President Biden yesterday bestowed the once meaningful Presidential Medal of Freedom honor to a dog’s breakfast—and not even a relatively tasty dog’s breakfast—of 19 individuals. A few of them could be viewed as justifiable honorees, but most were obviously chosen to pander to various voting blocks that Biden desperately needs to be re-elected. A white female Olympic swimmer was chosen to try to woo female athletes and their allies who don’t want to have women’s sports undermined by having to compete against biological men, for example. Catholics are abandoning Biden, as they should considering the “devout Catholic” fondmess for fetus-cide, so a Jesuit priest got a medal. To fake non-partisanship, Biden gave Liddy Dole a medal. Naturally there was the obligatory pandering to the African-American voting block, with race-baiting, former Rep. James E. Clyburn (D-S.C.) getting his fee for saving Biden’s Presidential nomination in 2020. Clyburn’s disgraceful Ethics Alarms dossier is here. Ellen Ochoa got a medal purely because of her Hispanic heritage and lady parts—there have been a lot of astronauts. Biden sucked up to unions and Hispanics by honoring Teresa Romero, the president of the United Farm Workers and “historic,” as the first Latina to lead a national union in the United States, which, of course, makes her more deserving than all the other union leaders. Even more blatant was the medal given to Michelle Yeoh. Who, you well may ask? She became the first Asian to win the Oscar for best actress this year. She was the most distinguished Asian-American Biden’s staff could come up with for these DEI awards? What an insult to Asian-Americans! Most of the rest were Presidential slobbers over partisan ethics villains like Al Gore, John Kerry, and Nancy Pelosi.

But those selection, however cynical and undeserved, aren’t the reasons for this post. This is: among Biden’s flagrant pandering were Presidential Medals of Freedom awarded to long-dead legendary athlete Jim Thorpe (had to get a Native American into this DEI orgy) and Medgar Evers, the civil rights worker who was assassinated 61 years ago, just to remind everyone what a racist nation we are.

The question in the headline above came from Ann Althouse, commenting on the Evers award. I assume she was asking why Presidents haven’t been regularly honoring long-dead figures in our history and not just Medgar Evers. In fact, there have been a lot of posthumous Presidential Medals of Freedom, but in almost all cases the honorees were relatively recently deceased: John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Steve Jobs, Pope John XXIII (What a ridiculous choice!), Lyndon Johnson, John Wayne, Paul “Bear” Bryant, Thurgood Marshall, Cesar Chavez, Walter Reuther, Roberto Clemente, Jack Kemp, Harvey Milk, Elouise Cobell, Grace Hopper, and Antonin Scalia. Biden is following in the pandering foot prints of his two predecessors, Barack Obama and Donald Trump, with the Evers and Thorpe medals. President Obama awarded medals to James Chaney, Andrew Goodman and Michael Schwerner, the three civil rights workers slain in Mississippi in 1964, 50 years after their deaths. Well, why not Emmet Till? Like Till (and Evers), the three just had the bad luck to be murdered: plenty of other civil rights workers worked as hard and bravely as they did. Trump’s dead recipients were even more contrived: Babe Ruth and Elvis Presley.

Once the slippery slope into the past has been greased, who isn’t fair game to be honored any time a President wants to signal his virtue? If Thorpe, why not Tecumseh and Sacajawea? (Lewis and Clarke would have to get medals too, I think.) Or, if the idea is football players, why not Johnny Unitas? If the Babe, why not Walter Johnson or Christy Mathewson, who were both more admirable baseball greats? Heck, why doesn’t George Washington have a medal? OK, he owned slaves—why not John Adams? Abigail Adams? Abe Lincoln? Frederick Douglass? Nathan Hale? Susan B. Anthony? Why no medal for Gen. George Meade, who won the battle of Gettysburg? Thaddeus Stevens, who ushered the Thirteenth Amendment through Congress? Dwight Eisenhower?

And since LBJ opened up the ranks to non-Americans by giving a Medal of Freedom to a Pope, shouldn’t John Locke and Rousseau be honored? What about Voltaire? If Elvis, why not Mozart? Surely Frances Scott Key deserves a Medal of Freedom. Harriet Beecher Stowe!

Come to think of it, Biden cheapened the medal so much by giving one to Phil Donahue last week—why not Ellen DeGeneris?—the whole discussion may be moot.