Theodore Rex

by Edmund Morris

Washington’s aloofness precluded friendly chat, as did Edith Roosevelt’s sweet uninterest in anyone—black or white—who was not, as she put it, “de nôtre monde.”

How in the fuck do you insist on believing that this woman made a good political wife. Alice Lee would've played attentive hostess to anyone TR invited!

In Charleston, South Carolina, Senator Benjamin R. Tillman endorsed remedial genocide: “The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that nigger will necessitate our killing a thousand niggers in the South before they will learn their place again.”

Ffs man, it was just a meal. Dude's wife was even snooty and rude

Members of the President’s official party looked around anxiously for sources of entertainment. They saw only a library and an empty, dripping bandstand. “There are many one-horse towns on Long Island,” a reporter noted, “but it is doubtful if there is another as uninteresting as Oyster Bay.”

Lmao just wait until you've unpacked. TR will make sure you wish you had time or energy to be bored

He intended to put as much distance as possible between himself and White House staff.

Maybe the staff will survive the summer after all

Kodaks clicked—probably in vain, because with his swarthy face and dark gray eyes under a black fedora, the union leader was dark enough to defeat any exposure.

That's....that's not how that works

The Kaiser liked to dress up as Frederick; when he posed for photographs in his hero’s thigh-boots he revealed rather wide hips. Roosevelt, alive to any hint of effeminacy, understood that in negotiating with Wilhelm he must at all times remember the importance of show. It would be foolhardy to humiliate him in the Caribbean. The Kaiser was enough of a man to stand a tough, confidential message—and enough of a woman, presumably, to retreat if it could be made to look glamorous.

Dude what the fuck

Students at Columbia University debated a resolution “that President Roosevelt’s policy of appointing Negroes to offices in states where sentiment is opposed to it, is unwise.”

Literally no state *wasn't* opposed to it, idiot

nubile girls in white waved prettily,

Dude. Just because you're writing about an out dated white dude does not mean you have to mimic his misogyny and racism.

“On the fourth of March next I shall have served three and a half years, and this three and a half years constitutes my first term. The wise custom which limits the President to two terms regards the substance and not the form. Under no circumstances will I be a candidate for or accept another nomination.”

This is why you shouldn't write impulsive memos

Episcopalian, erudite, conservative, intensely private, and—when her serenity was threatened—a formidable adversary, Edith struck most strangers as snobbish. The impression was in part correct (Archie and Quentin had to research the antecedents of all their would-be friends) but caused mostly by her New England reserve. She did not consider herself superior, so much as separate from hoi polloi. In receiving lines, she let the President do the glad-handing, while she stood clutching a nosegay, smiling only slightly, her sapphire eyes cool. What they saw, they saw without mercy. Mediocrity bored her, as did class resentment. “If they had our brains,” she was wont to say of servants, “they’d have our place.”

She sounds like a lovely person

It was exchanges such as this that persuaded some men that Roosevelt was fiscally retarded.

Dude. Also, we are talking about a man who spent his way through his entire massive inheritance before he was 30 and was only saved by his wife putting him on an allowance. Of course he knows nothing about money