Beautiful Losers

Hello.

You may or may not have heard of this, but the mainstream journo world is all a-titter over a story they have almost universally decided they can’t report. Allegedly, Iran has attempted to leak to several major media venues some significant dirt about Donald Trump obtained through hacking or other sleazeball means. The media has seen this data but is resisting using it. The speculation about why is enticing: 1) Are they feeling guilt over what they did to Hillary Clinton eight years ago? Or, 2) Is the material somehow not arguably newsworthy?

I have a different question.

3. At this point, what new information about Trump could possibly be damaging enough to dissuade even one of his ardent, idiot supporters? Four suggestions:

A: DNA tests reveal Trump is not actually human, but a mutant skunk.

B: Turns out, he was born in Kenya.

C: He has a secret, adopted Rwandan lesbian daughter who is a professor of queer studies at Oberlin College, and he loves her.

D: He secretly buys stolen dogs from itinerant Haitians, and eats them (both the dogs and the Haitians).

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Okay, on to today’s primary subject matter, losing in politics, and losing in baseball, and the potential beauty of both.

When I was a wee lad of nine, John F. Kennedy was running for president against Richard Nixon, and I — already a fledgeling libtard — was wildly partisan, and deeply worried. Nixon was ahead in the polls.

The times were fraught, and not inconsequentially. The major issue was the seeming imminence of nuclear war that would incinerate the world and everything in it. A key sub-issue was the fate of Quemoy, Matsu and Dongding, three tiny islands in the Taiwan Straits that were being fought over by China and Taiwan. The U.S. Secretary of State dourly predicted that this was was potentially “the world’s first nuclear crisis.” (In a delicious bit of coincidence, that third island was locally pronounced “Dingdong” because of the Chinese convention of emphasizing the first part of a name, as in “Chairman Mao” as opposed to “Chairman Zedong.”)

(Yes, I made up that last parenthetical. Never forget that The Gene Pool is, first and foremost, a lame humor column.)

Anyway, my Dad — a very practical, perpetually unworried man — sensed my anxiety and sat me down to tell me something I’d never forget. He said that time and again through history, when the stakes were high, the American voters always seemed to make the right decision. His most recent example was Harry Truman’s victory over the heavily favored Thomas Dewey. Truman, much derided at the time (a popular saying was “To err is Truman”), is now generally ranked by historians as America’s seventh best president. Whereas the lasting description of the dapper, fastidious and ultimately unprepossessing Dewey, attributed to the socialite Alice Roosevelt Longworth, was “that little man on the wedding cake.”

My father’s consoling words proved right for that 1960 election, and they stayed with me.

We are now on the brink of an election pitting a good person against a bad person; an inspiring person against a divisive person; a supporter of democracy against a self-proclaimed wannabe despot; an empathetic, reasonable human being against a bully and a liar. With five weeks to go, the election is reported to be a dead heat. Somehow.

So this got me thinking: Was my father even … right? This led to some research, and then to some intense cerebration, which resulted in some technically unprovable conclusions, by me. Below, I will deliver a summary of the five times in American history that the voters clearly got it wrong.

It’s a complicated calculus, and not at all obvious or knee-jerk. I started, for example, by presuming that whoever ran in 1856 against James Buchanan (by acclamation of historians, the Worst President in American History) would have to have been the better choice. But it turns out that, for convoluted reasons, he wasn’t!

Republican U.S. Senator John C. Fremont was a far stronger and more decisive man than the feckless, spineless, politically self-castrated Buchanan. On the rare occasions when Buchanan did take action, it was craven; he covertly influenced the Supreme Court Court’s Dred Scott decision affirming that slaves were legitimate property, widely regarded as the worst ruling in SCOTUS history.

