About Me

My photo
Jack is a graduate of Rutgers University where he majored in history. His career in the life and health insurance industry involved medical risk selection and brokerage management. Retired in Florida for over two decades after many years in NJ and NY, he occasionally writes, paints, plays poker, participates in play readings and is catching up on Shakespeare, Melville and Joyce, etc.

Saturday, May 1, 2010

Pogonotrophy in the White House

Until the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln as our sixteenth President, every one of our Chief Executives had been clean-shaven without moustache nor beard. From Lincoln on, however, with the exception of Andrew Johnson and William McKinley, all of our Presidents up until the election of Woodrow Wilson in 1912 displayed facial hair of some kind. Apparently, that was the style in the last part of the nineteenth century. Since Wilson, however, all of our Presidents have been clean-shaven, reverting to the pre-Lincoln fashion. Noting the number of beards and moustaches seen nowadays though, I wonder how long it will be before we have a President who once again practices pogonotrophy in the White House (and that ain’t a dirty word).

No comments: