Practice English Speaking&Listening with: 4 U.S. Presidents Whose Lives Put Action Movies to Shame - Badassing Your Way Through History

(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...