Greetings, loyal minions. Your Maximum Leader doesn’t know what is up with Wordpress. He just noticed today that he’s had a bunch o’ comments waiting moderation. He’d either missed them completely, or they didn’t show up on the dashboard. He approved three comments just now (he spammed three and deleted one - the one was a repeat).
One of the comments awaiting moderation was from our good buddy Smallholder who posted a link to a list of the sexiest Presidents for President’s Day. All in all your Maximum Leader isn’t sure how to rate presidential sexiness. He does know this however… Warren Harding was a huge ladies man and should be a lot higher up on this list than he is. Your Maximum Leader seems to recall some story of the Secret Service restraining Mrs Harding outside a room in the White House while President Harding was engaing in a little throwdown with a secretary or something…
This reminds your Maximum Leader of another little Warren Harding story. Your Maximum Leader’s good friend, the late Richard Couture once gave him a call and asked what a letter from Warren Harding might be worth. Your Maximum Leader wasn’t sure, but was sure of where one could find a number of presidential autograph/memoribilia appraisers who could get the answer for us. Richard sent this letter to your Maximum Leader (via Registered Mail). It was a standard “Thanks-for-your-comments” letter that politicians often send out to constituents who have written them. This one had some personal information thanking the recipient for kind hospitality many years before when Harding apparently dined with her. At the bottom of the letter was a beautiful clear signature reading “Warren G. Harding.” Your Maximum Leader compared the signature to a reproduction of a Harding signature he had in a book on the Presidents. It looked pretty close actually… So your Maximum Leader wondered if he was actually dealing with the proverbial real McCoy on the letter.
Your Maximum Leader made an appointment with a well-known and highly regarded expert on presidential autographs in Georgetown and took the letter up. While the appraiser was looking over the letter he explained to your Maximum Leader that there are basically three types of Harding signatures that come in to his shop. There are the actual Harding signatures (worth about a few hundred bucks); the signatures done by Harding’s secretarial pool (only worth something if the letter itself might be interesting); and then signatures done by one of Harding’s mistresses (which were worth up to $1000 depending on the letter condidtion and subject). Apparently ole Warren was happy to have is mistresses do a little letter-writing for him while he was concentrating on getting his freak on. It seems as though one mistress might have actually signed important documents (like officer’s commissions or ambassadorial letters) while she and Warren were getting jiggy with it. Sadly, the letter your Maximum Leader brought was just one from the secretarial pool and not worth anything really.
Anyhooo… Warren Harding… Probably more sexy than Nerve magazine gives him credit for…
Carry on.
