I'm sure that many of you have already seen this story -- it's already about a week-and-a-half old, I confess — but since the major news organizations gave it scant notice after Inauguration Day, January 20, inasmuch as there were many more pressing issues facing the nation, I have decided to resurrect it here for your reading and reveling pleasure. (And besides, back in the 1700s, when my Philadelphia newspaper often carried stories that were weeks if not months old, due to extremely slow channels of transportation and communication, the twelve-day delay of today's story is rather minor in comparison.)
So here's the scoop, in a nutshell:
When our new President, Joseph R. Biden, officially moved into the Oval Office, he immediately gave the room his own stamp of historical appreciation. Gone were reminders of racist, populist bigots idolized by the previous president. In their place, paintings and busts representing civil rights leaders, Native American culture, and influential Founding Fathers now tell an entirely different narrative. And that brings us to the point of my little story. For that, dear reader, I invite you to click on the photograph below, to view yours truly discovering something rather pleasing and noteworthy in the President's office:
Of course, I need to set the record straight. For those of you who may have been dozing in history class during this particular episode of our country's origins, I never had the honor of being a president. Though I was a Founding Father, as well as a signer of three of the most important documents in our nation's early history, I was never a president. And, thus, I never lived in the White House either. That structure was actually completed after my time; John Adams was in fact the first occupant of that stately, classically-inspired residence now known all over the world.
And, finally, as reported by the Washington Post, the official reason my portrait now hangs in the Oval Office is that President Biden wished to signify his deep, serious interest in basing his presidency and numerous policy decisions on a rational, sensible, pragmatic understanding of science — and who better to express that goal, than (all modesty aside) one of the 13 colonies' first and foremost scientists, yours truly?
Your humble servant,
B. Franklin
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