It’s not that Fremont had no negatives: A decorated army officer, he is credited with leading three famous battles against the Indians; these skirmishes were named — I kid you not — The Sutter Buttes Massacre, The Klamath Lake Massacre, and The Sacramento River Massacre. As a politician, Fremont was said to be somewhat impetuous and pig-headed. But there is little doubt among historians that he would have made, at the very least, a marginally better president than Buchanan. He hated slavery, and had a spine. However:

This winnowing is not about the wisdom of the choice made in the moment, but which choice would have ultimately proved to be better for the country. You have to look at the long game.

Had he been elected president in 1856, Fremont likely would have been reelected in 1860, meaning that he and not Abraham Lincoln would have been the man upon whose genius would rest the fate of the country during the Civil War. Easy call.

So, the long game.

This is only about where, in retrospect, the public went the wrong way in their choice. There were dreadful elections that involved foul political corruption, such as the elections of 1824 (J.Q. Adams over Andrew Jackson) or 1876 (Rutherford Hayes over Samuel Tilden). But these were systemic problems — as is the existence of the electoral college — but not not the voters’ fault.

So, without further ado, the winning losers:

Fourth Runner-Up: 1968, Richard Nixon over Hubert Humphrey. Unlike Nixon, Humphrey was a compassionate man. Unlike Nixon, he was a rousing, inspiring speaker. Unlike Nixon, he was not personally a ruthless, grudge-bearing paranoiac, aggrieved and vindictive and politically amoral, flaws that would lead to Nixon’s lasting ignominy and would, for a time, indelibly stain the presidency. True, we may not have reached the sort of entente with Russia and China that we did under Nixon, who, as a rock-ribbed commie hater, had the benefit of the doubt of the public into such incursions, but those gains were largely transitory: Look where we are now. Easy call.

Third Runner-Up: 2000, George W. Bush over Al Gore. You could label this just another corruption-influenced case, but that’s not really fair. It stank, but wasn’t corrupt. The system worked as it was supposed to, until the Supreme Court ruled along political lines, which is, alas, structurally allowed.

But it was a bad call by the people. Whatever weaknesses Gore would might have shown, he was a prudent man who would never have made what is a president’s most unforgivable sin — dragging a nation into an unnecessary war of whim, complete with manufactured evidence and dreadful intelligence failures— all to extract personal vengeance on a foreign leader who had disrespected his father. What resulted from that benighted, ill-conceived war was the birth of ISIS, the global ascendancy of Iran, the squandering of $728 billion dollars just before a historically terrible recession, 4,492 American deaths and countless more Americans maimed. Plus over 150,000 dead Iraqis, many of them civilians. Easy call.

Second Runner-Up: 1852, Franklin Pierce over Winfield Scott: Pierce was a sloppy drunk, which was not then a rarity in a politician; what was rare was that he was also a northerner who covertly kinda liked slavery and supported its spread.

Scott, colorfully nicknamed Old Fuss and Feathers, was a creaky, obese 67-year-old (which was then considered ancient for a candidate), a former war hero who now had problems mounting his horse unassisted. Like many old soldiers with conscience and character, he had developed an intense distaste for war. More important, he’d proven to be a skilled negotiator in defusing tensions — he sought consensus when it was possible, pursued it doggedly, and accepted war when it was not. It is highly unlikely that he could have staved off the Civil War, which seemed inevitable, but he would not have done what Pierce went on to do.

More than any other president, including even Buchanan, Pierce can be directly blamed for exacerbating the tensions leading up to the Civil War. He signed the rancid 1854 Kansas-Nebraska Act, which supported the Southerners’ supposed constitutional right to expand slavery into the territories by popular vote. It repealed the Compromise of 1850, which prohibited the spread of slavery in swaths of the South. The Kansas-Nebraska act infuriated northerners, provoking a violent uprising that came to be known as “Bleeding Kansas;” pro-slavery and anti-slavery activists poured into the territories to influence the vote. Some historians have called this, not Fort Sumter, the real opening salvo of the Civil War.

