Citation Needed - Horace Greeley

Episode Date: March 6, 2024

Horace Greeley (February 3, 1811 – November 29, 1872) was an American newspaper editor and publisher who was the founder and editor of the New-York Tribune. Long active in politics, he served briefly as a congressman from New York and was the unsuccessful candidate of the new Liberal Republican Party in the 1872 presidential election against incumbent President Ulysses S. Grant, who won by a landslide.

Hello and welcome. Citation needed. Podcast where we choose a subject, read a single article about it on Wikipedia and pretend we're experts. This is the Internet and that's how it works now. I'm Heath and I'll be hosting this discussion about American politics from the 1800s. And of course I'm joined by a panel of white guys. They're not all landowners. We're going to do the best we can. We haveil Noah hominy line. Yeah, I'm so white taxis. Hail me at this place Based on the size alone yeah, I'd say I'm Alright, let's get right into it Noah what person place thing concept phenomenon or event are we gonna be talking about today? Today, we're gonna be talking about Horace Greeley. All right.

And how did you pick Horace Greeley? Well, so, because as we barrel towards the inevitable renomination of Donald Trump for the fucking presidency, I want to reassure everyone with a historical example that proves that you can lose a presidential election so hard it kills him. Here's to hoping. Good answer. Yeah. Well, okay. Yeah.

Please. I'm starting on a high note. Right? Yeah. Happy start. So who was Horace, really? He was one of the most famous American newspaper men of the 19th century. He was the founder and editor of the New York Tribune.

He was among the founders of the Republican Party back when they were the good guys. He was one of the most influential voices in the history of American politics. And he was, I believe, the only person to ever be the presidential candidate for two different major political parties in the same election. He was also relentlessly weird in all kinds of contradictory directions. Okay. I mean, he was the head of the good Republicans. So how could he not be? Right. Yeah, exactly. No, I started off there. So Greeley was born on February 3 of 1811 on a small farm near Amherst, New Hampshire. In the Wikipedia article, it says he quote, could not breathe for the first 20 minutes of his life end quote. But I find that hard to

believe because there were additional minutes in his life after that. Right? So I feel like they mean that he could breathe on his own. I don't know. The Wikipedia article implies that this oxygen deprivation at birth caused him to develop Asperger's syndrome. I feel like that's not a thing I don't know, but suffice to say that through the modern lens Horace was probably on the autism spectrum somewhere, but back then he was just eccentric. Or as Ulysses S. Grant would later summarize in a letter, Horace

was quote, a genius without common sense, end quote. For baby can't breathe during birth, you have to leave it connected like dig dug and work mom's legs like a billow. So you just push them. Yes, that's how it works. All right, so Horace's father, Zaccheus, was a farmer, but he wasn't a very good one. Oh, the names get so good in this one. Zaccheus in a hoi lop. That is not the best name I'm gonna give you today.

Zaccheus sounds like a nerdy vampire. Yeah. You could have just said vampire. Like he shows up to the blood orgy and everyone's like, turn the lights on it doesn't matter Zach is Rutheran of the night don't don't do it man. We all talk normal now Zach is was a farmer, but he wasn't a very good one

So throughout Horace's early life his family kept having to flee west Less dad wound up in a debtor's prison. Um, this is the early 1800s. So when I say West, think Pennsylvania. No, I will not think Pennsylvania and you cannot make... No. It sounds like Joe Biden. All right, but despite his somewhat transient childhood, Greeley got a decent education for the standards of the day

and he proved to be a hell of a student. At one point, some neighbors offered to pay his way into a prestigious boarding school, but his parents refused to accept charity because sometimes people's pride is more important to them than their children. Cool. Yeah. All right. We're a family of pride sons. We can't do that thing with the nice school. Now pack up your stuff. I borrowed seed from fucking Jebediah at the general store. We're going to fuck them on the bill and flee us again. Pridefully.

