Part 10 (1/2)
William McKinley is the president that n.o.body remembers, family and friends included. Born in Ohio in 1843, this white shadow's hometown of Canton, Ohio, is far more famous for being the home of Pro Football's Hall of Fame than it is for being the birthplace of our twenty-fifth and most forgettable president. A Civil War veteran, McKinley steadily rose in rank, although n.o.body remembers why. As president, he may have been a proponent of the gold standard and possibly in favor of keeping tariff s high on imports, although he could have been for low tariffs and ”Made in China” stickers on every toy - historians aren't sure.
MCKINLEY HAD A ”BEEN THERE, DONE THAT, GOT THE T-s.h.i.+RT” ATt.i.tUDE TOWARD BEING GOVERNOR OF OHIO IN 1896. Following his forgettable stint as governor, McKinley kept his low profile by winning the Republican nomination for president. His opponent, William Jennings Bryan, ran on one issue and one issue only: the issue of disqualifying the Hollywood foreign press from voting for the Oscars, condoms in the cla.s.sroom, the fair tax, greenhouse emission controls, military reform, and same-s.e.x unions. Despite Bryan's one-issue platform, he found it impossible to compete with McKinley's anonymity, as he followed the time-tested formula of military man + state governor = next president of the United States.
Who Killed the President?
McKinley's a.s.sa.s.sin is as anonymous as the president he murdered. Alongside fellow presidential a.s.sa.s.sins with names like John Wilkes Booth and Lee Harvey Oswald, the name of Leon Frank Czolgosz just doesn't have any sizzle. Like all presidential a.s.sa.s.sins, Czolgosz was an anarchist and a loner. Not using his nonrhythmic name as a crutch, Leon aborted his original plan of killing the president with a candlestick in the library in favor of the more traditional gun in front of scores of witnesses.
Czolgosz shot McKinley at the Pan Am Exposition being held in Buffalo, New York. Leon simply walked up to the president and calmly pulled out his pistol, shooting the president twice. After the shooting, the crowd beat Czol-gosz, nearly killing him. Despite the crowd's lack of follow through, the courts finished what they started, as Czolgosz was executed in the electric chair in October 1901.
Who Was That Man?
As for the legacy of the dead McKinley, it is the legacy of the forgotten president. He quietly and uneventfully pa.s.sed away from the gunshot wounds eight days after the shooting. As a symbolic gesture of remembrance, the government named a mountain after McKinley in the far off and nearly uninhabitable state of Alaska. In keeping with McKinley's forgettableness, many Alaskans simply refer to the mountain by its Native American name, Denali.
After his death, Americans felt they had awakened from a case of amnesia, as McKinley was succeeded by Theodore Roosevelt, a much more memorable president in Americans' minds. BUT IN HONORING MCKINLEY BY PUTTING HIM ON THE $500 BILL, WE HAVE a.s.sURED THAT MOST AMERICANS WILL NEVER KNOW THE FACE OF OUR TWENTY-FIFTH PRESIDENT WILLIAM MCKINLEY.
1913 INCOME TAX ENACTED.
Through the magic of the IRS, American workers have the opportunity to help finance lavish White House dinners.
Proud to Be an American.
Over the years, Americans have been fortunate to have numerous opportunities to be proud of their country and its citizens, both natural and naturalized. Starting out with a handful of unwanted European castoff s that stormed the sh.o.r.es of the east coast of what is now the United States, they were able to convince tribe after tribe of Indians that they would enjoy the challenges of raising their families out west where the conditions for difficult farming were ideal. Through intimidation and near daily beatings, they were able to make use of unruly black labor to harvest cotton, tobacco, and sugarcane.
THEY WERE ABLE TO TAKE A SEMILITERATE ACTOR NAMED SYLVESTER STALLONE, WHOSE BEST DIALOGUE CONSISTED OF GRUNTING, AND TURN IT INTO A SIX-FILM FRANCHISE. And finally, through generations of careful designer breeding, America was able to give birth to an eager p.o.r.n star named Houston, who excitedly set a modern day g.a.n.g.b.a.n.g record in 1999 by having s.e.x 620 times over the course of eight hours. America stood at attention and their pride swelled on that fateful day.
