Who's Your Favorite Founding Father - a July 4th Discussion

Jackie Mason | July 5, 2009
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | July 5, 2009
Ben Franklin. He accomplished so much in so many different fields, and he had the most colorful personality, or at least that's the way he's remembered.

Erik Bates | July 5, 2009
[hidden by request]

Erik Bates | July 5, 2009
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | July 5, 2009
Joe the Plumber continues to say lots of dumb things – he recently said that "this country has been great for over 180 years now" – but my favorite dumb quote of his this week was that the Founding Fathers "knew socialism doesn't work. They knew communism doesn't work." (link) Really? They knew these things that would be invented in their great-grandchildrens' time wouldn't work?

Jackie Mason | July 5, 2009
[hidden by request]

Scott Hardie | July 5, 2009
I confess to losing interest in fireworks over the years. You can only see them so many times before they become meaningless, I guess. I hope to watch them with my kids someday so they can regain their novelty, but I'm a little afraid that the experience will mean even less to the next generation of over-stimulated kids, like this.

Jackie Mason | July 5, 2009
[hidden by request]

Amy Austin | July 5, 2009
On Joe the Dumbass Plumber: "why hasn't he been strung up???" ;-DDD
On his politics: All the talk about "socialism" in this country just kills me -- Americans wouldn't know real Socialism if it jumped up and bit them in their fat, video game-playing buttocks.

On unimpressed kids and light shows that suck: I'd say "lol" about that, but the truth of the matter is that last night, as I watched my first fireworks display in I cannot remember exactly how long (I don't have any recall of any in the last ten years, honestly... and sadly, as that was once a favorite annual thing for me, kids or no -- now it's just too bittersweet) -- and a fairly impressive one at that -- I lost count of exactly how many times one of the boys in attendance (it was a large party, with definite segregation of the parents & non-parents going on) asked, "is that it???" Another irritating overheard comment (from same boy) in another apparently too-long pause during the more than half-hour show: "What was the point of that? Just a waste of a bunch of fireworks!" Yeah. I understand "jaded", but no way in hell should a seven-year-old be expressing it! Where do they learn this??? Is life really so underwhelming for them??? And yes... immediately after the show, they all ran back inside to resume their Rock Band sessions and online gaming.

In fact, I gently informed one boy as he played (possibly the same one, I don't know) that I was waiting to get online, and when he got to a "stopping point" to please allow my intrusion. Yeah... that was about as effective as speaking to him in Chinese -- he somehow managed a glance over and a "what?"... to which I repeated my request, which I was just sure was understood and respected. I stood by, not hovering (at first), and waited/watched to see exactly how long it would take for him to politely defer to "the adult". I probably would have been doing so for-ev-er, had his mother not entered the room and started speaking to him in hushed voice about his being on my friends' computer (initially, my friends' son had been on there with him, but now here he was, fully absorbed in the laptop by himself). I couldn't hear everything that was being said, but it was something along the lines of seeing if it was okay with my friends (who, incidentally, knew I wanted to get online) to keep their computer on for this long. No mention made of my presence or why, and I did not interject because 1) I couldn't hear them that well and figured that I shouldn't have been able to, and 2) I didn't want to seem impolite... I figured the boy would surely find his manners at some point and make mention of it to his mother. At that point, I suppose their game plan was to go "ask Miss R....." if it was okay to keep on playing. Well, without any real guilt, I sat down and -- only minimizing his window (because I'm nice like that) -- began my last-minute endeavor to start and/or win a concert before losing my streak again. They were back in the room in a couple of minutes, and his mom said, "Oh, well, she's already closed it" (I hadn't), and I said that I'd been waiting to get on. She said, "Oh... well you should have said something" as if to tell me that she would have gotten the boy off of there for me... to which I replied, "I didn't want to be rude." To which she said, "Oh... well, I appreciate that." What I ought to have said, as "an adult" slightly offended about being thus ignored (by both of them, actually -- I mean, why else did she think I was standing there???), was "Well, as a matter of fact, I did tell your son... ten or fifteen minutes ago. I guess he must have forgotten." Yeah. There's no way in hell I'd have ever gotten away with this sort of behavior at that age. Granted... the Atari didn't keep any adults from doing what they wanted to do, lol... but I'd have seen my head spin if I ignored any adults or their requests for longer than a few seconds... even/especially if it involved my putting down a game. I wasn't looking to get the kid in trouble... or to seem like a big baby myself... but I rather regret giving him the opportunity to prove that such respect appears not be instilled anymore, but only granted when an enforcer is present. I know he's only a kid... but I'm not his mom... and I'm *definitely* not into acting like it.

Lori Lancaster | July 6, 2009
[hidden by request]

Steve Dunn | July 6, 2009
Jefferson was my favorite for a long time because he was so talented at so many different things. Sometimes I go on a Franklin kick. Don't snooze on Washington, though - without him, it might have all just been a bunch of talk. And his contemporaries viewed him as The Man. I'm about to start watching the John Adams HBO series, so that could sway me his way. Deep down, in my heart of hearts, I'm probably an elitist like Hamilton, so props to him. And hey - Sam Adams was a brewer!

So hard to decide.

One thing seems certain - it was a remarkable group that assembled. Very different, but very brilliant. Their constitution is a work of political genius, to go down in history alongside the Code of Hammurabi, the Ten Commandments, the Magna Carta, the 95 Theses, etc.

Jackie Mason | July 6, 2009
[hidden by request]

Amy Austin | July 6, 2009
What Steve said. I couldn't have put it better myself.