Teddy Roosevelt, the last American President who was a true badass, turns 150

Since TR turned 150 this year, I thought it only prudent before the annum was out to commemorate his pure, unadulterated, badass-ness on the Monstro blog. While the Monstro is currently the most badass thing in America, it is not as badass as TR was, not by a long shot. Therefore it is only fitting that the Monstro blog pay tribute to its predecessor-in-awesome.

TR was a badass in every regard from a young age. After spending his childhood pummeling bullies, he threw his metaphorical haymaker at his studies and went to Harvard, where he won the Harvard boxing championship his senior year by bloodying nerds until they cried uncle. His doctor warned him that he had a heart condition and should stop fighting and pursue a more sedentary lifestyle. TR responded by heading for North Dakota to ride, rope, and hunt every beast in God's creation. Badass. See picture at left.

After a few years roaming the plains (and keep in mind, this is during the 1880s when the West was very Wild) he headed back East to pursue politics and public life. Not by kissing babies mind you, but by killing motherfuckers who got in the way of the Red White and Blue. TR founded his own cavalry brigade (the famous Rough Riders - what a badass name) and recruited every badass friend of his to fight in it. He declared himself a Colonel in command of the regiment and headed off for Cuba to fight the Spaniards in the Spanish America war. This is the equivalent of me rounding up all my guns, calling up the Monstro bros and saying "I'm heading for Iraq pseudo-independently of the U.S. military to kill some non-American motherfuckers; and by the way, I'm your leader. Who's with me?!" And was he all talk? NO. He led a freakin' charge and took San Juan Hill as the only surviving officer, earning him the Medal of Honor (still the only President to get it - not even Washington, Grant, Taylor, or Ike got the MoH). BAD.....ASS!!!

Upon returning to the States he became President William McKinley's VP at the relatively young age of 42. When McKinley pussied out and died from something as trivial as a pistol bullet, TR became President and rocked that office hard for the next 8 years. He did cool shit all the time like saying badass things ("Walk softly and carry a big stick") and hiking around with John Muir while establishing the National Park and National Forest systems and the Forest Service to keep vast parts of wild America badass for future generations (who sadly would rather just sit at home and watch TV anyway - pussies). He negotiated a peaceful ending to the Russo-Japanese war by threatening to personally slap the leaders of each country like the bitches they were (it is a little known fact that TR is the source of the famous rap lyric "if you act like a bitch / you get slapped like a bitch") and won the freakin' Nobel Peace Prize for doing so - the first American President to get it. He took burgeoning American Imperialism to new heights with war in the Philippines and the ordered the commissioning of The Great White Fleet, a massive squadron of new, state-of-the-art battleships meant to scare the piss out of any country who might think of crossing TR's United States. He had many presidential firsts, all of which were pretty badass: he was the first president to ride in a car (and also consequently the first one to race from a stoplight and flip off a cop - right to the cop's face), the first one to travel outside the US, the first one to be submerged in a submarine, and - I kid you not - the first one to study JUDO and JUJITSU. He went skinny dipping in the Potomac river in the winter. He was the most voracious reader since Jefferson and read several books a day, sometimes in different languages. He also started work on the Panama Canal; see picture below. BTW, that is an actual picture, not an illustration: TR literally grew to 600ft tall and shoveled a trench between the continents. He then returned to normal size and went back to being the most badass president ever.



After he left the White House in 1909 because he'd already done all the badass things a president at the time could do, he did what any badass would do: go on safari to Africa and kill a shitload of large, often dangerous animals to donate their stuffed carcasses to the Smithsonian museum. In all he personally killed over 11,000 "specimens," over 500 of them big game animals like elephants, hippos, and the uber-endangered Northern White Rhino (the last male Northern White Rhino in existence is here at the San Diego Zoo, BTW). It took the Smithsonian YEARS just to mount all the beasts. See the picture below with TR standing over a lifeless elephant he just killed with what looks like an elephant gun? Look closer - it's not an elephant gun at all, it's a fucking club. That's what he was talking about when he said to carry a big stick - he actually meant you might need to dispatch an elephant at any moment and a club was the most badass method of doing so. What else would you expect from a badass motherfucker like TR?



In perhaps his most incredible feat of badass-ness, TR holds the title of most badass 'staring death in the face' example of any president, period. In 1912 after he founded his own political party so he could be president again (the Bull Moose Party, so named because TR declared he was as strong as a bull moose) he went around the country campaigning and at a stop in Wisconsin an assassin approached him and shot him once in the chest at point-blank range. TR literally punched the man in the face, took his gun from him, and pistol whipped him to the ground before the Secret Service could even get there. The bullet went through a glasses case in his shirt pocket and a 50 page copy of his speech for the campaign stop, slowing it down and allowing it to ONLY penetrate three inches into his chest muscle. As an experienced badass hunter and anatomist, TR correctly concluded that since he wasn't coughing blood the bullet had not completely penetrated to his lung, and thus declined to go to the hospital immediately. Instead, he delivered his scheduled speech with blood seeping into his shirt. He spoke for 90 MINUTES WITH A FRICKIN' BULLET IN HIS CHEST. He opened the speech in front of the crowd with one of the most badass lines of his entire lire (and that's saying something): "Ladies and gentlemen, I don't know whether you're fully aware that I have just been shot. But fear not, it takes more than that to kill a Bull Moose." HOLY BADASS MOTHERFUCKING SHIT. How will a president ever top that? Answer: they won't. Ever. But points to Reagan for trying...

TR lost the election but continued to be a badass till his death a few years later. When WWI broke out he offered to raise and command a volunteer regiment like the Rough Riders again (in his 50s, no less), but Woodrow Wilson was a pussy-ass liberal and wouldn't allow it. A few years later TR went on an expedition to find the then-undiscovered source of a ~650 mile long previously un-navigated river in the Amazon rain forest, which he promptly renamed Rio Roosevelt (just like another historical badass, the Roman Emperor Constantine, conquered the city of Byzantium and renamed it Constantinople).

TR also became the impetus for the successful children's toy, the Teddy Bear, because of a famous incident when he refused to kill a trapped bear because it couldn't fight back. Often omitted from this story (because of its traumatizing effect on kids no doubt) is how it ended: TR tied one arm behind his back, released the bear from the trap, and then strangled it with one hand.

When Roosevelt died in 1919, a full 40 years after his boxing doctor told him to take it easy, he went peacefully in his sleep, because that was the only way Death could sneak up on him. In fact, after hearing the news Woodrow Wilson's Vice President Thomas R. Marshall remarked: "Death had to take Roosevelt sleeping, for if he had been awake, there would have been a fight."

So Happy 150th Birthday Teddy, you badass.