Color Me Adjectival and Presidential

John in Cincinnati, Ohio, says that if something seems unsurprising to him, he’ll say sarcastically Color me surprised. John is sincerely surprised to learn that the color me X construction, where X is any adjective, goes back to a 1962 bestseller called The JFK Coloring Book, a jokey coloring book seemingly directed at children, but that actually satirized the administration of John F. Kennedy. In the tradition of non-satirical coloring books, which historically included cheerful instructions how to color in the illustrations, like color me brown for the dog or color me blue for the sky, this book instead had instructions like “color him red, white and blue” for JFK or “color her beautiful” for Jackie Kennedy. After JFK was assassinated, the book ceased publication, but you can find images of the original coloring book on eBay. This is part of a complete episode.