Why did the NYT crossword clue "WASP" as "Martin Van Buren was the first president who wasn't one"?

It's so absurd! Rex Parker freaks out:

What a no-good, terrible, confusing, stupid clue for a perfectly good insect. Does WASP mean "white Anglo-Saxon Protestant" here? If so ... WTF? No one used that term in the 19th century, so ... I mean, "inapt" doesn't even begin to cut it. I can only guess that this is the information at play in the non-WASP designation here:

Martin Van Buren was born on December 5, 1782, in the village of Kinderhook, New York about 20 miles (32 km) south of Albany on the Hudson River. Van Buren was the first President not born a British subject, or even of British ancestry. He was a descendant of Cornelis Maessen of the village of Buurmalsen, near the town of Buren in the Netherlands, who had come to North America in 1631 and purchased a plot of land on Manhattan Island; his son Martin Cornelisen took the surname Van Buren. (wikipedia)

No, wait, forget who knows or cares—even if you knew and cared, in what universe do you take your knowing and caring and turn it into a clue for, of all things, WASP, which is a pretty generic, and in my experience, at least mildly pejorative, term? Baffling. That was at 1-Across ... and the sourness never went away....

In the comments — this cracked me up — evil doug remembers the old "Seinfeld" dialogue:

KRAMER: Alright, so there I am at Lorenzo's - loading up my slice at the fixin's bar.. garlic and what-not... mmmm - and I see this guy over at the pizza boxes giving me the stink-eye. So I give him the crook-eye back, you know...Then, I notice that he's not alone! I'm taking on the entire Van Buren Boys!

JERRY: The Van Buren Boys? There's a street gang named after President Martin Van Buren?

KRAMER: Oh yeah, and they're just as mean as he was!

ADDED: Did you know that Martin Van Buren is the only U.S. President who did not have English as his first language? He was a native speaker of Dutch. I stumbled into that as I was retroactively adding my new tag "Van Buren" to old posts. I encountered this post from 2014 quoting John McWhorter as saying:

"In today’s America, to not be able to get down, or at least pretend to, is to be inarticulate. We live in a distinctly swaggery age. Obama, then, speaks a larger English than Romney – or Reagan, or Kennedy. It complements the fact that he is the first president since Martin Van Buren, who grew up speaking Dutch and broke into it when angry, to be raised in a household where more than just English was spoken. It’s stupid enough that Obama has to downplay his command of Indonesian to avoid looking like a Muslim; must we jump him for using the Black English spice kit?"

Does Obama speak Indonesian? CBS quoted him in July 2008 as saying: "I don't speak a foreign language. It's embarrassing!" Was he lying? This chart lists him as having "partial mastery" of Indonesian (and, interestingly, shows that we haven't had a President who was fluent in a foreign language since FDR).

"You know how Trump is always saying inappropriate and violent-sounding things?"

"Most people see that type of language as offensive and even dangerous. The exception is people who grew up in New York. We see it as 'talking.'" 

ADDED: Can we have a President from New York City? "New York" in the quote above, means New York City. People from NYC say "New York State" when they mean the state. We've had some Presidents from New York State already. But were they from NYC?

1. Martin Van Buren. No. He was from Kinderhook, New York, which is near Albany.

2. Millard Fillmore. No. He was from the Finger Lakes region.

3. Grover Cleveland. No. Born in New Jersey, some childhood time in upstate New York, and an upstate New York career, including mayor of Buffalo.

4. Chester A. Arthur. Not really. Born in Vermont, later lived in lots of different New York towns — York, Perry, Greenwich, Lansingburgh, Schenectady, and Hoosick. "The family's frequent moves later spawned accusations that Chester Arthur was not a native-born citizen of the United States." Eventually practiced law in NYC.

5. Franklin D. Roosevelt. Eh. He was born in the Hudson Valley town of Hyde Park, but he subsequently lived in NYC, in a high-society setting.

6. Theodore Roosevelt. Yes! Born on East 20th Street in New York City. What did he sound like? Listen:

All the Presidents' Drinks.

Excerpts:

John Adams. Adams loved alcohol, starting almost every morning with a hard cider. Then porter beer, rum and copious amounts of Madeira....

Martin Van Buren. Drank so much whiskey that it earned him a nickname, “Blue Whiskey Van.” He also enjoyed something called Schiedam (a gin-like Dutch specialty unique to New York’s Hudson River Valley)....

Millard Fillmore. Fillmore rarely drank wine or served it to others. However, this lightweight once admitted to sampling enough old Madeira that he was “slightly fuddled.”...

Chester A. Arthur. When a representative of the Temperance movement tried to pressure Arthur into a no-liquor policy in the White House, he thundered: “Madam, I may be the president of the United States, but what I do with my private life is my own damned business!”...

"In today’s America, to not be able to get down, or at least pretend to, is to be inarticulate. We live in a distinctly swaggery age."

"Obama, then, speaks a larger English than Romney – or Reagan, or Kennedy. It complements the fact that he is the first president since Martin Van Buren, who grew up speaking Dutch and broke into it when angry, to be raised in a household where more than just English was spoken. It’s stupid enough that Obama has to downplay his command of Indonesian to avoid looking like a Muslim; must we jump him for using the Black English spice kit?"

Says John McWhorter.