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‘Me The People’ Is Humorous
But Insightful Look At Constitution
By Alice Shaw
Contributing Writer
The Founding Fathers were all drunks.
George Washington was contemptuous of the Constitution, calling it a wishy-washy document that invited too many interpretations.
Thomas Jefferson expected the country to write a new constitution every 20 years or so.
James Madison, the father of the Constitution, explicitly advocated the principle of constitutional revision: “By the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation is to another....the earth belongs to the living and not the dead.”
These are just a few of the historical gems that Kevin Bleyer unearthed in his journey through Constitutional history, undertaken because he finds considerable fault with the existing document and intends to re-write it.
Mr. Bleyer is an Emmy Award-winning writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He also co-authored the best seller “Earth: The Book” and has written for The Bill Maher Show.
Since Mr. Bleyer has spent so much of his working life writing comedy, you would expect his new book, “Me The People,” to be funny. It is. Very funny.
But it’s also very serious. Mr. Bleyer describes the failing of the framers and the flaws in the document which they wrote. Mr. Bleyer felt it was his patriotic duty to do this because so many Americans consider the Constitution to be as sacred and untouchable as the Bible.
When Mr. Bleyer wrote that the founding fathers were all drunks, he wasn’t joking. All Americans in 1787 were drunks, explaining that “the amount of alcohol consumed in 1787 was staggering. The average American over 15 threw back almost six gallons of alcohol each year, more than twice our modern consumption. Drinking was a ceremonial part of the day and a companion at night. John Hancock kept a gallon of rum punch by his bedside so that he might sleep well and dream of large signatures. As was the custom then, the delegates indulged. They began each morning with a ‘small beer’ for breakfast — water and milk were considered unsafe, as if they needed an excuse — and they kept the party rolling during the day with hard cider and rum.”
Office hours were a paltry 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., “so they could make happy hours at the local taverns.” He added that George Washington and Benjamin Franklin “brewed beer with as much gusto as they fought wars or managed feats of diplomacy.”
According to Mr. Bleyer, when James Madison, the “father of the Constitution,” became president, he tried unsuccessfully to establish a National Brewery and a position in his cabinet for a Secretary of Beer.
Not only were the founding fathers drunk, Mr. Bleyer said, that were witless in choosing to hold their Constitution-writing conclave in summer and in Philadelphia, notorious for its heat and humidity. To make matters worse, he said, the Framers nailed shut the windows and shutters of the room in the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) because they were determined to keep the proceedings secret from the public. It’s a wonder the framers didn’t die of heat stroke, alcoholic poisoning or air pollution.
In addition to the heat and humidity, Mr. Bleyer said, another distraction was the “raw stink of Philadelphia.” The smell came from the contents of slop pots emptied into the streets and animal carcasses discarded by tanners and butchers.
The heat, humidity and stench plus all the booze they drank surely addled the Framers’ brains, explaining why the Constitution is so badly written and so confusing in so many places.
A lot of things about the Constitution irk Mr. Bleyer but some things really enrage him.
One is the Constitution’s failure to prevent gerrymandering, the process of letting those in office re-design the boundaries of Congressional districts, thereby ensuring their own re-election. Gerrymandering, Mr. Bleyer wrote, has made a mockery of our elections: “Democracy has been flipped. Instead of the voters choosing their legislators, legislators choose their voters. Together with lack of term limits, it has resulted in a class of ‘professional politicians’ who can rely on a long career in Congress....”
Another huge Constitutional flaw, according to Mr. Bleyer is that it gives every state two U.S. senators. In the Senate, tiny states like Rhode Island and Delaware have as much power as giants like New York and California. What this means is that people in highly populated states, like New York and California, are wildly under-represented in the Senate while those in thinly populated states are wildly over-represented.
Mr. Bleyer also is furious that the Supreme Court has become too big for its britches. Instead of setting an exact term limit for Supreme Court justices, the Constitution merely states that justices may serve as long as they exhibit “good behavior.” This has been interpreted to mean that Supreme Court justices serve for life unless they are impeached.
Mr. Bleyer suggests that the terms for Supreme Court justices be limited to 15 years — five years to learn the job, five to hand down sensible opinions, and five to undo the harm in the justice’s first five years.
If you revere the Constitution but actually don’t know what is in it — that’s most of us — read Me The People. The book is history laced with humor. It’s instructive, enlightening and funny from beginning to end. All of which proves that no one should be allowed to write history who hasn’t first worked for Jon Stewart.
(Me The People, by Kevin Bleyer, published by Random House, New York, NY, 2012, 317 pages, $26.)
