It's Nothing To Be Embarrassed About

Republican presidential candidate Tommy Thompson apologized yesterday, telling reporters that the reason he mistakenly expressed support for the right of an employer to fire a gay worker at a May 3 GOP debate was because he couldn't hear, didn't feel good and had to pee. While these excuses hit some observers as lame, vaguely unpresidential and unbelievably icky, supporters of the former Health and Human Services Secretary say this line of defense wasn't without precedent. According to presidential historians, Warren G. Harding blamed the Teapot Dome Scandal on a worrisome anal discharge, Herbert Hoover pointed to painful and bloody hemorrhoids as causing the Great Depression, while Richard Nixon is said to have blamed Watergate on a combination of flatulence, bad breath and a persistently itchy scrotum.

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