Presidential Confession: Peacenik Grandfather

This may seem arcane, but with my presidential exploratory campaign heating up as it has, I have to make a confession.  I’m naturally reluctant to do so, but I feel compelled to get my side of the story out before you read it in the press.  My advisors have assured me that this should only have a minimal impact on my exploratory campaign, but felt it was necessary, lest we allow my opponents to spin the story first.

Here it is: My great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather, Proctor Biobrain, was an anti-war protestor during the Civil War (or The War Between the States, for my rightwing readers).  That’s right.  He didn’t support slavery, or oppose Lincoln, and he was absolutely convinced that allowing the Confederacy to separate would be disastrous for our nation.  No, he just opposed the war because he was a peacenik pacifist who opposed all wars on any grounds whatsoever.

And frankly, his position on the matter was entirely incoherent and fairly delusional.  Because for as much as he vehemently opposed everything that the Confederacy stood for, he just thought that war was a big bummer and that any sort of hostile attitude was bad karma that would make war inevitable.  He also blamed slavery on the North’s addiction to natural fibers and honestly believed that the only way to keep the slave states from seceding was to think positive thoughts while facing south.

What can I say, the guy was a little ahead of his time; especially in terms of the consumption of psychedelic mushrooms.  He was also really big into wearing leather tie-dye overalls and his stovepipe hat had a bong built into it; which sounds like a good idea until you realize how often he’d bend over and spill that filthy water all over himself.  Ironically, he eventually died in his sleep of smoke inhalation as an old man while wearing that hat to bed, after his sheepskin pillow started smoldering.  And they say drugs don’t kill…

Anyway, that’s the long and the short of it.  You’re sure to hear more about this next week, as I’ve been told that the NY Times is planning to run a three-day frontpage story on this, starting on Sunday.  But you heard it hear first, and I can assure you, there is no story here.  Just the standard kooky relative who did lots of drugs and opposed a war due to nonsensical beliefs that he was only faintly familiar with.  Oh, and he often liked to make furniture and masks out of human flesh, many of which are in my home right now.  But I think you’ll find that kind of thing was pretty common among people of that time period, so I don’t see how anyone can hold it against me.  But that won’t stop them from trying…