Thursday, January 04, 2007

Today's Moment of Irony

  • Gerald Ford was one of the most athletically inclined presidents the U.S. has ever had.
  • He had a few well-publicized moments of clumsiness.
  • These moments were parodied on Saturday Night Live by Chevy Chase with dramatic pratfalls.
  • Triggered by the frequency and severity of some of these pratfalls, Chevy Chase developed chronic pain from a degenerative disc disease.
  • He was prescribed painkillers to help with the pain, and eventually became addicted to them.
  • To overcome his addiction, he checked himself into the...that's right, you guessed it:

The Betty Ford Clinic.

True story.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

what no Saddam ironies...(is that a word)

ok ok anonymous1, out!

Scott said...

Now that's funny.

(your post, not the above comment)

thirdfuerst said...

Where did you hear of this??

Interesting...and also interesting is how un-funny (that's not a word, either...) Chevy Chase became after he left the clinic.

LutheranHusker said...

ThirdFuerst,

I actually heard one of the network "talking heads" discussing this during the Gerald Ford funeral coverage. To make sure I had heard correctly, I checked some AP stories online, as well as Wikipedia. All the facts are there, though nobody saw fit to put them all together in a piece of irony (at least nobody I saw).

And you're right, Chevy Chase is the most un-funny formerly funny person I can think of.