Newspapers, Vampires, and America

Last year, around valentines day I read in the paper a whole article about the founding fathers being vampires.
Of course, it was a joke, and a funny one at that. I cracked up when I read it. Unfortunently, some other people had different views. That day the newspaper company was swamped with angry letters and editorials complaining. The next day a retraction was printed.
But the worst part (Other than the genius who wrote it getting in trouble) was that they thought that it was a heresy to write this.
I'm more than fine with respecting, learn about, and admiring the people who founded this country, but the people who wrote the angry letters seemed to treat the founding fathers as gods, and not only that, linking them to the god from abrahamic religions.
 That seems wrong in many ways. For one thing, Jesus had been born, raised, persecuted, killed, resurrected, and had ascended more than a thousand years before europeans even started coming to this country, much less colonizing it and creating a country from those colonies. Its not that I think god is unhappy or apathetic about the U.S., but I also don't think that it is more holy than any other country, and it is unfair to say to other countries that the founding fathers are up in gods right hand (In fact, they weren't even Christian! They believed god came down, made everything, and then left us to do what we want with what we've got, an interesting theology).
There is a comic strip I like called Pearls Before Swine. In one series of strips he decided to have the main characters bring back Abraham Lincoln. He is happy at first, then finds out he gets assassinated and gets all drunk and depressed. Then he decides to go back to his own time, where he is later shot.
The creator, Stephen Patsis got a lot of angry letters about showing Abraham Lincoln acting not like a historical figure, but actually acting like a real human. Patsis said in response (Quote approximated) "I've been reading up about Abraham Lincoln... (And) I've found he joked about death a lot, so I think Abraham would on my side with this one.", which is pretty much the stance I take with the founding fathers/vampire thing.