Well, we got a lot to get through and I’m already bumping up against the email size limit already, so without further ado….
PurpleAmerica’s People of the Past Week
The Good
Kudos to the Kansas City Chiefs on their Super Bowl win. Winning back to back Championships in the NFL doesn’t happen often, and winning three in four years is rare. Congratulations. It was well earned.
Same for Travis and Taylor. You cute kids.
Lately, I have not been a fan of the Super Bowl Halftime shows. And the start of this one was cluttered, so over the top and not so great. However, once Usher slowed down with Alicia Keys and rocked with H.E.R., and got his feet (and skates) under him, it was one of the best Halftimes in the past decade, and I’m not even that much of an Usher fan. Oustanding show.
The Bad— NOPE NOT THIS WEEK! LETS HAVE SOME MORE GOOD!
Let’s talk about a couple of Super Bowl Ads that were outstanding for very different reasons. First, I am really NOT a big fan of Super Bowl ads with more serious social or political messages. It’s supposed to be a fun day. But sometimes, an ad is so on point and so well done, I’m willing to make an exception. This one in particular was very well done.
Now that we got the seriousness out of the way, let’s give huge props to the Dunkings! With Touchdown Tommy on Keys (Player-Coach) and Matt Damon trying to downplay his association with Affleck (though this was a much more welcome appearance than the one last year for Crypto). It was the perfect SB ad.
It reminds me of this SNL skit with Casey Affleck.
The Ugly
Following the Super Bowl victory a gunman opened fire at the Kansas City celebration event. One person, a local newsreporter, was killed and 21 people, including many children, were injured. America, we have a serious gun problem.
A hearing was held on Thursday for Fani Willis, the Atlanta DA in charge of the Georgia election fraud case against Donald Trump. Ms. Willis is accused of having a conflict of interest in that she gave a vendor contract associated with the case to a boyfriend. The Georgia case is the one potentially most damaging to Trump and to have this kind of story out there is not helpful.
Speaking of Trump, the orange one endorsed his daughter in law, Lara Trump, to become co-chair of the Republican National Committee. Trump, Lara not Donald, immediately went on to say every dollar raised by the RNC should go to the Don, demonstrating the depth to this grift. The RNC is charged with raising funds for candidates all over the country. If everything goes to Trump, they will lose many close and winnable races down ballot because there is no funding to get the candidates’ names out. Trump is also spending boatloads of campaign cash not on his election, but on LAWYER FEES for the multitudes of litigation circling him. Said it before, will say it again— The Trump Campaign is nothing but a cash grift bilking seniors out of money they should be spending on grandkids.
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PurpleAmerica Pop Culture Random Top Five
This week: The Top 5 Anomalous Presidential Facts!
With President’s Day this weekend, let’s dive right into five of my favorite facts of some of those esteemed, priviliged few to become actually President.
William Henry Harrison, wanting to show strength at his Inauguration, refused to wear an overcoat. It wouldn’t have been so bad, but for the facts that it was the coldest Inauguration Day ever, and also the longest, with Harrison giving the longest Inauguration speech ever. He contracted pneumonia and died 30 days later.
When Polk left office, Zachary Taylor refused to be sworn in on a Sunday, so the Imauguration would not occur until Monday, leaving the Senate Pro Tem, David Rice Atchison as “President for a Day.” What did he do? Well he had gotten so drunk at the Inauguration festivities on that Saturday evening, he spent the whole day on Sunday in bed recovering. My kind of President.
Our 10th President (we’re currently on #46), John Tyler died in 1862. His grandchild, Harrison Ruffin Tyler is currently 96 years old and living in Virginia.1
Robert Todd Lincoln was present at the assassinations of three Presidents. His father, Abraham Lincoln’s, President Garfield’s, and President McKinley’s.
John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, two signers of the Declaration of Independence, died on the same day, exactly 50 years to the day they signed it, July 4th, 1826.
PurpleAmerica’s Cultural Corner
You know what’s great about President’s Day? It gives me an excuse to post the single greatest song about Presidents ever.
PurpleAmerica’s Subscriber Mail
When we here at PurpleAmerica Respond to the Teeming Millions (well, we’re still working on that first million)
So Tuesday this week, I posted my response to a Bulwark Morning Shots Newsletter regarding whether Biden should step down. Morning Shots (which used to be authored by Charlie Sykes, but he stepped down last week and was taken over by never Trump conservatives Bill Kristol and Andrew Egger) made the argument he should. I expanded on that and where I was on the subject, and also IF Biden were to step down what that would look like at this point. My analysis was that the campaign, regardless of who is at the top of it, would largely look the same, with the same issues.
