(jazz music)
- Welcome to Badassing Your Way Through History,
I am Daniel O'Brien, head writer for Cracked.com
and full disclosure, I love presidents
so if I had my druthers every president
would have his or his own movie,
except Millard Fillmore who, fuck that guy, he's the worst.
Do you hear me Fillmore's ghost?
Get at this, I'm ready.
(farting)
But also know that this is the internet
and people won't click on a video titled
42 presidents who deserve their own movie,
so hey look it's me selling out.
If you know one thing about Grover Cleveland
it's we had a president named Grover?
That's a Muppet name, to which I'd say
actually that's his middle name.
His first name was Steven, to which you'd say nerd!
So I'll just move right on to the second thing
that people think of when they think of Grover Cleveland.
He served two non-consecutive terms.
That's basically all you need to know
to ace the Grover Cleveland portion
of your middle school history midterm
because whatever, the public school system is broken.
But, if you were actually a living, breathing,
sexual human American during Cleveland's reign as president,
you know that Cleveland was synonymous with honesty.
In 1884 the American people had grown sour
on the idea of big government
and assumed all politicians were corrupt.
Cleveland emerged as a man of the people,
who told it like it was and always did the right thing.
A big, walrus-looking sack of refreshing honesty
which made it all the more surprising
when he lied to the entire nation.
See, Cleveland during his presidency
found out that he had cancer in his fucking head.
He didn't want the world to know that he had cancer,
so he only told a group of about six people
that didn't include his vice president,
whose name was Gonzo Huggingstuff
because shut up, you're not gonna look it up.
Cleveland brought this special team of doctors
on a boat to perform this surgery at sea
so no one could possibly walk in on them.
The refreshingly honest president of the United States
staged a secret cancer removal surgery
over a holiday weekend on a boat
to hide his condition from everyone.
The doctors even went in through the mouth
so as not to leave scars and also to make
the whole thing just as gross as possible.
If a small team of professionals secretly breaking
into the mouth of a president to remove face cancer
isn't the plot of an Ocean's 11-esque heist movie,
I don't know what is.
You know like Shame or Filth or Choke.
One of those movies.
Kennedy was a president for some amount of time
during which I assume many interesting things happened,
but what I'm here to talk to you all about today
is boning of which Kennedy did lots.
John the F stands for what you'd happily
let him do to your girlfriend Kennedy
admitted to friends that he could not be satisfied
if he didn't have sex at least three times a day,
and told the prime minister of the UK
that if he went more than three days
without having sex, he would get terrible headaches
which were that my problem, my head
would literally burst into aneurysms
all the, just all the time.
His list of sexual exploits included Marilyn Monroe,
Jayne Mansfield, Angie Dickinson, Belinda Balkan
and if you happen to have a grandmother
who worked within five miles of the White House
during Kennedy's administration,
I'm very sorry to be the one to tell you this
but yes, her too, your grandmother.
There's nothing personal, he was just a handsome robot
that needed a vagina to fuel his engines
and your grandma was like I have some vagina.
And he was like beep.
But this fake movie isn't about sex robots,
though shotgun that idea.
It's about a sex addict.
There are plenty of movies that show Kennedy the hero,
or Kennedy the complicated man,
or Kennedy the guy who got shot real bad.
But I want a gritty, dirty Kennedy
like Michael Fassbender in Shame or James McAvoy in Filth.
Just a crazy, self-destructive Kennedy
stumbling around the country
all braggadocio and dick swagger.
Maybe get Jon Hamm to do it?
(jazz music)
Whoa, that's way too long of a title.
Daniel make a note, edit the title card
down to something usable before you film this thing.
Oh, fuck I already read that off a teleprompter.
I'm an idiot.
We can fix that in post right?
I'm an idiot.
Awesome, great, thank you.
Anyway, Chester A. Arthur.
Brief history lesson.
In 1860s America all the real power
went to what was known as political machines.
Corrupt, behind the scenes organizations
responsible for all the sorts of crimes
that white people with money get to commit.
The New York Customs House
was the most powerful of these machines.
