| Monday, February 18, 2008 |
00:58 - I bust my butt day in, day out...
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1203374997.shtml
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Dean Esmay has a post bringing up a point of some irritation: Presidents' Day. Handy as such a day is for a ski weekend, it's not without its difficulties.
The problem I have with "Presidents' Day" is that the apostrophe tends to wander, as in the title of Dean's very post. It's easy for it to morph into President's Day. And then all sorts of stupidity happens.
For one, it becomes politicized. People who are too young to realize that it's supposed to be a day honoring two specific, generally universally appreciated historical Presidents (and these people are more numerous every day) can be excused for thinking that it's a day dedicated to honoring The President—as in the currently sitting one. Ever see someone refuse to take Presidents' Day off work because he hates Bush? I have.
And it's not like such people don't have a point, even if accidentally made. The United States isn't supposed to be a country that has holidays for sitting politicians, like some gussied-up North Korea lauding its Dear Leader with giant posters and parades. We (allegedly) place some distance between the people we've elected to take part in our daily lives and the act of naming airports and streets after particularly popular ones, by politely waiting until after they've left office and usually until after they've died, before getting out the sculptor's chisels. Facing D.C. and paying obeisance to some elected official who's still in office doesn't come naturally to our national character; nor should it. Hence an eye-roll and a sneer when we hear someone talk about "President's Day".
"Two separate paid holidays" within one short month is probably a bit much; but we really ought to be able to package Lincoln's and Washington's birthdays more elegantly than we're doing right now, because our current solution devalues those men's contributions in more ways than one, and seems contrary to our cultural nature, for no benefit I can see but slightly easier bookkeeping.
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Brian Tiemann
