NEWS: True Stories by Rob Corddry: Remembering the Real Gerald Ford

POLITICS: True Stories by Rob Corddry: Remembering the Real Gerald Ford

What I remember most about my time in the Ford Administration are the cutthroat games of Boggle. Gerry had a reputation for being a jock but I remember him as a guy with an affinity for spatial relationships, mostly as it pertains to wooden cubes with letters painted on them. The contests would sometimes last late into the night and were most often fueled by cigars and mid-grade cognac. His talent did not translate to Scrabble at which he was an impossible failure. Nor was he very good at crossword puzzles. “Three different things Bobby!” he’d say to me between sips of Hennessey. “Life ain’t about words! It’s about the lack of space between letters!” This philosophy carried him through 865 of the most tumultuous days in our nation’s history if you don’t count Michael Jordan’s baseball career.

If nothing else, Gerald Ford’s ascendancy to our land’s highest office proves that anyone can become president. You don’t even have to be elected. I was there the day Ford made that secret deal with Nixon and I was present when Al Haig told Ford to pardon the former president or he would “find himself governing the land of my foot in your ass.” Haig had a way with words that usually included his feet and someone else’s body holes. He stayed on as Ford’s Chief of Staff and spent the remainder of his time in office removing both of his feet from Vietnam’s rectum.

I was Gerald Ford's Assistant to the Second Assistant Joke Writer and one of the new guys. Most of his Laff-Staff had been retained from Nixon’s gang but Kissinger suggested Ford hire some “fresh meat.” Michael Ian Black and I were plucked right out of The Lampoon: two fresh-faced Harvard punks bent on changing the world one chuckle at a time. We had our work cut out for us though. A young comic named Chevy Chase, a rival of ours, was pratfalling his way to a Percocet addiction a few hundred miles to the north. No one fell quite as satirically as Chevy Chase and our staff worked weekends trying to counter his attacks. It was my idea that Gerry would start stumbling verbally rather than literally to take the heat off of his notorious clumsiness. Remember “I watch baseball on the radio”? How about “Things are more like today than they have ever been before.” Those were mine. Mike Black suggested that Ford just stop falling down and everyone laughed heartily, especially Rumsfeld (remember him?), but I think Mike was serious. You never can tell with that guy.

When I recall Gerald Ford the man...well...Gerry was REAL, you know? He played golf. He liked parades. He ate pancakes at almost every meal. He liked amateur porn, not that “airbrushed shit” (though Heff was a frequent confidante of his). He used to demonstrate wrestling moves on his younger and more lithe staffers. He was doughy but strong. And he had calf muscles like Popeye’s forearms except without the gay navy tattoos.

Ford and I just got along. We spoke the same language. We were both college football stars. We were both Eagle Scouts. Neither of us had ever date-raped anyone. It was at the signing of the Helsinki Accords that Ford told me to call him Gerry. He and Caspar Weinberger were taking pulls off a flask of Schnapps when he caught my eye. Before that day I was just the guy in the too-big suit with the thin mustache who’d written, “I’m a Ford not a Lincoln!” He motioned for me to come over and handed me the flask. “This’ll put hair on your pubes!” he said. I laughed, not expecting such a sophisticated turn of phrase from a former jock. “You play Boggle, Mike?”
“Rob,” I said, regretting my correction immediately.
“Whatever. We’re playing back at the hotel. You shake?” That was his euphemism for playing Boggle.
“Yeah! I mean, sure, whatever.”
He and Caspar laughed at my forced nonchalance.
“Eleven o’clock. High stakes.” With that he went over to talk to Jacques Chirac (remember him?). I found out later that a jealous Caspar Weinberger had put a sign on my back that read "potkaista we” which is “kick me” in Finnish. Notice I’m not eulogizing that douche.

Ford wasn’t a popular president. He was doomed from the start, having not been elected to begin with and pardoning Nixon was perhaps an unwise first official act. The aforementioned Helsinki Accords were also not popular. Remember John Lennon’s famous protest ballad “Helsinki is not alright with me”? Then there was the infamous New York Daily News headline “Ford to City: Drop Dead.” If I remember correctly his actual quote was, “You can tell Abe Beame to suck his own cock until his spine shatters.” We were up until the wee hours tweaking that one.

