Fun facts about the U.S. founders (AKA the men in tights)

After dozens of hours reading and watching documentaries about the U.S. revolution, I believe famed historian Jeff Spicoli nailed it brilliantly in “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

“What this Jefferson dude was trying to say was ‘We left this England place because it was bogus. And if we don’t get some cool rules, and pronto, then we’ll just be bogus too.’”

Right.

I watched HBO’s 2008 miniseries about John Adams last week (cleverly titled “John Adams”) then - because I wasn’t tired of repressed men wearing tights, wigs and fluffy hats - watched “The American Experiment” documentary on Netflix. Then - because I’d started thinking with a British accent and have an addictive personality, started watching a Thomas Jefferson documentary.

I’ve gained fascinating insights into the “founders,” whom modern politicians hold as beacons of trust, wisdom, and unselfishness when these modern noisemakers happen to agree with something the founders said.

But boy, was there WAY more backstabbing, plotting, lying, and general weirdness involving the founders than we ever heard on Schoolhouse Rock.

And that’s without getting into the ugly stuff, like declaring slaves three-fifths a person (or, gosh, having slaves to begin with), pretending the natives weren’t here first, or leaving women out of all those rights.

A few fun Independence Day tidbits:

• John Adams was such a fair-minded lawyer, he actually represented the soldiers accused of killing five colonists during the infamous Boston Massacre of 1770. He got them acquitted, which angered many people, including his cousin Sam, who reacted predictably by drinking a lot of beer.

• George Washington once played for the other team. He was actually a British officer who may have helped start one of England’s 765,000 wars with France.

• Our side plucked Washington off the waiver wire after the uppity English looked down on young George and refused to promote him for being born in Virginia. Right. We were his rebound relationship.

• Washington got the job running our first army because the Continental Congress realized he was the only guy in the room wearing a uniform. The founders started a war with the greatest military power on Earth with pretty much one guy with military experience.

• For those who don’t like the French, know we’d still be speaking good English (gross) had the French not written us some big checks and sent ships and soldiers, 2,112 of whom died fighting for us. Of course, they just wanted another excuse to kill English guys, but still.

• German soldiers fought a war on American soil. The British hired 30,000 German privateers - also known as Hessians because it makes them sound like Conan the Barbarian bad guys - to fight for them, More than 7,500 were killed. They all had giant mustaches.

• Spain invaded Florida, resulting in the two-month Siege of Pensacola, not to be confused with MTV’s Spring Break 2004. Spanish soldiers, on our side this time, drove out Britain, who were wintering down south because they got sick of all the snow at Valley Forge. Democrats are currently trying to convince Spain to again invade Florida before November.

• The Netherlands - a large part of which is known as Holland, which is full of Dutch people with three names, in case we weren’t confused enough - were also our allies and sent us money because they didn’t like the British either. Chatty John Adams went to Holland and talked and talked and talked until they couldn’t stand it anymore and wrote him a check if he promised to leave.

• The epic bromance of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson became legendary. These guys were way more dramatic than my high school girlfriend and I. They were like the cartoon chipmunks who bow and say “after you” when it was time to write the Declaration of Independence. They couldn’t quit each other until we became a country and elections started. Then Jefferson started a newspaper to call Adams a “hideous hermaphroditical character” that ‘possessed neither the firmness of a man nor the gentleness of a woman.”

Which is a great line. I’m going to start an argument this weekend just to use it. “Vacate the barbecue, hideous hermaphroditical character! When it comes to cooking pork ribs, you possess neither the firmness of a man nor the gentleness of a woman.”

• Jefferson also accused Adams of “deceit and wickedness” and questioned his intelligence. Alexander Hamilton got into it and started another newspaper to rip Jefferson. Adams countered just before leaving office by appointing many of Jefferson’s enemies as judges.

• Strangely, the former besties, turned enemies, turned friends again in retirement, Adams and Jefferson, died the same day: July 4, 1826. Right - Independence Day, on the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence.

• Fifth president James Monroe also died on July 4, in 1834. I don’t know the odds of three of the first five presidents dying on the Fourth of July, but … yes I do. I just found a reason to use ChatGPT: 1 in 10,000.

• Adams’ last words were “Thomas Jefferson still survives,” not knowing - because he forgot to charge his phone - Jefferson died five hours earlier. Jefferson’s last words were “Is it the Fourth? I resign my spirit to God, my daughter, and my country.” Notice he didn’t mention Adams. I guess we now know who couldn’t quit whom.

• After driving away the British, the Articles of Confederation weren’t enough to stop states from going broke and even small rebellions from igniting. The guys in the fancy socks finally decided to get to work on a constitution in 1787, four years after we won.

• The Alien and Sedition acts we’ve heard so much about in recent years, were conceived while Adams was president, while Jefferson and James Madison pressured him to get the country involved in the French Revolution. The act allowed our president to deport people aligned with the wrong foreign cause and journalists who said bad things about the president. The Sedition Act was later killed off, though the alien act is still around today. Though Adams was able to keep us out of the French entanglement at the last minute - as votes were being counted for the next election - it was seen as the reason he lost to Jefferson in the 1800 election. Which didn’t improve their former bromance at all.

• By the way, people had up to 34 days to vote back then. It sometimes took months to decide who won. States determined their own voting rules. We didn’t have an Election Day until 1845.

• When the founders decided to call the U.S. leader a “president,” Adams - who was vice president - argued it sounded too ordinary, that there were already “presidents of fire companies and cricket clubs.”

• Adams wanted to call the U.S. leader “His Elective Majesty,” “His Mightiness,” and “His Highness the President of the United States of America, and Protector of the Rights of the Same.” Washington was like, “Just call me Mr. President, you dope.”

• Adams was mocked by other founders for his European-influenced suggestions of what to call Washington, with Adams’ nickname becoming “His Rotundity” Because, even in tights, wigs and puffy hats, the founders were dudes and couldn’t let that shit slide.

Happy Independence Day.

My daughters have a dad to feed, so please consider paying $8 a month to read these columns. Find more nonsense in Tony’s book “Lying Drunk,” available from Barnes & Noble at https://bit.ly/46xoaJJ or Amazon at https://a.co/d/cYNCUPp).