Sorry Gerald Ford

James Brown died. So did Gerald Ford. As a culture, we seem to organize these things into threes. People -- even famous people -- die all the time; but we tend to lump three people together and decide that there is some point or pattern to it, and the point I want to make here is that there might not be two more different celebrated cultural signifiers than The Godfather of Soul and President Klutz. What third person could possibly end up complimenting or supplementing these people's seperate and unequal symbolic properties?

I have no idea.

The man in his prime.



I wish I could post a clip of Chevy Chase doing Gerald Ford (I even had a good lead-in: "The, err, man, not ready for prime time.") but of course NBC won't let YouTube carry that stuff. But I did find a clip of the Simpsons episode where he makes an "appearance". It's actually one of the kinder, gentler moments I can remember ever being on the Simpsons.