Go to work on Presidents' Day

I realize that a lot of Americans have to work on Presidents' Day, but those of us who are tax eaters got the day off.

Back when I was growing up in New York state, we had Lincoln's birthday on February 12 and Washington's on February 22. There were places in this country where Lincoln was still hated and his birthday was not observed. Eventually the folks in Congress worked out an arrangement for a single day to be observed everywhere, on a Monday, so that we now get a three-day weekend. Supposedly, it's technically still officially Washington's birthday, but everyone refers to it as Presidents' Day. Now, no one who hates Lincoln has to celebrate Lincoln's birthday.

The trouble with calling it Presidents' Day, though, is that this treats all presidents alike. There's good reason to honor our great presidents, like Washington and Lincoln, but not much reason to honor the bottom dwellers, like Harding and Carter. One size doesn't fit all.

The thought occurred to me a week or two ago, but I didn't get around to writing about it until now, that the BDS crowd must really hate this holiday. I've had surprising difficulty finding people complaining about it, but I've found this: "Of course, then we have the President of the present day. Honestly, am I supposed to stay home from work today and think about this guy? C'mon."

So what I'm going to do next year at this point is to try to organize a "Go To Work On Presidents' Day" campaign to encourage all the lefties around town to give up their day off. Because, you know, if they take advantage of the holiday by taking the day off from work, they're necessarily honoring ChimpyMcHitlerBurton, or whatever they call him these days.

This won't accomplish very much, but the idea that they're giving up a long weekend to avoid honoring Bush would at least make me, mmm, smirk.