But Insightful Look At Constitution
By Alice Shaw
Contributing Writer
The Founding Fathers were all drunks.
George Washington was contemptuous of the Constitution, calling it a wishy-washy document that invited too many interpretations.
Thomas Jefferson expected the country to write a new constitution every 20 years or so.
James Madison, the father of the Constitution, explicitly advocated the principle of constitutional revision: “By the law of nature, one generation is to another as one independent nation is to another....the earth belongs to the living and not the dead.”
These are just a few of the historical gems that Kevin Bleyer unearthed in his journey through Constitutional history, undertaken because he finds considerable fault with the existing document and intends to re-write it.
Mr. Bleyer is an Emmy Award-winning writer for The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. He also co-authored the best seller “Earth: The Book” and has written for The Bill Maher Show.
Since Mr. Bleyer has spent so much of his working life writing comedy, you would expect his new book, “Me The People,” to be funny. It is. Very funny.
But it’s also very serious. Mr. Bleyer describes the failing of the framers and the flaws in the document which they wrote. Mr. Bleyer felt it was his patriotic duty to do this because so many Americans consider the Constitution to be as sacred and untouchable as the Bible.
When Mr. Bleyer wrote that the founding fathers were all drunks, he wasn’t joking. All Americans in 1787 were drunks, explaining that “the amount of alcohol consumed in 1787 was staggering. The average American over 15 threw back almost six gallons of alcohol each year, more than twice our modern consumption. Drinking was a ceremonial part of the day and a companion at night. John Hancock kept a gallon of rum punch by his bedside so that he might sleep well and dream of large signatures. As was the custom then, the delegates indulged. They began each morning with a ‘small beer’ for breakfast — water and milk were considered unsafe, as if they needed an excuse — and they kept the party rolling during the day with hard cider and rum.”
Office hours were a paltry 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., “so they could make happy hours at the local taverns.” He added that George Washington and Benjamin Franklin “brewed beer with as much gusto as they fought wars or managed feats of diplomacy.”
According to Mr. Bleyer, when James Madison, the “father of the Constitution,” became president, he tried unsuccessfully to establish a National Brewery and a position in his cabinet for a Secretary of Beer.
Not only were the founding fathers drunk, Mr. Bleyer said, that were witless in choosing to hold their Constitution-writing conclave in summer and in Philadelphia, notorious for its heat and humidity. To make matters worse, he said, the Framers nailed shut the windows and shutters of the room in the Pennsylvania State House (now Independence Hall) because they were determined to keep the proceedings secret from the public. It’s a wonder the framers didn’t die of heat stroke, alcoholic poisoning or air pollution.
In addition to the heat and humidity, Mr. Bleyer said, another distraction was the “raw stink of Philadelphia.” The smell came from the contents of slop pots emptied into the streets and animal carcasses discarded by tanners and butchers.
The heat, humidity and stench plus all the booze they drank surely addled the Framers’ brains, explaining why the Constitution is so badly written and so confusing in so many places.
A lot of things about the Constitution irk Mr. Bleyer but some things really enrage him.
One is the Constitution’s failure to prevent gerrymandering, the process of letting those in office re-design the boundaries of Congressional districts, thereby ensuring their own re-election. Gerrymandering, Mr. Bleyer wrote, has made a mockery of our elections: “Democracy has been flipped. Instead of the voters choosing their legislators, legislators choose their voters. Together with lack of term limits, it has resulted in a class of ‘professional politicians’ who can rely on a long career in Congress....”
Another huge Constitutional flaw, according to Mr. Bleyer is that it gives every state two U.S. senators. In the Senate, tiny states like Rhode Island and Delaware have as much power as giants like New York and California. What this means is that people in highly populated states, like New York and California, are wildly under-represented in the Senate while those in thinly populated states are wildly over-represented.
Mr. Bleyer also is furious that the Supreme Court has become too big for its britches. Instead of setting an exact term limit for Supreme Court justices, the Constitution merely states that justices may serve as long as they exhibit “good behavior.” This has been interpreted to mean that Supreme Court justices serve for life unless they are impeached.
Mr. Bleyer suggests that the terms for Supreme Court justices be limited to 15 years — five years to learn the job, five to hand down sensible opinions, and five to undo the harm in the justice’s first five years.
If you revere the Constitution but actually don’t know what is in it — that’s most of us — read Me The People. The book is history laced with humor. It’s instructive, enlightening and funny from beginning to end. All of which proves that no one should be allowed to write history who hasn’t first worked for Jon Stewart.
(Me The People, by Kevin Bleyer, published by Random House, New York, NY, 2012, 317 pages, $26.)