First Runner-Up: 1928: Herbert Hoover over Alfred E. Smith. This was a big one. The country didn’t know it, but it was headed for the Great Depression and would need a giant of history in command, not a dithering, aloof incompetent who was pigheadedly in lockstep with the Republican hands-off attitude toward big business and banking. Dorkily, Hoover promised that prosperity was around the corner, with two cars in every garage, and a chicken in every pot.

(As it happens, the voters would dismiss the chicken man and finally get their giant of history four years later, waay too late.)

In the meantime they could have had a far more competent president than Hoover at the helm — along with his judgment, strength of will, and sound moral compass. Al Smith was an unapologetic progressive reformer, a garrulous proponent of civil rights; his sympathies were with the common man and his strengths were in lifting them up. He was the opposite of aloof. Few historians doubt that Smith would have tackled the cataclysm as it was unfolding, and tempered it. And then, he might even have fortuitously lost to FDR in 1932. How do we know that? Because he did just that, in the primaries, that year. Easy call.

Because I have the duty to entertain, I must also report that Smith was perhaps the funniest looking presidential candidate ever. As a young man, he looked goofy, like a cross between Stan Laurel and, not coincidentally, Alfred E. Neuman. As an older man he looked pretty much like this. (That’s Babe Ruth next to him.)

First Place: 2016, Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton.

Do I need to explain this one?

Right. I thought not.

Needless to say, if the 2024 election goes the wrong way, all of the winners above will have to move up a notch to make way for a new champ.

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Okay, on to baseball. First, the good news. We have a worthy winner in the Badwagon contest to create a slogan for a placard to display at the last White Sox game of the season. We asked for a slogan rooting for a Sox loss, which would officially certify them as the Losingest Team in the History of Modern baseball. Exactly 121 losses would do it. Historic antihero glory.

We got more than 100 entries, many of which were good, but not great; that’s because almost half the entrants didn’t quite get the idea. They wrote funny slogans informing the White Sox of how bad they were. (“You suck,” basically, but funnier.) That was not the point. The White Sox know they suck — their won-lost record bellows it to the universe. The slogans were supposed to root the Sox on to a glorious position in baseball history by urging them to lose this last game.

Fortunately, we got two fine entries, and one magnificent one, by Richard Alexander of Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Here is Richard’s winning slogan, which we tarted up to resemble a placard. The prize was a free trip to Detroit, by me, with me, on September 29, the Sox’s last game of the season, where they will play the Tigers. We would both root for a loss for, you know, the big of it.

Here is the winning slogan:

First Runner-Up: “Sox, Lose Like It’s Your Virginity.” — Sam Mertens

Second Runner-up: “Sox, Keep on Suckin” — Tom Witte.

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Now, for the bad news. Richard and I are probably not going to get to go to the game, because the Sox appear to be even worse than we thought. On Sunday, they lost their 120th game, meaning that in order to lose their 121st on the last game of the season — which were the conditions of the bet — they’d have to win their next five games, starting tonight.

They have not won five games in a row all year. They have not won four games in a row. This season they own the three longest losing streaks in all of baseball, bottoming out at a 21-game streak that tied the all-time record for futility. But Richard and I can hope for a miracle. More to come later.

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Today’s Gene Pool Gene Poll:

Please answer in your category only. I will update the results for all of you later in the chat.

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We have now entered the Real-Time Segment of the Gene Pool, where I will respond to your questions in real-time. Many of today’s questions so far involve my weekend challenge for you to report 1) euphemisms used in your family for bodily functions, and, 2) times that you did something awfully insensitive. Please send your new questions and observations here, to the new questions an observations orange button:

Q: To account for the fact that teams now play 162 games a season, instead of 154 (before 1961), you might treat not the Mets, but the 1916 Philadelphia Athletics, as the all-post 1900 worst:

W 36, L 117, PCT .235. As I write this, he White Sox are currently below that, at 36-120 .231.  I say .235 is the real number to beat.

They need to finish with a record of 38-124. My calculator tells me that would give a percentage of .234567 (weird, no?), vs. the As mark of .2352.  So that should be the real number to shoot for.

