© 2011 Gordon Nary and Tyler Stokes
October 01
James Earl
Carter's
Birthday
Jimmy Carter may well be more remembered as a great humanitarian than as the
thirty-ninth president of the
United States. His election was, in the opinion of many, due to then
President Gerald Ford's poor sense of geography. Just a few weeks before
the election, Ford stated that there was “no Soviet domination” in
Eastern Europe.
Initially a peanut farmer from Plains, Georgia, Jimmy served as
president from January 20, 1977 to January 20, 1981 and was noted for
his championing human rights throughout the world.. He is also credited for
the Panama Canal treaties, the Camp David Accords with historic: the
return of the Sinai to Egypt, the treaty of
peace between Egypt and Israel, the SALT II treaty with the Soviet Union,
and the establishment of US diplomatic relations with the China.
However, Jimmy'sf ailures significantly outweighed his achievements. His
policies led to the 1979
takeover of the American embassy in Iran and holding of hostages by Iranian
students, an unsuccessful rescue attempt of the hostages,
the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, the
war between
Iran and
Iraq, and the worst
fuel shortages that the United States ever experienced.
Jimmy was also an ultra-religious president who
preached regularly at the First Baptist Church in Washington DC and even
encouraged federal employees to marry their significant others so they would
stop "living in sin." Jimmy sometimes seemed preoccupied with sin. In a
1976 interview in Playboy , he admitted to having "lusted in his
heart" after a few women from time to time which he considered
equivalent to cheating on his wife.
Jimmy also made news prior to his presidency when he and others at a 1969 Lion's Club
meeting in Leary Georgiareported seeing a UFO which he reported to the International
UFO Bureau.
However, our favorite memory of Jimmy is the "killer rabbit"
incident. While on a fishing trip in Georgia, Jimmy told his staff about bn
a rabbit being chased by hounds "jumped in the water and swam toward my
boat. When he got almost there, I splashed some water with a paddle." His
staff doubted the story sin insisting that rabbits couldn't swim, or that
they would attach human beings. However, the incident was captured by a
White House photographer. The story was picked up by The Washington Post,
in a front pages story titled The story "President Attacked by Rabbit"
In Press Secretary Powell's 1986 book The Other Side of the Story, he recounted the story as follows:
“Upon closer inspection, the animal turned out to be a rabbit. Not one of your cutesy, Easter Bunny-type rabbits, but one of those big splay-footed things that we called swamp rabbits when I was growing up."“The animal was clearly in distress, or perhaps berserk. The President confessed to having had limited experience with enraged rabbits. He was unable to reach a definite conclusion about its state of mind. What was obvious, however, was that this large, wet animal, making strange hissing noises and gnashing its teeth, was intent upon climbing into the Presidential boat.”
So even though there are many favorite peanut
recipies by the Carter family that we could have chosen to feature on
Jimmy's birthday, we suggest celebrating with bunny burgers and to follow
the immortal words of Mrs Beeton, the 19th century cookbook author whose
instructions begin with "First catch your rabbit". An appropriate film to
watch while munching on your bunny burgers is Who
Framed Roger Rabbit (1989).