Help me make a list of people who have been imitated by a President of the United States.

The previous post has video of Harry Truman doing an imitation of the radio commentator H.V. Kaltenborn. And I can remember Barack Obama imitating Al Green. Or maybe that shouldn't count. He was just doing his best at singing "Let's Stay Together." Oh, I see that later he joked: "Tonight, I am speaking not just as a President, but as one of America's best-known Al Green impersonators." Obama also imitated the Seahawks' Richard Sherman: "I'm the best President in the game!"

I couldn't think of anything else. I googled people who have been imitated by presidents, and the first hit was a NYT pieced called "The Spirit of the President. Let it be Imitated." which I misread as promising for my list-making purpose. Turned out it was from November 12, 1864. Abraham Lincoln had called upon "all having a common interest [to] reunite in a common effort to save our common country," and the NYT editors recommended an imitation of his "forbearing and generous spirit." That's an immensely interesting detour, profound when I'm being lightweight. I'm only mentioning it because it's my way to blog about the process of blogging, and today, especially, has been a day of blogging details.

I'm genuinely trying to make a a list of people who have been imitated by a President of the United States.

Under the headline "Richard Sherman Is Better At Life Than You," Ta-Nehisi Coates says watching football is, for him, "sort of like seeing your ex-wife for coffee."

I'm interested in the Richard Sherman story. I blogged about it yesterday — here (including in the comments) — and I was relatively sympathetic to Sherman, and that was before I heard anyone saying anything in his favor or what Sherman himself wrote the next day.

What I want to talk about is Coates forefronting his ex-wife like that. He begins:

I sat down and watched two football games yesterday for the first time in a couple of years. It was sort of like seeing your ex-wife for coffee. 

Your ex-wife. I didn't take that to mean his ex-wife. He said "your," not "my," and I took the "your" to refer vaguely to the reader's experience. I didn't even stop — as I did in my younger years — to rankle at the presumption that the reader is male. (If I did stop to think about presumptions these days I'd have to concede that the writer might also have pictured female readers who had been married to other females and, despite the recency of gay marriage, had divorced.)

After quoting Sherman saying "I'm intelligent enough and capable enough to understand that you are an ignorant, pompous, egotistical cretin....I am going to crush you on here in front of everybody because I am tired of hearing about it," Coates concludes his column:

Anyway, it was good to see the ex-wife again. It was also good to remember why I left.

That last link goes to an article about football injuries, so what are we to think? Why the gratuitous reference to a woman? Was Coates actually married to someone who, he's implying, cruelly insulted him and threatened violence? Or is this just a stereotype of the ex-wife as a crazy bitch? Coates has his problem with football — whatever you might think about that — but why drag women into the story? Why use the ex-wife as your analogy? 

By the way, the phrase "better at life than you" is Sherman's, and you can hear him say it (and that "cretin" business) in this video from last March:



ADDED: Coates's deployment of the ex-wife stereotype reminded me of Rush Limbaugh — something he famously said about Hillary Clinton in 2006. I looked it up to get the precise text:

But when -- when she's genuine, she sounds like a screeching ex-wife. And -- and -- and I don't say that -- there's nothing against ex-wives or women. I'm just trying to be descriptive here for you. Men will know what I mean by this. 

That was actually more sensitive — more aware of stereotyping and apologetic for resorting to it — than what Coates did.  And Coates, unlike Rush, is someone who's main theme is spotlighting offhand/semi-conscious/unconscious racism. I'm calling him out for offhand/semi-conscious/unconscious sexism.