Splitting the Dog Vote with David Roth

00:00
Speaker 1
I want to tell you about a.

00:00
Speaker 2
New show from Radiotobia presents that we are so excited about. Alex and I are both storytellers, and we love stories, and that's a huge part of what we do on this show, and that's why we're so excited for this new podcast. It's called shocking, heartbreaking, transformative. Host Jess Shane puts out an open call on Craigslist for aspiring documentary subjects and selects four to work with. Together, they pull back the curtain on what really goes on behind the scenes of your favorite nonfiction shows, showing what it takes and what it costs to collect, edit, and consume stories about real people's lives. Radiotopia presents shocking, heartbreaking, transformative. Out now on your preferred podcast platform. Hello, and welcome to the season finale.

00:50
Speaker 1
Of season five of Normal gossip.

00:52
Speaker 2
I'm Kelsey McKinney, and in each episode of this podcast, we're going to bring you anonymous parcel of gossip from the real world today. I am so excited to have with me the Internet's favorite boy, my coworker, David Ross.

01:06
Speaker 3
How's it going? So I'll take listeners inside the game for a moment. Kelsey asked me to write a little bio for myself, and I wrote, oh.

01:13
Speaker 1
I have a bio. Don't worry, I'm going to read it.

01:16
Speaker 3
I just want to make it clear that I would not say that I'm the Internet's favorite boy in a setting where I thought it was recorded. I've said it many times.

01:24
Speaker 1
David Roth is an editor and a co owner at Defector Media. His writing has appeared in the New Republic, GQ, the New Yorker, and many other places. He co hosts the distraction podcast. He has a pet turtle named Marvin and is a huge advocate for having a little sweetie treaty in the afternoon. David Roth, welcome to the podcast.

01:42
Speaker 3
Thank you for having me, Kelsey. I appreciate it. It's good to be here.

01:45
Speaker 1
I'm so happy that you're here. Roth.

01:48
Speaker 3
Yes.

01:48
Speaker 1
Would you like to start me off with the classic first question and tell me what your relationship with gossip is?

01:53
Speaker 3
I think my initial instinct is that I've always been afraid of gossip is like, too, because that's like, I'm afraid of alligators. I'm not afraid of gossip is not going to eat me. But I think the idea of interpersonal gossip always did create kind of a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach. And then the more I thought about it, the more I realized that I've been doing nothing but gossiping. And I've been surrounded by nothing but gossip, just professionally, since I started getting proper jobs. That's all it is.

02:26
Speaker 1
Yeah. I mean, those are the two parts of sports. Gossip and the actual sports, right?

02:32
Speaker 3
And if you weigh them out, it's like 90% not sports. And then the 10% where they're, like, putting on their little uniforms and playing the game, that's neat. But the rest of it, and all the world building shit that you do as a fan, where you're kind of like, well, they don't like each other because their wives had a little bit of. It was a thing. It was on instagram. All of that stuff. Like, I know about that because some dude told me about it.

02:54
Speaker 1
Right. Another thing that you write about is politics. Do you have anything you'd like to say about gossip and politics before we move on?

03:01
Speaker 3
I mean, that's like the dark sided version of. It's the cause. There is a lot of it. But it's funny. Like, the stuff that I'm willing to accept in terms of weird, petty backbiting between wide receivers and quarterbacks, as soon as that's transposed to members of Congress, I instantly lose any sympathy for it. And I'm like, you need to grow up. You have an important job. Do your job, George Santos. Or know.

03:30
Speaker 1
Yes, because the difference is, right is like, one man's job is catch pointy shaped ball and the other person's job is legislate and lead the country. Right.

03:42
Speaker 3
Just an up or down vote on should we have a war is like a very different tenor and responsibility.

03:51
Speaker 1
Please stop chirping.