We are gries. Yeah. Just a heads up, if anyone listening to this would like to pay for my son's education, there are some extremely humble things I am willing to do to your holes and hanging pieces. Just ask away, if you know what I'm saying. So perhaps Sensing Dad was an impediment to high achievement, really ran away to become a printer's apprentice in 1822. He was 11 at the time, which was too young to work around a printing press, even by the lax labor standards of the day. So it wasn't until 1826 at the ripe old age of 15 that Horace finally nailed that coveted apprenticeship at a Vermont paper called The Northern Spectator. He'd bounce around from paper to paper

for the next five years, soaking up industry knowledge, and then in 1831, he would set out for New York City to make his fortune. And for the four years prior to the printing press job, he worked in the much safer Pennsylvania mining industry. So. Yeah, right, right.

Now, I should probably point out that shortly before he left for New York, young Horace Greeley had a religious conversion to the relatively young universalist movement. Now, of course, normally this wouldn't matter to a person's overall story because religion is nothing and one brand of nothing versus a different brand of nothing doesn't make a substantive difference. But Horace Greeley would go on to try pretty much every other ism he would ever encounter

in life. As brilliant as he was in a lot of fields, he does have an almost paltrow-esque embrace of pseudo-science that rears its ugly head throughout his biography. Please don't say he invented a candle that smelled like his dick, Noah. I mean, it's 1831, Cecil, so I think candles already smelled like burning animal fat. I think he is good. Eli, you need to see a doctor if your already smelled like burning animal fat. I think You need to see a doctor if your dick smells like burning animal

I see all the doctors I hate for you to find out again this way So anyway, so he gets to New York he dicks around working for a few different papers for a few years and eventually he starts a little publication called the New Yorker. But not that the time. His was a moderately successful but poorly managed literary magazine that started in 1834 and folded, get it, in 1837. He then went on to publish a thrice weekly paper called The Constitutionalist, which according to the Wiki, quote, mostly printed lottery results. A rigged game that mostly survives by preying on the week's belief in it. Sounds pretty constitutional to me, Noah.

All right. Well done. Well done. Now, you still have to vote for Joe Biden. You still have to. Right. Yeah, I'm sorry. Regardless. Now, you might wonder where Greeley was fined in the money to start all these papers. And this is where we have to introduce young Mary Young Chaney to the story, who Horace met shortly after moving to New York. History doesn't know a hell of a lot about her, honestly, but the two married in 1836

and it's rumor that Greeley used her savings to fund his first couple of papers. Wikipedia says of that rumor, quote, citation needed and quote. I'm not sure. But what we do know is that theirs was not a happy marriage. There was no honeymoon, they rarely took trips together, they were rarely seen together, and by all reports they hated each other's fucking guts. From very early on in their marriage, Horace avoided his house and his wife

except when impregnating her. They'd have seven kids altogether, though five of them died really young, and at least some of them, and possibly all of them, died from neglect. Okay, let's write something in here to keep Eli away from that space. Minagami, Minagami, see a doctor. Subtle tea, subtlety, behaving with subtl subtlety acting with sports ball there that'll do Good thing in Cecil right serotonin I don't like that. I operate on the same principles as a haint

So but one thing that Horace and Mary shared was a mutual love for fringe movements She was an advocate of the Graham diet, which was the vegetarian diet proposed by Sylvester Graham. That's the guy that the Graham cracker was named after. And his diet was basically, if it tastes good, you might as well be licking Satan's penis. Okay, confusing. I don't know whether this is good or bad. And Graham crackers are amazing. I'm completely lost. They're not. They're fucking awful needless to say

Like Graham crackers you gotta go Had no sugar. Well that you that too. Yeah, the honey mates. Yeah, they the old school had no sugar at all No sugar no honey no sweetening and Tom liked it like They taste like shit even when you put the sweetening in so you can only a fucking Now there you're so now needless to say, Graham is often called the father of vegetarianism in the United States. And if you're thinking, well, that's not too French.

I should also point out that Mary thought one of her sons was a spiritual medium. But he was actually a small, so at that. Oh, Jesus Christ. Okay. This is shit tits. Now, if you know the name Horace Gray, it's probably as the guy who said, go West, young man.