It collected tariffs on just about everything
that came into America, which it could then
use to financially back the
presidential candidate of its choice.
Meaning that presidents were relying
on maintaining a good relationship with political machines.
People vote sure, but the machines
could actually make someone president,
and Arthur was one of the three people
who ran the New York Customs House
and enjoyed lots of money, unchecked power,
and slimy handshakes for years
until president Rutherford fired him.
You know, for crimes.
Arthur, hoping to regain some of that prestige
and influence, handshook his way
into being the Republican nominee for vice president
under James Garfield.
Then Garfield got shot, on a Monday I bet,
and Arthur became president
and here's where it gets cool.
Given Arthur's past, you'd assume
that he would keep doing business as usual
and be the most corrupt president ever,
perpetuating and strengthening
the power of the political machines
that for so long lined his pockets, but no!
Arthur used his knowledge of the
corrupt, political machines to destroy them.
All of his former shitty friends,
the people who made him so powerful in the first place?
He systematically took them down.
He completely defamed them like only he,
as a former insider, could do.
It's like Denzel Washington in American Gangster
helping Russell Crowe take down
New York's worst drug dealers
and also like Frank Lucas in Real Life I guess.
If you don't think Martin Scorsese could make
an interesting miniseries about Chester A. Arthur's
rise to corrupt power, fall from corrupt power,
rise to legitimate power to undo all of his past wrongs
then you, you're a bad person, you're wrong.
Miniseries would be awesome.
Get DiCaprio all fat and mutton choppy,
let him do a funny voice.
It'll be great.
(jazz music)
Spoiler alert, Herbert Hoover died.
I guess that shouldn't be a spoiler alert technically
but Hoover died before anyone thought he died.
Like he was a sick child and a doctor said
this kid's fucking dead,
and his parents were like that's fair
so they put pennies on his eyes
and covered him with a sheet which was custom back then
for when people died, and declared him dead
which is custom still today.
The only problem was that Hoover was super still alive.
A few hours before his parents
were probably going to bury him,
Hoover opened his eyes and was like damn it,
I was just sick for a little bit,
cool it I'm two, I'll be fine!
Which of course was an understatement.
Once he fake died as a child,
Hoover went on to absolutely crush the world.
His parents died for real a few years
after Hoover died for pretend
and Hoover, alone at nine years old,
fell in with a gang of young Indian boys
who taught him how to hunt and fight
and use a bow and arrow.
He paid for his own education through various odd jobs
and when he graduated college,
made a stupid amount of money in gold
which he turned into an even stupider
amount of money in white people stuff.
Which he turned into food and supplies
for World War I soldiers.
He wasn't employed by the army or the government mind you,
he was just like hey I heard you guys like huge guns.
I've got some money, here you go.
Pay me back or don't, whatever.
Hoovah Hoov!
His favorite sport was a game called Hooverball,
which is like volleyball except instead of using
a soft, bouncy volleyball they use a 10 pound medicine ball
described by a friend as "more strenuous
"than either boxing or wrestling or football."
Hooverball was the preferred sport among fearless
once dead badasses and exclusively no one else.
The Hoover movie that I want to see
doesn't even touch on his presidency.
I'd pay any amount of money to watch this little Hoover kid
learn to fight and survive in the wild,
this first act of Hunger Games and shit all day.
Then pick himself up by his bootstraps and make a fortune
while also throwing 10 pound balls at his buddies.
Why hasn't that movie been made yet?
We had a J. Edgar Hoover movie first?
Horseshit.
Clint Eastwood, that's horseshit I say.
Is anyone even listening to me?
(upbeat music)
Hi I'm the internet's Daniel O'Brien from just seconds ago.
If you enjoyed that video and you'd like
to learn more about presidents, go to your local library
or go to your even localer computer
and order my book, How to Fight Presidents
at howtofightpresidents.com.
It's a book and I wrote it
and it's got presidents and stuff in it.
A lot of the same jokes that you just heard,
but this time you have to read them so thanks!
- Roll sound!
Roll cameras and...