03:54
Speaker 3
Most of the time, politics. Gossip sucks. Like, it's just bad vibes and it's annoying people, like, people who really couldn't have any other job. Like a normal job. The best case scenario is they own a car dealership that has a family of raccoons living in it that they can't get to leave. Or, like, it's not a competent or likable cohort. But I've been trying to reconcile with the George Santos related gossip. Really is kind of primo shit. I don't like it. I don't like that he's in Congress. He represents Long island, which, as somebody who's from New Jersey, I have a whole narcissism of small differences relationship with Long island. But there's stuff about the Santos related shit that I actually like. I have to tip my cap.

04:39
Speaker 1
That is one of the annoying things about ethics, is often unethical things. They're funny.

04:44
Speaker 3
Yeah.

04:45
Speaker 1
That's a little fucked up in my opinion.

04:47
Speaker 3
No argument there, Roth.

04:50
Speaker 1
I was told that you brought a little gossip for me. Is that true?

04:54
Speaker 3
I have. So I struggled with to. It gave me a new appreciation for what you all do here, because I've been trying to put it together, and I'm realizing that most of the stuff that seems like it should be gossip is just the fact that I live in a big building full of unreasonable people. So what I settled on is something closer to home. I have a turtle named Marvin. As you know, he's a good lad. So when I got Marvin with his late brother, he was being sold out of one of those buckets of drywall on Canal street in Chinatown. You got two turtles, a small amount of food, and a tiny little case for $20. And this was like, I mean, this was 21 years ago. It was an impulse buy. And I did not know at the time.

05:44
Speaker 3
First of all, it's a strange impulse. I'm going to own that.

05:47
Speaker 1
Okay, thank you.

05:48
Speaker 3
I can't imagine how many people walked by that day and were like, cut me a piece. I want some of that.

05:55
Speaker 1
That man sold one pair of turtles in, like a month.

06:00
Speaker 3
All it takes is the right idiot. And that was me at that moment. But I didn't know that turtles live, basically, as long as people do. Like, I'll have Marvin, Lord willing, for the rest of my life. And, yeah, it's like pet birds. Okay, this will connect later. But when I did bring Marvin to a veterinarian, this was something that I learned. She's just basically like, you can expect another 20 od years. Super.

06:26
Speaker 1
And how long have you had Marvin at this point?

06:28
Speaker 3
21 years.

06:32
Speaker 1
Marvin's going to have a midlife crisis, buy a convertible.

06:36
Speaker 3
He's already, I think, kind of being like, so this is it. We never go on vacation together. I just sit here by the window. All right, cool. Sweet. I got him. I didn't know how to have a pet turtle. The turtles that I got, weirdly, I don't know that this law has changed. They're not illegal to possess, but they are illegal to sell in the state of New York.

06:58
Speaker 1
Okay.

06:58
Speaker 3
Not because they're an invasive species or anything, just because there's a lot of weird laws involving pets. So I basically did a crime, brought these two turtles home when I was in my early twenty s and still have one of them. I figured they were like fish.

07:11
Speaker 1
So rebellious.

07:12
Speaker 3
Yeah, it is. It's actually the single naughtiest thing that I've done in my life. So brought the turtle home, and I got, like, a tank for it, and I put some gravel down. I got a little rock for the guys to sit on. And that was just sort of what I thought you were supposed to do, because that's what you do with a fish in one way. And then also, I know that turtles need to be dry, so I did that. Years later, I met a guy. This was during a heat wave. A man who was walking his turtle, I guess, would be the term that you'd have for it in my neighborhood.

07:46
Speaker 1
Okay. Like, the turtle was on a leash.

07:49
Speaker 3
Well, it was not on a leash, but they're not super fast. That part of. I know that's kind of the one thing everybody knows about them, but it's true. Not a lot of burst, not a lot of stamina. So I saw this turtle walking down the street, and I saw a man kind of keeping an eye on it. And I was like, I'm a turtle owner myself. Like, welcome to the brotherhood. And he gave me a business card that his name, and then underneath it said, turtle expert. And I was like, I got to know. It didn't have a contact information. It was just like an identification thing. So I asked him about his turtle. He gave me some tips. One thing he said was, you got to get rid of the gravel in the turtle tank. It's not good for them.

08:26
Speaker 3
So I did.