— Ken Gallant

A: You are tragically wrong, Ken, and I will tell you why.  The first reason is practical.  I have chosen the same measurement that virtually all sportswriters covering this debacle have chosen – most losses in a season – long held by the dreadful 1962 Mets. 

The second reason is both philosophical and ontological.  And frankly, your suggestion raises the possibility that you might be a man without a soul.  Your suggestion reminds me of Baseball Commissioner Ford Frick’s horrendous ruling that Roger Maris did not break the one-season home run record in 1961 because he didn’t hit his 61st by the 154th game. That ruling will live in infamy. 

A season is a season.   A loss is a loss.  

Look into yourself, Ken, and reconsider your blasphemy.  It is not too late. You can do it.

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 Q: As a kid we had a unique family euphemism.  For us, a fart was a “boomer.”

Additionally, there was something that my father invented(?) known as the "boomer cord." The boomer cord was an invisible cord generally hanging up high in the corner of any room he happened to be in (think of a Victorian-era bell-pull one used to summon servants, or string attached to a light bulb in a garage or attic). When this invisible rope was pulled, at full extension of the cord, the puller would elicit a boomer of generally considerable volume. As a male, this has always been funny to me. What made it more funny were the theatrics involved which were the same every time. The cord would suddenly catch my dad's eye. Perplexed as to what he was seeing, he would slowly make his way over to the corner with furrowed brow, "What is that?" At this point he would reach up and grasp the invisible cord and give it a solid pull. The cord would remain fully extended for the duration of the boomer and then released. Comedy gold. My father is 79 years old now and has definitely pulled the cord in the past year or so.

A: Thank you.

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TIMELY TIP: If you’re reading this on an email: JUST CLICK ON THE HEADLINE IN THE EMAIL AND IT WILL DELIVER YOU TO THE FULL COLUMN ONLINE. Keep refreshing the screen to see the new questions and answers that appear as I regularly update the post.

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Special Notice: In the unlikely but still possible event of the White Sox winning their next five games, I will wind up approaching* destitution. I have agreed to finance — purely for the entertainment of you, my generous and intelligent readers — several people’s trips to Detroit, from wherever, at my expense!! No journalist in the history of America has ever risked so much for so little. In light of this, might you see your way clear to upgrading your free subscription to “paid,” which will result in a minor investment of $4.15 cents a month for increased access to this fine product and keeping me from having to beg in the streets. Begging here is already shame enough. Heres the button. It takes one minute:

Okay, good. Here we go.

* “Approaching,” according to Newton and Leibniz, is a highly fluid and relative term that need not be rigorously defined or defended.

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Q: Re bumper stickers.  Of course, it's impossible to outdo the classic bumper sticker from the 1991 Louisiana governor's race, which pitted the corrupt Edwin Edwards against the white supremacist David Duke: "Vote for the Crook: It's Important." 

A: Excellent.

Q: So, to continue your Vonnegut theme, would the MAGA crowd qualify as a granfalloon?

A: No.   If I remember correctly a granfalloon is a group of people who claim an alliance based on no actual significant, revealing connection.  Example: Graduates of William & Mary.   The MAGA crowd is genuinely united by stupidity, sullenness, bigotry, and worship of a con man.

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Q:  Your reference to, "Well, that escalated quickly" as a cliche got me thinking.  I would consider that quote to be a meme, rather than a cliche.  But what defines a meme vs a cliche?  Is it the the associated photo?  If it's the photo, does saying it out loud without accompaniment make it a cliche automatically?  Can something be both a meme and a cliche?  Please clear this up for me so I can focus on more important things like trying to avoid thinking about the most embarrassing thing I have ever done.

A: I believe them to be both parallel and overlapping.  If it is an analogy you leap for instantly when you hear of a situation, it may well have originated as a meme, but it has also become a cliche. 

Q: Regarding the naked-in-the-pool story and your response that it sounded like your recurring dreams:    

I seem to recall at one point you mentioned that you sleep in the buff. May I suggest that these are related?  