Or, more fully, go West, young man, and grow up with the country. Well, as with pretty much every famous saying ever uttered by anyone, this one is probably misattributed. We know that Grayley popularized that saying, but its actual origin is disputed. But whether Coining or popularizing it, Greeley deployed it in 1837 when the financial crisis that would eventually doom his New Yorker had made an awful lot of New Yorkers homeless.

So basically, he was saying to New York's destitute, you know what's great is elsewhere. That last part, Tom actually got that embroidered on a burlap pillow from his dad and his 18th birthday. Oh, God. I'll be ridiculous. So my dad whittled it into my going away wheelbarrow. Thank you. You got a wheelbarrow? As he asked you. After the New Yorker closed, Horace goes to work up for the phenomenally monocled Thurlow

weed. Love that. Love, right? So weed hired him to edit a state newspaper for the Whig party called the Jeffersonian. Greeley's editorials were instrumental in the election of the Whig candidate for governor William H. Seward. And a couple of years later, they'd be instrumental

in the election of Whig presidential candidate, William Henry Harrison. In fact, Greeley even wrote several popular campaign songs for Harrison. And I know that we don't really have campaign songs anymore, but they were a huge deal at the time. And I'd kind of love to bring them back just to see what kind of atonal kindergarten rhyme bullshit Trump supporters would come up with. I would like to present exhibit A. Linda Paulson for United States Senate, Utah District 12, publication date 2022. Oh, see some little link in the notes to this. On YouTube, it's an old white lady doing a rap for her Utah Senate campaign.

It's a hate crime. It is technically a hate crime. I watched it and now I'm on like lists and shit and the victim to be clear of that crime is the concept of time Her video and audio are misaligned by like I'm gonna say eight generations of human beings much like her platform It's crazy. I think she's trying based on this platform. She's trying to primary a wig from the right In today I can I could play it if you want to hear it do people want to hear it I would be happy to have one when lost house I can hear it everybody's hearing it again

Oh god hell yeah Hey, Utah district 12 listen up right here. There's a new name on the ballot for the Senate this year. My name is Linda Paulson, Republican and awesome. Love God and family and the Constitution. Oh my God. To get another conservative to run. Nobody could do it, so I'm getting it done.

I'm pro-religious freedom, pro-life, pro-police. The right to bear arms and the right to free speech. I want less government controlling regulation, want to stop and expose all political corruption, where's integrity? Accountability. Government programs should lead to self-sufficiency and support traditional family as the fundamental unit of society. But in schools they are pushing for new beliefs. Well not all of them. That's a female adult I know what a woman is. What is that?

It's a bright wing canard. That's an anti-transfer thing. Fuck you stupid. I love this country it's a blessing. Oh there's more. Jesus. Freedom comes with responsibility. This is 26 minutes long Noah.

This is longer than our podcast. That is erected. If you share my values, if you like what I stand for, then give me your vote on the 8th of November. District 12 needs a choice. Let me be your voice, Linda Paulson. Linda Paulson for Senate. There it is, guys. There it is. You did it, Linda Paulson for Senate.

If you're not picturing her crossing her arms and tilting at the end, you should be. It's a war. There it is, guys. There it is. You did it, everyone. It just happened. If you're not picturing her crossing her arms and tilting at the end, you should be. You definitely are picturing that. Racistly. Yeah. Everyone is picturing that. Have to vote for Joe Biden. That is exactly what I wanted, Cecil.

I was right. Sorry. So, well, based on his success with Wig papers over the past few years, Greeley decided to give publishing his own paper another go, and in 1840, he launched the New York Tribune. This daily paper is the paper that would make him famous. It would coocally rise to be the most red paper in the country, and under Greeley's leadership, it would publish many of the most important thinkers

of the 19th century. Greeley used his paper to promote the works of Henry David Thoreau and Ralph Waldo Emerson. He published hundreds of articles and opinion pieces by Karl Marx. And early in his career, Mark Twain was a staff writer for the paper. Jesus.