08:26
Speaker 1
Okay.

08:27
Speaker 3
Next time I cleaned the turtle tank, I threw a bunch of rocks out with the garbage, which is okay. Just a long chain of me doing normal shit. That's what the rest of the story is going to be. So I got rid of it. Turtles didn't seem to mind. They didn't seem to notice. They're not okay. Talkative. Years later, continuing to clean the turtle tank whenever it gets gross, take the guys out, wash everything off, rinse everything out. Every now and then, I would still find little bits of gravel, little small rocks in there, and be like, that's weird. How did I miss that for six or seven years, right?

09:04
Speaker 1
How is this pebble still here?

09:05
Speaker 3
Right?

09:06
Speaker 1
There should be no more pebble.

09:07
Speaker 3
And I assumed it was like, I don't know, it was in the filter.

09:10
Speaker 1
Or whatever, stuck in a little tree.

09:12
Speaker 3
Yeah. And there's not a lot of places to hide in the tank. But I am both lazy and cleaning eternal tank is not fun. So I was just like, all right, let's get this over with.

09:24
Speaker 1
So you weren't investigating. You were just like, these are the secret pebbles that live in the tank.

09:27
Speaker 3
Yeah, but I didn't give it any thought. I should have, because it's a red flag that there's a rock where there wasn't a rock before. That's, like, not something that happens very much, even in a geological context. But in this case, I ignored it for, let's say, five years. Probably more than that.

09:46
Speaker 1
Okay.

09:48
Speaker 3
At some point, Marvin, being a turtle, made a mistake, and some of the little gusseted little plastic stuff at the bottom of the tank had come loose, and Marvin, being a turtle, ate it. Marvin and I would have said, if I could have reasoned with him, don't eat that. I'll give you food. I have food for him. But apparently, this is something I later learned from a veterinarian, that this is like. That's all that turtles do. They sleep. They like to sit on a rock. Sometimes they like to be in the water. And the other thing they do is eat every single thing that they find.

10:21
Speaker 1
They're just like me.

10:22
Speaker 3
Yes. I was going to say it's an energy that I've embodied throughout my own life, which I think is.

10:29
Speaker 1
They take after you.

10:30
Speaker 3
Yeah. They learned it from watching me. So he eats the plastic stuff. I'm worried he's getting agitated, and I have to start looking for a vet for the first time. They're very easy pets. They don't need to get, like, regular checkups or shots in the way that dogs or cats do. How much trouble could a turtle conceivably get in if all you're ever doing is moving it from one tank to the next?

10:54
Speaker 1
Right. But now he's eaten a small piece of rubber.

10:57
Speaker 3
Yes. Which leads us to the secret that my turtle had been keeping from me for more than a decade, which was that when we had those rocks in the tank, Marvin was absolutely going town and snacking on the rocks, eating them.

11:12
Speaker 1
Marvin.

11:13
Speaker 3
So he's getting upset finally just throwing.

11:18
Speaker 1
Rocks into the back of his mouth like popcorn.

11:23
Speaker 3
The way that I eat cheez its after, like, a low dose edible, that is how Marvin was eating the most definitionally inedible thing that exists on earth. So the way I find this out is finally, he. This is the gross part of the story. I apologize. He yorks up some of the plastic. I get that out of the tank. So he's not tempted to eat it again. Because Lord knows, the decision making is extremely suspect. I figure this is the end of it at some point over the evening hours. So after I do that, I'm, like, soothing Marvin in the way that I can't pet his shell. I don't even know if he likes it, but it's, like, all I could do.

11:59
Speaker 1
Yeah.

12:00
Speaker 3
Overnight, Marvin disgorged I would say two dozen small rocks one way or another in the tank. What it was years worth of the random pebbles that I found. I guess that Marvin had just had those in his body for ten years.

12:18
Speaker 1
The weird piece of rubber agitated them.

12:20
Speaker 3
Yes. At some point that got in there and sort of mixed it up, and so they came out. I got them out of there quickly and then started frantically trying to find a vet at that point.

