You Might Be a Zombie and Other Bad News - Writers of Cracked dot Com [7]
Of course, wearing pink doesn’t necessarily mean that you are affected by it. After all, if it’s on your body you’re less likely to see it yourself. But everybody else? Well, they have to see it every time they look at you. Do you realize what that means? Wearing pink doesn’t make you a wimp; it makes everybody around you a wimp. Technically speaking, that means the toughest guy in any given situation is the guy in the My Little Pony shirt.
THE FOUR MOST BADASS PRESIDENTS OF ALL TIME
THE stories you learned in school about some of America’s most important presidents skipped a few details. Most of what you know about the guys whose faces are on the money in your pocket and the mountain in North Dakota were edited for the same reason health class edited out the best aspects of human sexuality: Because telling you the truth was far more likely to end with you putting someone’s eye out.
4. ANDREW JACKSON
When the 1828 election rolled around, a lot of people were terrified when they heard Andrew “Old Hickory” Jackson was running. If you’re wondering how a guy we’re calling a badass got such a lame nickname, it’s because he used to carry a hickory cane around and beat people senseless with it, and if you’re wondering why he did that, it’s because he was a freaking lunatic.
Former Democratic senator and secretary of the treasury Albert Gallatin feared a Jackson presidency because of the man’s “habitual disregard of laws and constitutional provisions.” In other words, the guy was a loose canon—nineteenth-century Washington’s answer to Martin Riggs. Sure, he probably didn’t have an irate black lieutenant to answer to, or a weary partner who was too old for this shit, but he most certainly had a death wish.
How do we know? Despite everyone’s best efforts, Jackson was elected to the top office, and when he wasn’t busy shaping the presidency as we know it today, you could find him out back dueling. In case you haven’t been to the nineteenth century lately, this unmanly sounding activity involves standing across from an armed man and shooting at him while he in turn shoots at you. The number of duels that Jackson took part in varies depending on which source you consult: Some say thirteen, while others rank the number somewhere in the hundreds, either of which is entirely too many times for a reasonable human being to stand in front of someone who is trying to kill them with a loaded gun.
On one occasion, Jackson challenged a man named Charles Dickinson to a duel (the reason behind it wasn’t important, not to us and certainly not to Jackson), and Jackson even politely volunteered to be shot at first. Dickinson happily obliged and shot Jackson, who proceeded to shake it off like it was a bee sting. When Jackson returned the favor, Dickinson was not so lucky, and that’s why his face isn’t on the twenty. The bullet, by the by, remained in Jackson’s body for nineteen years because he knew that time spent removing the bullets would fall under the category of “time not dueling”—Jackson’s least favorite category.
Looking back on his life, spent murdering people for little to no reason, Jackson reflected, “I have only two regrets: I didn’t shoot Henry Clay and I didn’t hang John C. Calhoun.” Calhoun, it should be noted, was Jackson’s vice president.
Greatest displays of badassery: Andrew Jackson was the first president against whom an assassination attempt was made. A man named Richard Lawrence approached Jackson with two pistols, both of which, for some reason, misfired. Jackson proceeded to beat Lawrence nearly to death with his cane until aides pulled him off.
The guns were inspected afterward, and it was discovered that they were in perfect working order, leading some historians to believe that it was an odds-defying “miracle” that Jackson survived. But we’re pretty sure the bullets, like everyone else, were simply scared of Jackson.
3. JOHN F. KENNEDY
Nowadays, John F. Kennedy is remembered mostly for getting shot