Right? Greeley's was also one of the first newspapers to hire women as full-time journalists. That is very impressive, but they ran a lot of Dunesbury cartoons. So yeah A lot. All right. So this is where we get into the Greeley as both hero and villain thing though because Through his influence at the Tribune, he wielded enormous political power in the country during the civil war Abe Lincoln would say of Greeley's endorsement quote having him firmly behind me will be as helpful to me as an army of 100,000 men." End quote.

And he used that platform for all kind of good causes. He was anti-slavery, he supported socialism, he was an ardent feminist and a consistent supporter of the working class. But after the Civil War, he was real quick to jump onto the enough with all this reconstruction crap, hemp. He was a major voice in the temperance movement, and he promoted all kinds of kakamemi utopian pipe dreams, including the infamous Oneida cult from episode 120 that involved a lot of child rape. Okay, I feel like half this essay is just checking Eli into the board so he can't write a joke in some of these places. Let him come. Yeah, it's like a neutral zone trap

if you're a hockey person, you understand? Is it Eli, he's winding up for a bit and then it's like dead baby hip-checking, he's like, I'm sorry. Stop pointing up. Let him come. So he also managed to make a lot of enemies in government. And obviously that's gonna be the fate of anybody

who's in the newspaper business, right? But Greeley would explore new heights and he really kicked that into high gear when he found himself in Congress in 1848. So the guy that was representing New York's sixth district was unseated for election fraud and there's like a couple months left in his term. So as a thank you for all the hard work he did getting Whigs elected over the past few years, the Whigs nominated Greeley for the seat in a special election. And as soon as he got into the Congress, he was like, wow, this place is super duper corrupt. I should write about that in my newspaper. Just walking around the house floor. Hello, fellow youths of Congress.

Yeah, I mean tonight, right? Right? We do that. Well, to be fair, this was the part of history where the answer wasn't everybody. So that meant something. You know, I think it was everybody but Greeley. But yeah. So yeah, there is scribe under your shirt. No. So, so during his three month stint in Congress really launched a series of attacks in the Tribune against abuse of legislative privileges. He even tried to introduce a law that would reign in travel expenditures and excessive reimbursement for members of Congress who were all like, what the fuck dude?

And then voted it down, obviously. He also, he would publish lists of all the congressmen who missed votes and, man, after my own heart that he was, he questioned the very existence of the office of House Chaplain. Within those three months, he, by his own reckoning,oning quote divided the house into two parties One that would like to see me extinguished and the other that wouldn't be satisfied without a hand in doing it and

Man remember when American politics had common ground like right before the Civil War And I guess we'll find out if Horus gets extinguished. But first, a little apropos of nothing. Mr. Greenlee, it's Congressman Smithers and Westeroson. Good to meet you, Greenlee. How do you do, sir? Hi. Hi.

Sorry, Westeroson was just telling a most amusing story. Indeed. It seems a certain mayor in my fair district was hoping to have a bridge built, and I told him, first, we fund my campaign, then we to have a bridge built and I told him first we fund my campaign then we see about your bridge. Right, but that's illegal though. Sorry? Yeah, well like we're not allowed to withhold public funds for our own gain. That's a crime

and everything. I'm telling. I'm telling. No. Sorry. Greenlee, you're new. Let me explain. See, things around here are a little looser than you might used to be. But keep your eyes open. You may see your own form of profit. Oh, so you're all committing crimes it's not just this guy. Okay I'm gonna tell on all of you. No no no no. Now see Greenlee I'm saying you commit the crimes with us. You see yes and you will get to be rich, haha But I'm I'm already rich. I'm a congressman. I got a newspaper. I Sorry, aren't you guys already rich too? Yes, I suppose I am I'm quite rich myself. Yeah, I know that you mentioned that right great So why wouldn't I just tell people that you're doing the crimes you're doing?

Because if you do we Well, we won't like you. Okay, I'm just gonna tell them. Oh man, we won't like you? I've thrown. Nobody's ever done that before. And we're back. When we left off, Congress was shocked when Horace Greeley turned out to be a narc who famously owned the biggest narcing firm in the country in that newspaper. What's next? So yeah, so with his brief beret in Congress over, Greeley got back to work at the Durbian. In a very sour grapes kind of post-congressional realization, he decided that he could do more

to direct the course of national history through his newspaper than he could ever do in Congress. And given his legislative record, that almost couldn't not be true. Yeah, you should have told Bernie Sanders. They were colleagues in everything. Right? Yeah, Noah, why didn't you tell him? I didn't realize until later. Jesus.