I don't know if this has been studied and am too lazy to Google it, so my experience is anecdotal, but for decades, I would awaken from that recurring dream -- oh fine, let's call it a nightmare. The dreams were never actually the same, but would always take a frightening turn when I realized I was naked in public. 

Then, after 30 years of sleeping in the nude, I started wearing something to bed (just a thin t-shirt and boxers). That was the end of those dreams.

A: I USED to sleep in the buff.  When I hit sixty or so, I started wearing undies at least, possibly because of a subliminal feeling that any women in my nighttime fantacies might appreciate it .

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This is Gene, with a snap Instapoll.

Q: Because the real puppet masters of this country ( which, btw, has been led by fear-based governance since 1945)have allowed 95% of critical computer chip production  to move to Taiwan. President Biden has stated a few times that if China attacks Taiwan ( a recognized political subdivision of China), that the U.S. will intervene militarily. That shit scares me more than any fear monger ing by the bombastic and inept Trump. 

A:  I do not know this, and yes, you are right, and it fits today’s Gene Pool perfectly, and I hate you for the anxiety it causes.  You are right, the U.S. official recognizes China as the only China, and Taiwan as a part of China. 

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Q: Re: the TSA trays and fridgescapes in the Invitational Gene Pool. I have been thinking, in the future will we scoffers be looked down on the same way I think of those who didn’t “get” that putting a toilet in a gallery was art?  So many ways to feel old…Terri Smith

A: I think this is an excellent question.  I had it myself.   Back at the beginning, I thought music videos were appalling. I railed against it.  I felt music was music, and should be presented as music, not as some tarted-up thing.  I did not acknowledge the potential for artistry. 

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Q: This company name is hilarious. You can't make me believe they didn't choose the name on purpose and the website address looks like it's for a porno site but I guarantee it isn't. When you're mama's horny for a good plumbing, she calls Hardon's!

— Jon Gearhart.

A: Elegant.  Thank you. 

Q:  Pooping in my family was “to do a trick.”   

A: Wow.  That is lovely and theatrical. 

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This is Gene, reporting in, as promised. Not much difference so far between men and women. Almost everyone opts for piano and guitar.

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Q: OK, for bodily functions--I don't know why--my mother used to call when you urinated 'going tee-tee'.  Stupid.  

As to challenge two, insensitivities:  we purchased our first house back in 1984 and 5 years later decided to move.  We had engaged a realtor, and they were unable to sell the house, so we decided to sell it on our own.  We advertised an Open House for a Sunday and as couples came, we would tour them through the house.  One couple came through and the woman appeared to be having a baby soon, so I asked, 'When are you due?'.  She gave me a nasty scowl and said, 'I had the baby two months ago!'.  Learned my lesson, I never ask a woman if she is pregnant or due, no matter what she looks like.  I only comment if she or someone else brings it up. 

A: My rule is you only acknowledge a woman’s pregnancy if you are an OB/Gyn and you are literally, at that moment, delivering her baby.

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Q: When my twins were little, there was one time when one of them threw up right before a nap. As a result, neither of them was any too keen on laying down again for a nap or to go to sleep for a while.

I decided that I would have to give them some "medicine" to help them go to sleep, but obviously I didn't want to overmedicate my kids. So I grabbed the grenadine from the liquor cabinet — being a drinkin parent comes in handy! — and gave that to them as medicine. 

My brilliant PhD husband, who can be a little obtuse, freaked out and asked why I was giving them medicine every time they went to nap or sleep, so I had to explain to him that it was that really good medicine, you know, the Placebo medicine. 

My two-year-olds latched on to the name and for a good 6 months or so would ask for their Placebo medicine before naps or bedtime. They sure got funny looks from our friends!

A: Very nice. 

Q:  My daughter was at a stage, maybe 2 or 3 years old, where she followed me everywhere she demanded to know what I was doing in the bathroom where she could not join me. From behind the bathroom door I allowed that I was working on a science experiment. This has become family code for bathroom visits. We just say: "science experiment" when we head to the bathroom should an explanation/comment be needed. 

