The Remus Rodham Story
Netlore Archive: Viral message euphemistically summarizes the life and times of 'Remus Rodham,' supposedly the great-great uncle of former First Lady Hillary Clinton and a horse thief and train robber to boot.
Description: Viral joke
Circulating since: Oct. 2000 (this version)
Status: False (see details below)
Example:
Email contributed by R. Nelson, Nov. 2, 2000:
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Subject: High Profile |
Analysis: This joke had already been around the block umpteen times before Hillary Clinton's maiden name was inserted into the version above in 2000. We find a shorter, generic version of it, for example, in Fonda Baselt's The Sunny Side of Genealogy, published in 1988:
A family historian who was writing his family history was dismayed to find that an ancestor had been publicly hanged. In a moment of inspiration he wrote, "He died during a public ceremony, when the platform upon which he was standing collapsed beneath him."A slightly different rendition cropped up in a speech given by BYU religion professor Reed Benson in 1998:
I'm not like that chap some of you may have heard about who applied for a job and he came to the part on the application blank where it said, "Are your parents still living and if not how did they die?" Unfortunately this chap's father died as a result of a hanging because of a crime he'd committed. Of course the boy wasn't proud of it, but he'd been taught to tell the truth, and yet he was so embarrassed that finally he wrote these words in on the application blank. He said, "My father was attending a public function when the platform on which he was standing collapsed."An even more elaborate version of the joke posted online in 1999 — featuring train robbing, horse thievery, and the first name "Remus" — was the probable template for "Remus Rodham."
As one would expect given that it lampoons the sanitization of family history, the anecdote is very popular in genealogical circles. In fact, the wordplay follows the same pattern as that found in this joke, which dates back to the 1920s (if not earlier):
"I've got a pretty distasteful job before me," remarked the genealogist. "Mrs. Newrich employed me to look up her family tree, and I've got to inform her that one of her relatives was electrocuted."Politicians being among the most infamous practitioners of verbal deception, it was inevitable that certain of them would end up the butt of this joke. Soon after "Remus Rodham" began circulating in October 2000, a "Gunther Gore" version appeared, only to be superceded by a cleverer "Chadsworth Gore" variant with the added tag line, "And thus passed the very first hanging Chad" (an allusion to the Florida voting machine scandal of the 2000 presidential election).
"Oh, don't worry about that!" said his friend. "Just write that he 'occupied the chair of applied electricity at one of our public institutions.'"
It was only a matter of time before we heard precisely the same tale told of a ne'er-do-well by the name of "Chadsworth Bush."
What goes around comes around.
Updates:
• The Remus Cheney Story (2007)
• The Remus Reid Story (2009)
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Last updated: 01/10/09