Now, over this period, Greeley was growing increasingly disillusioned by the Whig party and not just because they wouldn't let him sit with them at Congressional cafeteria or whatever Like a lot of abolitionists really was furious over the compromise of 1850 Which was basically the fucking Munich pack of the Civil War. Yeah, and that's essentially the forfeit human of the crap It was it was a series of bills meant to ease tensions It was a series of bills meant to ease tensions between the free and slave states, which managed to stave off all that war for like almost a dozen years.

And although Greeley would eventually support the 1852 Whig candidate, Winfield Scott, his support was tepid at best, and Scott would go down to defeat by the least interesting of all U.S. presidents, Franklin Pierce. Okay, a fun fact about Franklin Pierce, when Field Scott was actually Franklin Pierce's old boss when they were in the army. And that is the most fun fact about Franklin Pierce. Seriously, I Googled like fun facts about Franklin Pierce and Google was like, did you mean facts about Franklin Pierce?

No. The first result I got was like, his dad was a governor. Yeah. So in 1853, he formally renounced his and his papers affiliation with the Whig party over their failure to take a firm stance against slavery. And though Whig officials had a very like, well, we didn't want you here anyway,

response to his defection, it's telling that the whole fucking party fell apart and dissolved within a year of him doing that. And around the same time, Greeley became heavily involved in discussions about forming a new political party around the anti-slavery issue, and those discussions would lead to the founding of the Republican Party, which would explain why Greeley's earthly remains constantly turn over like they do. Yeah, they use his grave as a paint mixer these days. Yeah, absolutely good. Keeps the cement from setting, yeah.

Hey, hey, hey now. Republicans do not want slavery back. They would consider all the feeding and housing of anyone a wasteful of time. Yeah, right. Of course, slaves, but no social safety net. That's what you want. Yeah, yeah. Now, of course, in 1860, that Republican party would nominate one Abraham Lincoln as their presidential

candidate, and his victory would ultimately touch off the Civil War, even in the absence of him having done anything yet. Right, it's important to remember that the South seceded from the Union not over anything that Lincoln did, but rather over what they feared he would do and had no fucking plans of doing. And for his part, Lincoln hesitated quite a bit to actually do this shit. Even deep into the war, he vacillated on whether or not he would abolish slavery. In fact, more than a year after the Civil War started, Lincoln famously said, quote,

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slaves, I would do it. And if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it. And if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that. End quote. Man. We need that kind of moral vacillation like we need a hole in that. Too soon. Too soon.

And look, that's a pretty famous quote, right? But what you might not know is that when Lincoln said that, it was in direct response to Horace Greeley. Specifically, it was in response to an open letter he published in the Tribune titled The Prayer of 20 Millions. In fact, Greeley's paper was so heavily associated with the abolition movement that when the draft riots broke out in New York City, his paper was one of the mob's first targets and it took more than 150 soldiers to keep it secure. Yeah, I'd say can you imagine rioting over being pro slavery? But I still get tweets from people who rioted over the right to get a disease

that would kill. So people rioted when they couldn't get a packet of Szechuan sauce at McDonald's during the sauce reboot based on a Rick and Morty episode based on. Is this for real? That is for real. Human beings, our destiny is just to like get mad about some dumb shit and then be like, that's what we do. That's us. And yes, that's real, Tom, for real, real, real.

God, cops had to be called to multiple locations because McDonald's brought back Szechuan sauce, which they did in 98, I think when Milan first came out and then they brought it back because of Rick and Morty. People went fuck wild when they couldn't get their sauce. God damn it. Why were they? What? No, up to this point, Greeley has been an easy guy to admire,

right? Even if he did support mesmerism and promoted the concept of spirit wrapping, which held that ghosts could knock once for yes and twice for no engine, provided you had the right kind of medium around who was definitely channeling the energy of a ghost and not knocking on the underside of the table. Totally different thing that they were doing. After the Civil War... You gotta just sit next to that and knock again like three more... You could fuck that up so easily when somebody's lying about that. Now, but after the civil war, his legacy gets a little more complicated.