12:33
Speaker 1
Right. Because you're like, my turtle has had dozens of rocks inside of him for years.

12:39
Speaker 3
So I found a lady. She's on the other side of town. I put Marvin in his little tank, and I got on the bus with my turtle, because at this point, there's no making this situation less deranged. So she takes a look at Marvin and checks him out. They did an x ray, which was nice, which revealed no further rocks, which was very reassuring. But basically the person did tell me, this is normal. Don't put any more rocks in front of your turtle. He's most definitely going to eat them or try to eat them, but otherwise he should be okay. Probably got another couple of decades in him. And so that was that, and I've continued to live. It's been a year. Marvin is behaving more or less as well as I think I could expect him to behave.

13:25
Speaker 3
But our relationship is different because I.

13:29
Speaker 1
Know now he has this whole other life.

13:31
Speaker 3
Yeah. Like animal whose brain is, like, maybe the size of a lentil, notably more cognitively powerful than a lentil successfully kept a secret from me for 15 years.

13:45
Speaker 1
Wow.

13:46
Speaker 3
Yeah.

13:46
Speaker 1
Does that make you feel sad, or does it make you feel impressed?

13:49
Speaker 3
Honestly, more impressed, because it's not. Again, this comes back to the fact that if Marvin had the capacity to be like, I got a level with you. I am absolutely full of rocks. I would have been like, all right, thank you for telling. Let's. Let's get to work on this. But he can't say anything. He just climbs up on the rock, and it's like. And that's like, the extent of our discourse is that.

14:13
Speaker 1
Rob, thank you. I loved this gossip about a pet.

14:16
Speaker 3
Thank you, Kelsey. I appreciate.

14:27
Speaker 2
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15:07
Speaker 1
Transition us. Can you tell me how you're feeling going into this election year?

15:12
Speaker 3
Full of dread. Thank you for asking. Yeah.

15:15
Speaker 1
Oh, you're so welcome.

15:17
Speaker 3
I had to write a lot about Trump during his presidency. And then when he was gone, to the extent I thought he was gone, I was just kind of like all cool. Like, I'm free now I can go back to writing my little posts about which baseball teams I find irritating or whatever. And, yeah, I guess I'll never be free, which is cool. And that's a bad feeling. How are you feeling about it? You pumped? You ready to get out there and have some discourse?

15:44
Speaker 1
No. I'm also feeling full of dread.

15:46
Speaker 2
A lot of people are going to.

15:47
Speaker 1
Be interested in the presidential election next coming year and elections about senators and representatives and judges, and those are all very important. Registering to vote is good, but could I interest you today in hearing about a much stupider kind of election?

16:03
Speaker 3
Oh, my gosh, yes. I'll take the stupidest election gossip you've got.

16:08
Speaker 1
I've got it. Our friend of a friend today, we're going to call her Talia.

16:14
Speaker 3
Hello, Talia.

16:15
Speaker 1
Talia lives in the southwest, beautiful desert town. She grew up here. She loves it. But it's the kind of place with so much sun and sky and space that people become, like, a little eccentric. In some ways, they are normally eccentric, and in other ways, they are not so normal. All right, so, for example, a normal way that these people are eccentric is that they have a Facebook group for the town where people fight. They also fight in this group about normal things, like which of the chain grocery stores are best and which locations are bougiest and which locations are most crowded and which locations they hate. But they also love to fight about politics, obviously, in this group. And because this is the kind of town that is, like, a little eccentric, they love to give people nicknames in this town.

17:01
Speaker 1
So, for example, someone named Matthew who believes that the earth is flat, they now call flat few.

17:08
Speaker 3
Good. All right, that's solid. Honestly, whatever. It might be a little cruel to do that, but if you bring enough craft to the nicknaming, I think I got to allow it.

17:16
Speaker 1
Yeah. This is just an example of flat few is not actually important to our story. I just thought you would like to know the most important member of our story today is named Cheez it.

17:26
Speaker 3
All right.

17:27
Speaker 1
Cheez it is the mayor.

