know some of them have lethal potential.

They shout “Kill him!,” “Traitor!” and “Off with his head!” at rallies. Just today, the chairman of the Virginia GOP, Jeffrey Frederick, said he was no different than Osama bin Laden. Think that won’t egg on some deranged believer to begin diabolical plots in the belief that they’re patriotically acting with God on their side?

John Wilkes Booth, an actor with the equivalent popularity that Brad Pitt enjoys today, pulled the trigger behind Abraham Lincoln’s ear and brazenly jumped on the Ford Theater stage knowing he'd be recognized and believing he’d be hailed as a hero.

I can’t fathom the bravery of a father of two young daughters who’ll go out and stand on a stage knowing that his opposition is saying he’s dangerous, that he’s chummy with Al-Quaeda, and that their most primal fears about dark-skinned men with exotic names are more than justified.

I hope Obama wins in landslide. Then I hope he gets into the White House and plants himself so deeply into the secure bunker so that no one can hurt him or his family.

And then I hope he begins to do many great things.