Like when former Confederate President Jefferson Davis was captured after Lincoln's assassination, Greeley was among the people who paid his bond to get him out of jail. He was also he had a very blut by guns be byones attitudes towards reconstruction that directly contributed to the Jim Crow era of Southern politics. Man, that feels like a time that really would have embraced Susan Collins. Right? Look, I know Lincoln was shot at the theater, but these days the cinema has proven just as dangerous. Nicely done. Nicely done. So throughout this time, Greeley trying to find a way back into elected politics, I had a number of unsuccessful campaigns, including a run for Congress, as well as one for state comptroller.

But you know what they say about failed candidates for state comptroller? They make great candidates for president, which is going to bring us to the election of 1872. Yeah, hashtag Greeley would have won right if my hands had had the guts. Yeah, so does anybody know what a cop controller is? Is it just a controller of something? I don't know. Yeah, you know how they have the ones on the side of the we and then there's the big one that you can buy. That's what it is. So okay. So it's an initial ignorant fat piece of shit. Fuck off our podcast. You're like the Munich of the Hoondon Boons. Up here. So initially, Greeley supported the candidacy of you. Lissy's S Grant,

but Grant's administration was notoriously corrupt and Greeley supported the candidacy of Ulysses S. Grant, but Grant's administration was notoriously corrupt and Greeley fell out of love with it pretty quickly. Then in 1871, Missouri Senator Carl Scherrs formed a new party called the Liberal Republican Party, which was primarily founded in opposition to Grant, but Scherrs was foreign born, so he was constitutionally ineligible for the presidency. So his party decided to tap Horace Greeley as their nominee. Meanwhile, the Democrats were afraid of splitting the anti-grant ticket, so when they met for their convention a couple months later, they also nominated Greeley.

That's a pretty good plan. Right? So they even adopted the Liberal Republican Party's entire platform and they adopted the liberal Republican Party's vice presidential nominee Benjamin Gratz Brown Which was probably a mistake? Brown was such a notorious drunk that in possibly my favorite anecdote in all of American politics He once drunkenly buttered a slice of watermelon Thinking that it was a piece of bread.

And then in an effort to cover the gaff, he had to eat the motherfucker. You laugh, but I guarantee you like it take me to three restaurants that serve that, except the butter is a hardened knob of solidified oat fat. Okay, well now you've ruined your surprise dinner at Shea you can barely Okay, I feel attacked by this relatable content first of all I am genuinely confident I would enjoy buttered watermelon Yeah, yeah French salted butter on absolutely. Yeah, maybe throw it on the grill Or fucking country croc with my hands. I don't care

All right, so but even if he'd had a perfectly sober of eep really stood no chance in the election He'd burn damn near every political bridge He'd ever walked across and he also got on the bad side of cartoonist Thomas Nast. You might remember him from episode 276 of this show, where he played a pivotal role in the apprehension of Boss Tweed. Nast's anti-greely cartoon showed him like, Payne Jefferson Davis's bail, flinging mud on Grant.

And in one case, shaking hands with John Wilkes Booth over Abe Lincoln's grave. Wow, that's subtle. Greeley was also a campaigner, which was heavily frowned on back then. Back then, voters expected a certain amount of feigned humility from their candidates. So the standard was that you didn't go out

and give speeches where you said, hey, you should vote for me. You had surrogates go out and do that kind of shit, and then you would hang back and you'd go like, well, I guess I'll take this presidency if no one else is gonna finish it. I mean, with somebody might as well have it. But really buck that tradition entirely

and went on a strikingly modern national campaign. I mean, to be fair, I agree with old timey people that nobody who wants to be president should do it, but I think I want it for different reasons. I think it's the same reason, I think, but yeah. So it's about here that Greeley's wife shows back up in the story. Now, mostly I've left her out of the story of his life

