Rewriting history: Hello Denali!

WASHINGTON -- Before boarding Air Force One to fly to Alaska, President Obama today announced he has decided to rename America’s highest mountain, Mt. McKinley.

“It’s certainly time,” the president said, pointing out that the 20,322 ft. peak was named shortly after the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley which, Obama noted, was “a national tragedy but we’re pretty much over it. Like, I’ve never met anyone who even remembers the guy.” Obama said the peak will henceforth be known as Denali, the name by which indigenous Alaskans have referred to it for centuries.

Concurrently, Obama announced he is issuing executive orders decreeing new names for other entities named after assassinated presidents.

New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport will revert to the name Idlewild, the name indigenous New Yorkers called it for years before it was renamed to honor the 35th president whose death in 1963 stunned the nation. "'Car 54 Where Are You?' a tv series from the early sixties, has been in reruns on Nick At Night for years,” Obama said, “but contemporary viewers have never been able to make sense of the line in the theme song, ‘There’s a scout troop short a child, Khrushchev's due at Idlewild.’ Now they will understand it.”

Obama also revealed that Garfield the Cat, the comic strip character whose name was inspired by president James Garfield, assassinated in 1881, will be renamed Dick Tracy in homage to a defunct cartoon detective Obama said was “my favorite when I was a boy, plus I really loved the movie version starring Warren Beatty and Madonna. Michelle and I saw it on one of our first dates.”

The Lincoln Memorial in Washington, named for America’s sixteenth president who was slain in 1865, is to be renamed the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial. “Look, I admire Abe Lincoln as much as the next guy, “Obama said. “But it’s not like he actually took up arms or anything during the Civil War. All he did was issue the Emancipation Proclamation, which required nothing more than signing his name, whereas Martin Luther King, Jr. in 1968 delivered his immortal ‘I Have A Dream’ speech on the steps of that memorial. And that, to my mind, is what it should be associated with in the future.”

When an Associated Press reporter asked the president how there could be two Martin Luther King, Jr memorials in Washington, Obama conceded the reporter had a “valid point” and said he would think about what to rename the current Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, which was completed in 2011, on his flight to Alaska.