So, I recently decided that, starting this year, I was going to review every single film that the Late Night Movie Crew and I watched here at SyFy Designs. For those of you who don't know, we gather almost every Saturday night in the SyFyDesigns chat room and we watch a movie and we snark the Hell out of it. It's a lot of fun and I always make it a point to join in when I can.

So, last Saturday's movie was The Ghost and Mr. Chicken, a comedy from 1966 that featured Don Knotts playing a reporter who spends the night in a house that might be haunted. His story about seeing and hearing a ghost makes him a minor celebrity but it also leads to him being sued for libel by the nephew of the alleged ghost.

It's a very broad comedy and, I have to admit, that the film itself really wasn't my thing. In fact, I lost interest in the movie after about ten minutes. My interest perked up a little when I discovered that Don Knotts was playing a character named Luther Heggs but that's largely because I misheard his name as being "Luther Hayes." This caused me to wonder if perhaps Luther was related to former President Rutherford Hayes.

You have to understand that the only thing that I love more than dancing and movies is history. i am a history fanatic. Like a lot of people, I can name every President in order. However, I can also name every vice president in order and I can also list everyone who has ever unsuccessfully run for President in order.

It's actually kind of funny because I'm about as close to being apolitical as a person can be. When it comes to politics, unless it personally affects me, I could really hardly care less would everyone else is outraged about. As apathetic as I am about current affairs, nothing excites me more than learning about past affairs.

For instance, did you know that Rutherford Hayes is one of the most underrated Presidents ever? A few years ago, President Obama made some joke about how Hayes wasn't one of the Presidents on Mt. Rushmore and it so angered me that I nearly tweeted about it. (Then I remembered that tweeting about politics on twitter is the perfect way to have an endless argument so I thought better of it.)

First elected in the controversial election of 1876, President Hayes not only ended reconstruction and, as a result, finally allowed the nation to start healing from the Civil War but he also ran a remarkably honest administration that stood in stark contrast to the previous administration of Ulysses S. Grant. When Hayes was first elected, he promised that he would only serve one term and he kept that promise. (A politician who kept his promises! Imagine that!) America in 1881 was a far stronger country than it was in 1877 and that was almost all due to Rutherford B. Hayes.

Now, of course, some historian claim that Hayes did not actually win the election of 1876 and that he should never have been President. But, seriously, if the election was stolen, at least it was stolen by the right candidate. I shudder to think what would have happened if Samuel Tilden has been elected President.

So, no, the Ghost and Mr. Chicken was not exactly the best film that I've ever seen, though, as always, I enjoyed hanging out with the rest of the Late Night Movie Crew.

But Rutherford Hayes was a pretty good President.