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Is The Bald Eagle The Best We Can Do?
Some hairless (and airless) musings
By Ed Goldman
I found it courageous when President Joe Biden signed legislation making the bald eagle America’s Official National Bird. After all, Lame Duck Joe was the last guy on the planet I’d have expected to celebrate anything that’s bald since Biden so clearly didn’t want to be that he underwent one or more hair transplants in the course of his career. (The finished product seems highly dependent on favorable indoor lighting, but that’s another story).
The runner-up for America’s O.N.B. was neither the comb-over eagle nor the weave eagle. The obvious-rug eagle also failed to return my calls by deadline.
Eagletism
Meanwhile, the spokesperson for both the naked mole-rat and Mexican hairless dog declined to comment on his clients’ disappointment, though he did snort, “Look, they’re not birds. Nobody even approached them about this. What a stupid question. I’d like to see your manager.”
Before we go much further, we turn now for perspective to our fellow journalists and close personal friends at CBS News: “The bald eagle is emblematic of America,” it instructs us, perhaps unintentionally providing fodder for CBS being called both “the tiffany network” and “the pompous network.”
The lecture continues: “It’s on coins and bills, graces the Great Seal and inspired conservation efforts that brought the species back from the brink of extinction. Though it was first used as the national symbol more than 240 years ago, Congress had never made it official.” But on this past Christmas Eve, Biden signed the legislation declaring the bald eagle our O.N.B.
First, let’s not be surprised that the guy who delayed his exit from the Presidential campaign until a moment before the ballots were printed wasn’t exactly in a rush to codify the bald eagle’s status. Had he made an impulsive decision to do it 240 years or even a few months ago, it would have taken him quite a while to make his way to the signing desk—and, yes, to remember why it was that he’d made his way to the signing desk.
To be fair, I have moments like that, though they mostly involve forgetting why I walked into my scrapbooking room. The confusion is compounded by my not having a scrapbooking room nor having ever scrapbooked.
Let’s consider the voices of those who were ignored—which is to say, other follicle-challenged creatures who expressed disappointment at not being approached by whichever government body goes around conveying “Official National Whatever” status on their species.
For example, the aforementioned naked mole-rat and Mexican hairless dog were bypassed even for an Official National Rodent or Official National Annoying Pet nod. And though the Mexican hairless dog graciously acknowledged that his illegal-alien status probably took him out of the running, both the mole-rat and dog said that nobody so much as sent them a text or otherwise messengered them to solicit their participation. “It would have been an honor to just be nominated,” the mole-rat wrote on his Instagram account.
Is this great nation selective about which bald beings it honors? What about chimps and stump-tailed macaques, who lose their hair via some form of critter-pattern baldness? Or whales, dolphins and porpoises, all of whom are born without pompadours?
Is it mere coincidence that noted cue-ball Benjamin Franklin never became president but ol’ lush-locks Thomas Jefferson did? Can it really be that former General Dwight David Eisenhower was our only bald chief executive, commander of the armed forces, leader of the free world and guy who actually married a woman named Mamie whose last name wasn’t Van Doren? (As of this writing, she’s 93 years old, by the way. And still doesn’t wear a toupee.)
The Russians seem to have a different pro-baldness take on leadership. Consider the late chrome-dome Nikita Khrushchev and the evidently eternal Lex Luthor-wannabe Vladimir Putin. Did you notice how, a few decades ago, they threw hairy old Leonid Brezhnev under the bus, possibly figuratively? Well, of course. He looked like the werewolf. His hairline started at the center of his eyebrows then worked their way up his forehead, across his scalp and down his back.
At least in North Korea they seem to respect having a leader, Kim Jong Un, who has a full head of hair. Admittedly, the fact that he can also have you killed for so much as burping during a parade in his honor may have something to do with his being held in such esteem. I’m going to give this some more thought in my daily Rogaine shower.
Don’t forget! A new Goldman State Podcast drops every Friday!
Ed Goldman's column appears almost every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. A former daily columnist for the Sacramento Business Journal, as well as monthly columnist for Sacramento Magazine and Comstock’s Business Magazine, he’s the author of five books, two plays and one musical (so far).