Here’s Abraham Lincoln’s Favorite Fart Joke
Abraham Lincoln, America’s 16th president and co-star of Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure, is obviously remembered for historical accomplishments such as the Union’s Civil War victory, the Emancipation Proclamation and the legendary Gettysburg Address, which, as any historian will tell you, didn’t end with Lincoln asking those gathered to pull his finger. But on other occasions, he was a big fan of fart jokes. Or, at least, one very specific fart joke.
As we’ve mentioned before, Lincoln was well-known for being an avid teller of jokes, which even spawned a cottage industry of Lincoln-themed joke books.
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Steven Spielberg’s acclaimed 2012 film Lincoln even managed to include a scene in which Honest Abe launches into a lengthy toilet-based anecdote. Although sadly, Disney World has yet to program any scatological stories for its Hall of Presidents animatronic to tell.
Reportedly one of Lincoln’s best-known jokes was a lengthy story predicated on accidental flatulence. The joke is about a “man of audacity” attending a fancy party, which Lincoln claimed was “not far from here.” The man danced and mingled before dinner was eventually served. He then sat at the head of the table, and was therefore tasked with carving up the turkey. Unfortunately he “expended too much energy” and ripped a loud fart.
A “shocked” silence followed, but the farter was super-chill about the whole thing. He removed his jacket, rolled up his sleeves, spat on his hands and very seriously readied himself to try again. “Now, by God,” he told the other guests, “I’ll see if I can’t cut up this turkey without farting.”
That’s it. That’s the joke.
Of course, it probably doesn’t play the same today as it did over a century ago. And much of the humor likely came from the telling of the joke, and the prolonged, unnecessary details. Still that hasn’t stopped some modern critics from passing judgment — for instance, The Washington Post called the fart joke one of Lincoln’s “worst joke stories.”
Oddly enough, Lincoln’s fart joke bubbled up into the mainstream news cycle just 10 years ago, after Barack Obama appeared on Between Two Ferns in 2014.
Soon-to-be disgraced right-wing pundit Bill O’Reilly criticized Obama for daring to appear on a (gasp) comedy series, and specifically stated: “All I can tell you is, Abe Lincoln would not have done it.” That led to people pointing to Lincoln’s history of jokes, specifically the fart joke, as evidence that Lincoln totally would have appeared on the show. You know, once he got over the shock of seeing modern video cameras and horseless motor carriages.
The fact that this aspect of Lincoln’s personality was overlooked by O’Reilly was especially dumb considering that he once wrote a book about Lincoln. In any case, he was wrong. If Lincoln was around today, not only would he be cameoing on comedy shows, he’d probably be carrying around his own personal fart machine like Leslie Nielsen.