Even with all of these explosively satisfying moments, nothing makes hard-working Americans feel prouder than when they look at their pay stub every other week and see their automatic contribution to the Internal Revenue Service.
First Comes Love, Then Comes Marriage.
Capitalizing on Americans' desire to fund government projects before funding their family bank accounts, the Sixteenth Amendment to the Const.i.tution, ratified in 1913, provides the federal government the authority to levy taxes on personal income. This wildly popular amendment called for a progressive tax that allowed the highest earners the satisfaction of contributing an even greater proportion of their income to the beloved IRS. During the honeymoon stage, the income tax started at 1 percent of taxable income above $3,000 for individuals and 1 percent of taxable income above $4,000 for married couples, ensuring that a marriage penalty would always be part of the tax code and the honeymoon with the IRS would never end.
It is through the magic of the IRS that American workers have the opportunity to help finance freedom fighters in other countries, host lavish White House dinners for hated foreign dignitaries, and provide subsidies to insanely profitable oil companies to continue their willingness to sell us their products that we have come to love and cherish.
Pay It Forward.
Recognizing that wealthy people are very pa.s.sionate about war and they are inherently philanthropic, the income tax levels were adjusted to call for top earners to contribute 77 percent of their income to the IRS during World War I and an o.r.g.a.s.mically satisfying 91 percent during World War II. For many big-hearted rich Americans, the war ended too soon. With the scaled-back tax rates of peacetime that followed, many of the richest of the rich were left feeling a little charitable void in their life.
Fortunately for today's Americans, little has changed. The opportunity to partic.i.p.ate financially in foreign conflicts is still mandatory. The rich are still given the opportunity to experience higher taxation rates. The marriage penalty is still in place and every once in a while we still get to pay for the food and entertainment of political leaders that hate us. THE IRS: s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g YOU LIKE A HONEYMOON BRIDE SINCE 1913.
19141918 WORLD WAR I.
Both sides declined the invitation, choosing to have a meet and greet luncheon with Cameron Diaz instead.
Shot Heard Round the World.
Decades before the LA Bloods allegedly shot Notorious B.I.G. in retaliation for the murder of 2Pac, there was a slightly less memorable shot heard around the world when Archduke Francis Ferdinand was gunned down Compton-style by the Serbian Blood Gavrilo Princip while in Sarajevo in 1914.
Besides being the target of Blood-on-archduke violence, Ferdinand was the heir in waiting to the Austrian throne. AS AUSTRIAN ROYALTY, THE FAMILY OF PRIVILEGE ENJOYED FREE LIFT TICKETS TO THE COUNTRY'S MUNIc.i.p.aL SKI RESORTS ALONG WITH AN a.s.sORTMENT OF ”WE'VE GOT YOUR BACK” FRIENDs.h.i.+PS FROM A HANDFUL OF CAPITALISM-CRUs.h.i.+NG WORLD LEADERS AND THEIR MILITARIES.
With the orderly succession to the Austrian crown now out of succession and Princip's a.s.sa.s.sin behavior exposed, the Austrian military declared all out Armageddon on Princip's home country of Serbia. Not without friends, the tiny nation of Serbia received military support from neighboring Russia. As Russian troops entered the fray, the first country to overreact to the ruble users' involvement and the archduke pus.h.i.+ng daisies was the 1990 FIFA World Cup champion, Germany.
Enthusiastic to share the joys of war with other European countries, the Germans responded by checking off France, Serbia, and Russia on their Declaration of War paperwork. AS FRANCE BECAME ENTANGLED IN THE WEB OF WAR, THE ”SOCCER-IS-FOOTBALL” NATION OF GREAT BRITAIN EAGERLY DECLARED WAR ON GERMANY BECAUSE OF THEIR FRIENDs.h.i.+P WITH FRANCE.