17:32
Speaker 3
It's not necessarily what you want, but let's see. I don't know much about Cheez its policies. I just feel like I know a little bit about Cheez its tanning habits.

17:39
Speaker 1
You do know a lot about eccentric mayors, though. Can you tell me the pros and cons of having an eccentric mayor?

17:47
Speaker 3
I think in some ways, it's like there's a harm reduction argument in that if that person is the mayor, then they don't have another job where you might have to deal with them more often.

17:57
Speaker 1
Yeah. They're not like your doctor.

17:59
Speaker 3
Right. So if they're in the mayor's office, then they're not, like, performing a physical on you or, like, fixing your car.

18:08
Speaker 1
They can't cause you immediate death.

18:11
Speaker 3
Yeah. It's more of an administrative process, which is good. It slows them down.

18:15
Speaker 1
Yeah.

18:16
Speaker 3
So is Cheezit not an affectionate nickname? Because I think of Cheez its as being kind of good.

18:21
Speaker 1
Oh, yeah. Thank you so much for asking. Cheez it is the actual name.

18:25
Speaker 3
Okay.

18:25
Speaker 1
Because Cheez it is the pet mayor of this town.

18:29
Speaker 3
All right. Go on.

18:30
Speaker 1
The pet mayor is in the mayor's culture department. In this town, the pet mayor is on a two year term.

18:37
Speaker 3
Okay.

18:38
Speaker 1
Every two years, they elect a new pet mayor.

18:40
Speaker 3
So when you say pet mayor, you're talking about animal pet?

18:44
Speaker 1
Yes.

18:45
Speaker 3
Good. All right, cool.

18:46
Speaker 1
This is an elected pet.

18:49
Speaker 3
People go to the polls.

18:51
Speaker 1
Yes.

18:51
Speaker 3
Great.

18:52
Speaker 1
People. Pokemon go to the polls every two years to elect a pet mayor. They don't actually go to the literal poll. They have to do it separately for legal reasons. But it's an online poll.

19:02
Speaker 3
You don't want to force the pets to register with a party. And then they got a campaign, donations. It's a whole thing.

19:08
Speaker 1
Yeah. You don't want that thing about Cheez it is that this is Cheez. It's fifth two year term as pet mate.

19:15
Speaker 3
Oh, my gosh. So this is really more of like a pet president for life scenario.

19:20
Speaker 1
Yeah. There are no term limits on pet mayor, which is maybe a flaw, depending on your opinion. So Cheizet has been pet mayor of this town for a decade. How do you feel about this?

19:31
Speaker 3
I mean, I want to know more about cheesette. I'd want to review some footage, but I feel like, in general, that's not something that necessarily happens by accident. Like, when a person is mayor for ten years, something is not cooking. Right. But if corruption, if a pet. Right. But I don't think that. And again, I'm looking forward to being proven wrong. If this is the case, I don't think that cheezit could warp the mechanisms of power such that cheezit remains in power for a decade. Probably it's just that Cheez it is one of those spaniels that climbs on your leg in a cute, like. It's like a nice way to be.

20:07
Speaker 1
Yeah. Our friend of a friend, Talia, she loves Cheez it.

20:11
Speaker 3
Cool.

20:11
Speaker 1
She's like, cheez it is a great pet bear. Very quiet, very calm. Kids love cheez it. What kind of pet do you think cheez it is?

20:22
Speaker 3
So I'm hoping that it's, like, a nice dog, but I feel like, because we're in the, like, all bets are off. If you were like, cheez it is a gila monster. But, like, a nice gila monster, I'd be. So is cheez it. What I'm hoping for is, like, aged pug with very serene vibes. But I'm thinking that's probably not right.

20:46
Speaker 1
Wrong. Cheez it is a goldfish.

20:48
Speaker 3
Also good.

20:51
Speaker 1
As pet mayor. Cheez it has many jobs. Cheez it attends restaurant openings. Cheez it can write endorsements of businesses.

21:01
Speaker 3
Really?

21:02
Speaker 1
Yes. There is a sticker that says Cheez it approved and has a picture of Cheez it that can get, like, slapped on things.

