Gettin' Jiggy With Jefferson

He certainly did pursue everything.

Sometimes, the less you know the better you feel. I learned this truth anew on my recent visit to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's glorious mountain-top plantation located in Virginia's stunning Piedmont Region. Our third president and one of our most popular Founding Fathers, Jefferson is famous for stating in the opening of the Declaration of Independence that, "All men are created equal." Turns out that, just like his namesake William Jefferson Clinton who came along so many years later, Tom was also a lying blankety-blank.

Wisely, I see now, I slept through pretty much every history class in high school, being averse to hearing about the repugnant violence and soul-shattering destruction caused by man's inhumanity to man. I side-stepped the subject entirely in college where I majored in Fine Art and spent almost all my time reading Shakespeare, painting, drawing, and immersing myself in the lives of artists, none of whom were busy owning, whipping, trading or selling slaves or tearing apart families, which apparently Mr. Jefferson, or should I call him "Massa Jefferson," did with abandon. Certainly I had heard whispers of those terrible truths, but never to the nauseating degree I heard them during a lengthy and almost too informative tour of the "slave quarters" at Monticello just a few days ago.

Dozens of books have been written on the subject so there's no need for me to say more, other than my conclusion that being a two-faced, lying windbag filled with empty rhetoric has been part of the job description of POTUS for many years. And compared to Jefferson, who fathered at least six children with one of his "slave girls" and no doubt dallied with several others, and who thought nothing of wrenching slave children from their mothers' arms and putting them up on the auction block, our current president, who has admitted to enjoying seeing pretty women undressing backstage at beauty pageants, is a veritable prince among men. Or at least among presidents.