BUT HOLY SHIT. Some of y’all went total Apeshit on this. I get that people are hypersensitive to defending Biden but WOW! It’s like many of you didn’t even read the article and instead wanted to lecture me on ageism. To be clear, I’m a big fan of Biden’s and was on the Biden train while all y’all might have been flirting with Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg and Bernie Sanders. I don’t need a lecture on what Biden has done as President or how good he is at the job— I knew he would be and have been a huge proponent of most everything he has done.2
By noon on Tuesday, it was my most viewed post of all time. NOON. It had been up for only 5 hours at that point.
By the following morning it had twice as many views as my next highest all time. TWICE AS MANY.
It also generated a shit-ton of responses, mostly all negative. A sampling (names withheld—I don’t want to call them out directly).
“Eat S**t Trump fellating loser.”
“Biden’s forgotten more than you ever knew you brain dead f**ker.”
“Hey Sh*t For Brains—Quit leaning into GOP talking points. You’re just a GOP mouthpiece spreading their dirty work for them.”
“My 95 year old grandmother is smarter now than you are dipshit.”
“What…The….F**k. How can you sit there and say you support Biden and Dems when you post this s**t?”
“F*CK YOU.” (there were about a dozen with this in the emails, but only one where this was the whole message altogether).
Look all, I care a lot about civility. As Kurt Vonnegut once wrote, “Obscenity and meanness only results in giving people a reason not to listen to you.” One of the reasons I utterly detest KHIVE is because of self-defeating tactics like the above; it still makes me more averse to Kamala Harris even now because of it. None of those responses above made me reconsider anything I wrote. Not one. That kind of offensiveness is utterly counterproductive.
I do not want to reiterate the whole post I had—you can go ahead and read it here. Instead, I want to repost a very positive response who differed with me while also making some very serious, good points that I hadn’t considered fully. This is how you get people to listen.
Thank you John for your thoughts. It’s good, thought-out, rational dialogue like this that makes what I do all the more worth it. It’s this kind of civil discourse, not just with me but with your relatives, that we need more of in our political discussions. I genuinely appreciate it, I’m sure they do too.
Have a question you want us to answer? Email us at purpleamericanunity@gmail.com
PurpleAmerica’s Historical Note from This Week
On February 18th, TWO huge historical facts regarding a particular President occurred:
First, on February 18, 1861, Jefferson Davis was sworn in as President of the Confederacy. He was the first, the last and the only President of the Confederacy.
On February 18, 1885, Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn” was first published. Ernest Hemingway would eventually comment all American Literature begins with Huckleberry Finn.
So what President do both of these events have in common? Ulysses S. Grant. He would go on to defeat the Confederacy in 1865 as General of the Union troops. While it is assumed to many that Mark Twain penned Grant’s memoirs, the fact is that Twain was more involved in getting them edited and published, making Grant substantially more money at a much higher rate than Grant was originally offered. Coincidentally, Grant’s memoirs were published in July of the same year as “Huck Finn.” Grant’s Memoirs are largely considered the best written ones, probably because of this very reason.
PurpleAmerica’s Dad/Uncle/Cheesy Joke of the Week
OK. You know those Geico ads featuring the camel a few years back? This one?
Well, it’s corny but I do this with my son every Wednesday. I just go “What day is it, what day is it, what day is it?” and he rolls his eyes and grudgingly says “It’s hump day.” Then I go “HUMMMMPPPP DAAAAAAAAYYYYYYYY!!!”
Anyway, this last Wednesday, I casually asked him “Oh, hey, do you know what day it is?” thinking he’d realize it was Valentine’s Day, and instead I get a big, “HUMP DAAAAAAYAAYYYYYYYY!!!!” My wife fell off the couch laughing so hard. I just casually nodded and was like, “Er, ah, yeah. It’s also Valentine’s Day.”
And with that…
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Footnotes and Fun Stuff
His father was a Civil War veteran living on a pension. While in his 80’s to help pay for his care, he married his young nurse, who would then go on to receive widow’s benefits for her entire life. This was a common practice at the time, but occassionally would result in newborn children of 80 year old men, like here.
You know how much I respect Biden? Back after the invasion of Iraq, he drew up a plan for the partition of Iraq into various sectors, including a Sunni Sector, a Kurdish sector and a Shiite sector. This was actually a pretty sound idea, one that was routinely discarded by the Bush administration. As Iraq fell apart and ISIS sprang from the remnants, that plan looked more and more prescient and ideal. All you people lecturing me about Biden probably don’t even remember that.
Your Biden candidate piece seemed to cover the bases reasonably and realistically. Not sure why it would generate controversy (though from my vantage point as a subscriber I can't see any of those comments you alluded to).
Yeah, the tolls formerly on Twitter seem to have started to invade Substack.