21:08
Speaker 3
That's excellent.

21:09
Speaker 1
The pet mayor also has a column in the local paper. Cheez it has a lot of opinions. Know, don't litter. Water's smart. Microplastics are bad. Very powerful position.

21:24
Speaker 3
These are all positions that I also hold. I would have thought that I was not qualified to be a pet mayor, but it turns out that, policy wise, cheese and I are pretty well aligned.

21:35
Speaker 1
Yeah. You may be asking, though, how does the goldfish attend a restaurant opening?

21:39
Speaker 3
I'm assuming that they have a security detail or just the guy carrying them in a bowl.

21:45
Speaker 1
Carrying around in a bowl. Exactly. So similarly to when Marvin went on the bus. That's kind of cheez its whole life.

21:55
Speaker 3
That's incredible. I mean, I feel like, in some ways, that was probably the best day of Marvin's life. It's great to think that for Cheez, it gets to live that experience multiple times. Like, every time a qdoba opens in town.

22:08
Speaker 1
Exactly.

22:09
Speaker 3
It's great.

22:10
Speaker 1
Cheesett gets to go christen it. The pet mayor's biggest job in this town is in the fall. There's a big county fair, and the pet mayor is the host of the famously.

22:20
Speaker 3
Yeah, no, that all scans, more or less.

22:23
Speaker 1
Yeah. How are you feeling at this point?

22:26
Speaker 3
A little worried for cheese it. If I'm being honest, it seems like a lot of work for goldfish. Again, not famously. One of the more forward thinking organisms on earth.

22:38
Speaker 1
Yeah. Small brain, little brain.

22:40
Speaker 3
Yeah. But a short memory as well. So it's the sort of thing where even if this goes bad, cheese, it's going to wake up the next day. Being like, that was an amazing fair, probably.

22:49
Speaker 1
I hate to tell you this, but your feeling of dread is accurate. Usually no pets die on this podcast, but one day in May, a whole summer before Cheesette's 11th county fair, cheeset goes belly up. Everyone is very sad, but everyone is like, Cheesett had a good life. He was mayor. He's going to the mayor's fishbowl in the sky.

23:19
Speaker 3
That's an incredibly long run for a goldfish. Ten years is not just a long time to be in power for any pet. But ten years is a long time for a goldfish to not be dead.

23:32
Speaker 1
Yes. Whenever there is a death in office, we have to ask, do you suspect foul play?

23:44
Speaker 3
I mean, where goldfishes are concerned, I feel like that is overdoing it, just in the sense that goldfish die for plenty of reasons. Usually it's just like it's their time. But, yeah, you're right. If Cheez it is all over town. If everywhere that you're going, you're seeing a sticker of Cheesett endorsing something, or crucially, not seeing it and being like, well, what does Cheesett know about this place that I don't? You're going to make a lot of enemies in ten years in power.

24:16
Speaker 1
Yeah.

24:17
Speaker 3
So I'm a little concerned about that part of it.

24:19
Speaker 1
The town folk are concerned and they are gossiping and they are posting in the Facebook group and they are like, we are very concerned about Cheez its death. To the point that Cheez its owner is forced to issue a statement. Cheez its owner is like, no one needs to worry. Cheez it had a long and happy life. Cheez its it's vet suspects that a lifetime of being given snacks by children did him in.

24:46
Speaker 3
But that's the way to go. If you're a goldfish, that's the way to so. And I'm assuming the statement is like, I do not encourage flat Earth Matthew's speculation that cheese it was a hologram or anything. The discourse is not great, but everybody is generally pulling in the same direction.

25:05
Speaker 1
Like everyone who dies in office. While we are sad about cheese its death, the process must move on. Yeah, there's a county fair that seat.

25:14
Speaker 3
Cannot be empty on day one of the county fair. I agree, but there's not a chain of succession for the mayoral pet.

25:24
Speaker 1
Thank you for asking. This is a question I had for you, which is, what do you know about vacant executive seats and how these positions of power could be filled?