A: I used to joyfully improvise on the cliche of “Seeing a man about a horse.”   As in “Seeing a man about a mongoose,” or something.

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Q: I am a woman. I do not sleep in the nude. I have had occasional dreams where I am not totally naked, but topless in public. The funny thing is that, in the dream, it is embarrassing, but not as embarrassing as it would be in real life. In the dream, I am acutely and uncomfortably aware of my toplessness, but everyone else is politely not mentioning it.

A: I like that last part. It’s deep. It shows concern about social dimplomacy, and your vulnerability.

Q: For pooping, my dad used to say “going grunts.”

A: That is disgusting.  Thank you.  I have never understood men in public restrooms who happily loudly bleat out their grunts. Yes, ladies, they do. I am informed that women NEVER do this.

Q: A friend of mine has the habit of exclaiming, "Ducks!" when he passes gas, referring to the sound that it often makes (in case that wasn't obvious).  My wife and I found it hilarious and have adopted it.  We've also expanded it so that any reference to ducks is "known" and thus can be used in mixed company and no one is the wiser.  We have also expanded the concept to belches, which are called out with the exclamation of "Frogs!" 

A: I have a good friend who looks around and says, “Where’s that damned duck?”

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Q: When I was a kid, my Dad always called using a public bathroom "going to the yonnel "(or yawnel - I never saw it spelled out).  I thought that was his name for the porcelain contraption you peed into though I never heard anyone else call it that.  Never asked him about it.  A few years ago (after my Dad had passed),  I was using a public bathroom and, as I was peeing, I noticed a sign on the wall in front of me that said something along the lines of "Don't put stuff in the urinal."  I don't know what combination of time, place and circumstance finally flipped the switch, but the light went on and a 65 year old mystery was solved. My Dad and I were from Boston.

A: This was my favorite post on the subject.

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Q: My mother referred to my sister’s vagina as her “ Suzie Q.” I had forgotten this until, while in college, Credence Clearwater Revival recorded a song with that same name. My fiancé, once apprised of its family provenance adopted it as her nickname for her naughty bits, and we immediately made it “Our song” and intended to use the CCR tune at our reception as our first dance. Alas, the engagement collapsed, but we’re  still buds and we never have a conversation without my inquiring about Suzie.  My ex never fails to assure me that Suzie is fine, perhaps a tad neglected by her husband. She’s long married to some rich shitbird in West Palm who has no idea of what we’re talking bout, thinks it’s a reference to some old college pal.

A: Okay, this made me laugh. 

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Q: An embarrassmen I've always enjoyed cruel humor.  Don't know why.  I used to laugh myself sick at the Mr. Bill segments on the 1970s "Saturday Night Live".  So, when my son was 4, I had a great idea for a Halloween costume concept:  dress him up as Mr. Bill, and myself as his Play-Doh tormentor, Sluggo.  It was going fine until we got to the house of a Black family.  The man who answered the door gave my son the expected candy, but gave me... a look.  Walking away, I was wondering, "What was THAT about?  Wait, is Sluggo supposed to be... am I in blackface?"

A: Hm.  I see Sluggo as being dark blue, not black.  WAS YOUR FACE BLACK, YOU MONSTER?

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Q: With regard to the challenge for an insensitive thing I have said: I was in medical school in the mid-80’s and on one of my first clinical rotations. I was assigned to take the medical history and perform a physical examination on a patient in the hospital, who agreed to this, probably because he had nothing better to do at the time. He was sitting in a chair when I entered the room, and I sat opposite him and took his medical history. When it was time to do the physical exam, I said: “Why don’t you hop up on the bed so I can examine you?” It was then I noticed that he had only one leg.

— Adam G

A: Excellent.

This is Gene. We are down. Please keep sending in comments and observations here.

We will meet again on Thursday, with the Invitational.