Tag Archives: Cuba

The Informative American: CUBA! COMMUNISTS! CAPITALIZED LETTERS! (Originally Published June, 1959)

“This Fidel Castro character won’t last.  That beard is far too absurd.”

~U.S. Politics in the 1950’s

It’s remarkable to think about how things used to put us on edge in the past when they seem pretty innocuous right now.  Similar to looking back at fads you partook in as a child (pogs, anyone?) when you look at what the nation feared years ago, and compare it to how we view them now, it all seems pretty silly.  The most relevant example we as a staff can think of would have to do with the fervor surrounding Fidel Castro and Cuba.

Yes, we get it, having a communist power so close to America during the Cold War’s perpetual game of nuclear chicken was probably very terrifying at the time.  But we’re talking about a man who America unsuccessfully tried to poison the beard of who now is considered such an afterthought that most of you reading this aren’t sure if he’s alive (he is) or if he’s still in power (he is not).

Of course, our stacks of archives from the 1950s remembers everything, and we have no shame about pointing out how incorrect our views were in the 1950’s.  So that is why we present you today with…

The Informative American:  CUBA!  COMMUNISTS!  CAPITALIZED LETTERS!  (Originally Published June, 1959)

 

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America Fun Fact of the Day 11/20- November 20th in American History

“I can’t even think straight I just want to eat Turkey.”

~AFFotd Editor-in-Chief Johnny Roosevelt

Look at that little spot on the map.  the 24th.  Turkey day.  Goddamn it we’re so excited.  Do you know we have someone on staff whose only job is to kill turkeys the week of Thanksgiving?  We only need like, 5 of them to feed the office.  And we pay him $40,000 to do that.  And that’s after he’s explicitly told us he’d do it for free.  We didn’t care.  We wanted to pay him to kill birds for a week.  That’s our right, goddamn it.  It’s our right.

Anyway, here’s what happened today in the past.

Today in American History (America Version)

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America’s Ugliest Vice-Presidents Part 1: #10-6

“Well, uh, that Biden fella is goofy looking and, uh, I believe we should make him the Vice President.”

~President Barack Obama

American Presidents run the gauntlet from “Ugly as sin” to “Your wife would bone him, let’s be honest” as far as physical attractiveness goes.  But, to be President of the world’s greatest nation that only gets better when you remove the letter “e” from its name, you have to have a pretty large, healthy ego.  So, for most Amrrican Presidents, there have been terrifying looking monster serving as their Vice-President.  The more you think about it, the more sense it makes- much like a Bride giving her Maids of Honor ugly dresses to wear, the President wants the Vice-President to be there to make them look good.  As much as her politics, rhetoric, and speeches were incredibly divisive and damaging to John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign, what really doomed him from the start was that he decided to choose a running mate who makes you feel sort of funny when you see how she looks in a bikini with a gun.  Meanwhile, an old man and a MILF were running against a young man and the puppet from Jeff Dunham’s stand up ventriloquist bits.

Young man with a puppet running mate win every time.

It’s American to be an ugly Vice-President, and honestly, there are so few instances of non-monster-like vice presidents that those that don’t look like a child of Mothra end up having an easy ticket into the White House.  Plus, we’re pretty sure that the only reason Teddy Roosevelt was a Vice-President before becoming President was that he threatened to shoot McKinley if he wasn’t made VP before pointing at his nose and saying, “That’s called foreshadowing, asshole.”

So as the representatives of the pulse of this fine nation, AFFotD is primed to run down a list of the 10 ugliest American Vice-Presidents.  Because even if they achieved more power than we ever can hope to come close to, we can take solace in the fact that no one remembers their names, and they were goofy looking.  Like, really goofy looking.

[editor’s note- though it’s an easy target most people can recognize, we are not putting Dick Cheney on this list, mainly because our research staff found a picture from his High School Yearbook, and the majority of our female staffers said, “Holy shit, I’d actually bang that guy.”]

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