25:33
Speaker 3
Ordinarily, there's a chain of succession. So theoretically, if there had been sort of a resilient process built in here, that it would be after cheese, itsit's passing. Someone from the human mayor's office or some other part of the political establishment would knock on the door of somebody who owns, like, a beagle and be like, I have some great news about crackers. You're going to want to get everybody together for this. And then you announce either, like, an interim pet mayor because you need to have an election eventually, but the seat can't be empty for too long or else it creates a power vacuum and then anarchy. So what's their process? Do they have a process?

26:19
Speaker 1
Something I learned in my research of this is that in many states, the governor just gets to appoint someone to a position. Like, if a senator retires, the governor just gets to be like, this is the new senator, and what party that person was before is irrelevant, which is very interesting and scary. Do you think that would be a good policy for a pet mayor?

26:43
Speaker 3
I think it's a better policy for a pet mayor than it is for a United States senator, only, again, because the risk seems somewhat lower because a lot of times, governors, it's another one of those sorts of jobs where people just agree to elect someone so that they won't have to see them as much.

27:01
Speaker 1
Yes.

27:02
Speaker 3
So in this case, I don't know who would necessarily be making that decision, but it does seem like the stakes are, you don't want to say lower because a pet mayor is important, but they're lower.

27:14
Speaker 1
Yes. The problem here is that the pet mayor intentionally has a short term. Right. A two year term. So theoretically, a pet mayor should not die in office.

27:25
Speaker 3
Right.

27:25
Speaker 1
And so there was no plan.

27:28
Speaker 3
Terrible.

27:29
Speaker 1
Additionally, this town has only had a pet mayor for 20 years, and she's. It has been in office for ten.

27:34
Speaker 3
Right. This is, again, one of those things where it's really easy to come up with depressing american political parallels, where it's just sort of like people are just voting for this person because they forgot that you could have someone else as your.

27:47
Speaker 1
Yeah.

27:48
Speaker 3
And that's how you wind up with corny. Yeah. Like people that are basically, like, if the crypt keeper went to college, those people are still in the United States Senate. That's not what you want.

28:00
Speaker 1
Yes. There is no precedent for what to do here. So a special committee is called in the human mayor's office and it is decided that out of honor for Cheez it, a special election will be held before the fair.

28:16
Speaker 3
Thank goodness.

28:16
Speaker 1
To elect a new mayor to finish Cheez its term.

28:20
Speaker 3
This seems like the right thing to do. That said, I feel know there's probably a lot of trauma in the community and people might not be ready to accept either a new mayor or just deal with the usual mudsling that I imagine predominates in a pet mayoral campaign.

28:36
Speaker 1
Yes. The other problem is that this is decided in May after she's at staff and the fair is in the fall. So people are going to vote on Labor Day so that the mayor can be inaugurated at the fair, which means that there's a shortened campaign window.

28:54
Speaker 3
Yeah. This is one of those things where everything that you're saying to me is completely insane, and yet I'm, like, nodding, being like, oh, that's smart. Good. Have it on a holiday. That way more people can vote. Yeah, go on. This is good. So far, I'm pretty impressed with the plan that they're rolling out.

29:10
Speaker 1
Yeah. The decisions made by the human mayor's office are announced in a classic way on the local news network.

29:19
Speaker 3
Yeah. So people know.

29:21
Speaker 1
People know. The clip from the local news network is posted in the Facebook group. The time period that this story takes place in is a time in which this town is ungoverned for several months.

29:32
Speaker 3
Yes.

29:33
Speaker 1
There is no one to attend the elementary school graduation. There is no one to christen restaurants. The only benefit of this is that one of the restaurants that opened during the period with no pet mayor was a sushi restaurant. So Cheez, it was not forced to do that.

29:48
Speaker 3
Yes. Which is a small like, because I'm assuming that cheez, it would have endorsed. But that's the sort of thing that would reflect poorly on your legacy.

29:58
Speaker 1
Yeah. It's hard when you're forced to endorse the death of your know, and being.

30:03
Speaker 3
Like, wow, they look great.