But The Ford Administration saw its share of successes as well. It was Ford who helped Canada become a member of the G7. He also saw to it that the Swine Flu pandemic would kill no more than just a few people.* Historians also tend to forget that Gerry managed to live through two assassination attempts. That’s one more than their beloved Reagan. Most memorably Gerald Ford’s administration saw the final withdrawal of American personnel from Vietnam in “Operation Frequent Wind.” That moniker was mine.

In 1976 Jimmy Carter won 50.1% of the electoral vote, effectively ending my political joke-writing career. I floundered around for a few years, ghost writing for Mad Magazine’s Dave Berg and, at the height of my alcoholism, penning racist cartoons for Hustler. I cleaned up, got sober a few times and eventually found The Daily Show after bumming around New York’s improv-poetry scene.

But I’ll never forget my formative years spent writing jokes around that large oval table, the Boggle pod always within arms reach. And I’ll never forget the guy who gave me my first shot. He was a large, somewhat oafish galoot named Gerry. He was my benefactor. He was my President. He was my friend. We’ll miss you Ger’.


*Editors note: The Ford-approved Swine Flu vaccine killed twenty-five people, twenty-four more than swine flu itself.

Rob Corddry is an actor. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife and daughter.

I'm going to get this tattooed on my chest in Olde English letters.

priceless

Thank Gawd!! I was wondering where the holiday funny was.

Poor Gerry! The most nearly harmless of American presidents in the second half of the 20th century, and you still have to have a go at him. Why not vent some of your satirical spleen upon the demonstrably mad Bushes, the crooks Johnson and Nixon, the cretins Eisenhower Reagan and Carter, the willy-propelled Clinton and Kennedy etc.

Why is it that the world's most populous and prosperous democracy elects such feeble specimens of humanity to its highest office?

That brought a single tear to my eye. Beautiful.

Johnson is disliked for a few odd reasons, being crooked has never been one I've heard much on. The worst things have hung around his neck were Vietnam if you're on the left (or if you're on the right and actually realize it was a mistake, so as to shift any blame Nixon had for that the guy who started it), and the "War on Poverty" if you're on the right.

Just about EVERYONE has been happy with him twisting arms in Congress to get civil rights legislation passed. Democrats because it was the right thing to do and because it took black votes away from what once was "the party of Lincoln." Republicans because it handed them the white southern redneck racist vote within ten to twenty years.

Ummm...salamiplus (if that is your real name)...first off, we're not the world's most populous democracy...that'd be your old colonial buddy, India.

And, secondly, we didn't elect Mr. Ford to the highest office. We didn't even elect Ford to our second-highest office. No...the only people that ever elected Mr. Ford were the voters living around Grand Rapids, Michigan.

And, of course, his buddies in the House of Representatives, sanctioning his promotion to VP once Spiro Agnew had to resign in '73.

As for knocking him, I agree he was a pretty good guy...but he did pardon Nixon and, for no apparent reason, give ample stature to Don Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney.

So he's on the hook for that, eh?

Bobert, I love you.

2007 begins as it was prophesized in the great book--with a Caspar Weinberger joke. Gold, baby, gold.

fangoddamntastic.

I spent three hours trapped in a United Airlines Red Carpet club with the charming Mr. Ford and his lifetime secret service attachments. Including "Gerry" and his 2 "friends, there were 5 of us waiting out a weather delay. Without provocation, he saddled up to the bar next to me and broke into conversation that was at once comfortable and friendly. We talked for about 40 minutes milking bad liquor. I boarded my plane thinking about how different he was from the image on television; bright, articulate, clear thinking, and warm hearted. Maybe that explains why he couldn't be elected.

i do believe this was the best article yet.

*anxiously awaits next week*

Oh, this one was great, thanks.
hahaa.

I like the creativity.
It warms the loins.

If Ford proved that anyone can become president, then George W proves that an inanimate object can become president.

good stuff

In spite of the fact that I'm too young and politically illiterate to understand most of the jokes, they are still funny. I'm impressed.

thank you Rob.

Awesome.