Whenever the subject of Napoleon comes up — and it comes up more often than you might expect, given that we are not French, and it’s been awhile since he’s been current — people inevitably point out that he had what is alleged to have been a very, very small penis. Which makes one wonder: What if Napoleon had had a simply gargantuan penis? Would we still mention it? “Ah, yes. Napoleon. Ruled over Europe for a time. And he had an enormous penis, you know.” For some reason, I suspect that had this been the case, we would not only not mention it, but we’d probably discuss Napoleon far, far less.
July 3, 1999
Napoleon Bonaparte
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