because so did he, right? But she had this lung affliction that had bothered her for decades and she often spent years away from him at various treatment centers and will retreats and shit. And through most of his presidential campaign, she was actually off in Europe doing exactly that. But in late June of 1872, she returned from the trip gravely ill and in mid-October she took a turn for the worse. Really suspended his campaign at that point and he spent every waking minute by her bedside until she died

a few weeks later. Now, there was nothing in their relationship to suggest that they were close or even fond of each other, but Horace was devastated by her death. He fell into a deep depression, he couldn't sleep, he barely even noticed when he lost the presidential election by 220 electoral votes. And a week after the election, he fell ill with an undiagnosed affliction and only 31 days after the loss of his wife, Boris Greeley died. I mean look, anyone who has sex with me seven times also wins my undying love and affection. So I get it. So now his death was actually really awkward for a lot of newspapers because they had just

spent months viciously attacking his character in support of Grant's reelection, but mostly they pivoted well to praising all his various and often contradictory reform movements. A would-be utopia that he helped the found in Colorado changed its name to Greeley in his honor, and is still called that now, and the city of New York would ultimately erect two different statues to his memory. I don't understand, you can be a sore winner, you fucking won! He died, his wife died, you fucking won. He died. His wife died. You won. Like if Melania died, and then Donald, same, a month later. The only complication for me is like new decorations

for my ongoing party. So now the Wiki quotes a historian named Ivor Bernstein, who summarized him like so, really was an eclectic and unsystematic thinker, a one-man switchboard for the international cause of reform. He committed himself all at once to utopian and artisan socialism to land sexual and dietary reform and of course to anti-slavery. Indeed, Greeley's great significance in the culture and politics of Civil War America stemmed from his attempt

to accommodate intellectually the contradictions inherent in the many diverse reform movements of the time end quote in other words he didn't know the right way to do shit but he knew for damn sure this wasn't it and if you had to summarize what you've learned in one sentence what would it be? Melania could take one for the team any time she wants. Come on. And are you ready for the quiz? I'm ready. Are you Melania? All right.

Noah, if Greeley had won, what would he have said in his acceptance speech? A, a list of people he hated. B, a list of people who hated him. C, a sobbing rendition of Cand candle in the wind about his wife he met eight times. Or D, you like me, you grilly, grilly like me. All right, Eli D is fantastic. Thank you. He was working entire fucking joke, but I've read the guy's biography. It is a. I should answer as a. All right. No, what's the best name for a newspaper when the owner makes candles

modeled after his own dick? No. A. The piss patch B. The Daily Mail C. The pubic Harold or D D the Wall Street urinal. Nice. I feel like that's what we should refer to that paper as anyways. I'm going D Wall Street urinal. Correct. All right. Noah really at one point felt like being in Congress couldn't compare with the power of being in the media. History has proven this correct. How?

A, an oligarch bought the Washington post. B, a different oligarch bought Twitter. C, yet another oligarch already owns a media platform with two billion active users. Or D, the 118th Congress is on track to becoming the least productive Congress in history. That's it! Beating the 117th, I'm sure. Yeah, oh, wow, that's tough. I'm gonna go with secret answer E all of the above. Damn it, he gets it. Yeah, he got it. Noah, you got them all, you are the winner.

All right, well, I want a Tom essay next week, damn it. All right, someone's gotta be lost in the cold somewhere. Excellent. All right, well, for Tom, Noah, Cecil and Eli, I'm Heath. Thank you for hanging out with us today. We'll be back next week, and Tom will be an expert on something else. Between now and then, you can listen to cognitive dissonance, lawful assembly, dear old dads, talk and ship, god-awful movies, the scathing atheist, the skeptic rat, and D&D minus.

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Connect with us on social media. Take a look at show notes. Check out CitationPod.com. And that's when he told me that he was withholding public funds unless people supported his campaign. Brian, so you need someone to like, shut him up, pull the wool over his eyes? Well, no, I want you to arrest him.

For what? For the crimes I just told you about. Sorry, can you start over? I have no idea what you're talking about. You're the 11th cop I have talked to about this today. Stop resisting.