WASHINGTON DESERVES SECOND LOOK.

Byline: Kimit Muston Local View

I don't approve of ``Presidents Day.'' It's another Monday holiday off from work for no darn good reason.

I'm afraid we've gained a ``white sale'' at the price of losing touch with two of the greatest Americans who ever lived - Abraham Lincoln, born on Feb. 12, 1809, and George Washington, born on Feb. 22, 1732.

But while Old Abe at least gets cameos in all the Civil War movies, poor old George stumbles along in his pantaloons and tricorn hat, shivering through his wooden teeth, snowbound at Valley Forge in a modern Miami Beach world.

His image has become as devalued as the currency baring it. People used to work all day to earn a portrait of George Washington. Now, you might not bend over to pick one up.

But curiously, no matter how outrageous or inflated current events seem to be, I've always found Washington to be relevant. And if he doesn't seem relevant to you, that may be because you don't know enough about George.

Washington was the original Southern aristocrat. They didn't break the mold after making George. He was the mold for the next 200 years for reserved, genteel and arrogant Southern stuffed shirts, which is ironic because George wasn't arrogant, and he was only reserved because he was so very shy.

I thought about George while suffering through the ranting over the Janet Jackson halftime exposure. Very likely nobody would have enjoyed her performance any more than George Washington. He once wrote to a friend that his favorite pastime was attending theatrical ``ribaldries,'' a kind of early vaudeville filled with dirty songs and gross jokes, suggestive dancing, raised skirts and dropped trousers. In that earthy, anti-intellectual environment, the father of our country admitted he could relax, laugh his head off and just be a human being.

When George was 11 years old, his father died, leaving him to run the family plantation under the constant supervision and harassment of his mother, Mary. Although she was one of the wealthiest women in Virginia, Mary was also a penny pincher of prodigious proportions, a combination social matriarch and entrepreneur, a sort of 16th-century Martha Stewart.

And like any good post-tech-bubble CEO, Mary constantly drove George to cut spending and increase profits on the farm. Decades later, after she had grown even richer, she still wrote letters to her son belittling his achievements and begging him to send her more money.

It was because of Mary that at the age of 15 George became a surveyor and worked so hard at it that just four years later he was appointed official surveyor for the entire colony. By the time he was 20, George was earning a very good living, even sending money home to mother.

But he was bored. George had always dreamed of being a soldier. Luckily for him, war broke out between the French and the Indians in 1754. Despite his mother's protests, he sought and received an appointment as a colonel in the Virginia militia, the National Guard of his day. Still, he remained his mother's son and he soon threatened to resign the army if his pay wasn't increased.

Twenty years later, when the Continental Congress was looking for a commander for the fledgling American army, George was the obvious choice. The deciding factor was that, while the other candidates had served only in the militia, George had actual combat experience with regulars. He had served under the English Gen. Braddock during the 1755 Pennsylvania campaign, which had culminated in the battle known to history as Braddock's Defeat. The name may give you some hint of just how thin was the margin of victory.

As president, Washington was accused by the media of acting like a king, crushing freedom in dealing with the Whiskey Rebellion, lying and harboring traitors in his administration. If those kinds of accusations alone don't make Washington relevant to current politics, I don't know what could.

So today, while you're not working, please pause to remember: Washington wouldn't be working either.