30:05
Speaker 1
Yeah, exactly. Our friend of a friend, Talia, has a dog named Wolfgang. Wolfgang is named after the composer Mozart. Yes. Because he has, like, weird flippy hair, like a founding father.

30:20
Speaker 3
Okay.

30:21
Speaker 1
It's the kind of dog that our colleague Samur would really like.

30:25
Speaker 3
Oh, yes.

30:27
Speaker 1
Could you describe this dog?

30:29
Speaker 3
So kind of like a roomy eyed senior chihuahua. Like the sort of dog that you would pick up and put in, like, you know how you get sweatshirts and got the one big pocket in the front.

30:40
Speaker 1
Yeah.

30:40
Speaker 3
Not only could you put this dog into that pocket, it would fit in such a way that no one would know. Like, you could sneak your dog into a movie. So is Wolfgang, like, 13? Like, all of Samur's chihuahuas are things that. They're adorable, but they're also, like, a little unholy. Like, their tongue never goes back in their mouth and they look really tired all the time.

31:03
Speaker 1
Yes. All of these words you're saying are exactly accurate. Wolfgang is twelve years old. He is a very small white dog.

31:11
Speaker 3
Nice.

31:11
Speaker 1
He is a little fucked up. His tongue is always sticking out.

31:15
Speaker 3
Fantastic.

31:16
Speaker 1
He cannot walk in a straight line. He is the happiest dog on earth.

31:22
Speaker 3
I don't know if you know the answer to this question. Are non residents of this town allowed to vote in this mayoral election?

31:28
Speaker 1
Great question. No, they are not.

31:30
Speaker 3
All right. Because I would love to throw my support vigorously behind the dog you just described.

31:36
Speaker 1
Do you think if you're Talia and you have Wolfgang, this little tongue sticking out, can't walk in a straight line dog? Do you submit Wolfgang for the pet mayoral race?

31:47
Speaker 3
I mean, I'd certainly be inclined to do it because it sounds like a pretty special animal that I think people would really enjoy. But I guess the concern here is whether your neighbors think that you're being power hungry or I guess they would say that Wolfgang is being power hungry, which seems completely unfair to hang on a dog that can't even walk in a straight line.

32:11
Speaker 1
Talia is like, I see some pros here, right? She's like, wolfgang would absolutely win the hearts and minds of the people of this town with his funky appearance and winning attitude. She's like, but the con is that I don't want to write a column for the paper.

32:27
Speaker 3
Oh, I hadn't thought about that.

32:28
Speaker 1
Yeah.

32:29
Speaker 3
Just kind of like, oh, wow, that's incredible. That cheese can type, let alone be so informed about the perils of microplastics. But yes. All right. Obviously, yeah. The person writes the column. That makes more sense.

32:42
Speaker 1
Yeah, I'm sorry to take this she magic off of this. Talia is like, I don't want to write the column for the paper. She's also like, I love to lurk in the Facebook group. I love to observe the town drama, and I feel that this is going to be a contentious election, and I do not want to submit my beautiful dog to that.

33:02
Speaker 3
Yeah. To have to deal with the mudslinging and the character assassination. There's a lot of good pets that probably never run for office for those very reasons.

33:09
Speaker 1
That's so true. In June, the first straw poll is released. It identifies two leading candidates for pet mayor. The first is sir midnight the iguana.

33:24
Speaker 3
All right.

33:25
Speaker 1
Sir Midnight is a nocturnal iguana. He wears a tiny cowboy hat with a tiny turquoise stud. Okay, that's all there is to know about sir midnight the iguana.

33:35
Speaker 3
Okay.

33:36
Speaker 1
The second pet mayor candidate in the lead is a husky named Cadillac.

33:43
Speaker 3
Okay. I'd want to know more, but I like the idea of a husky in leadership. Although I think that, again, if I had to choose, those are not smart dogs either. I think I would rather have a small, less messy dog at a restaurant opening than a husky. But I don't know. I'd have to know more about Cadillac's positions on stuff.

34:03
Speaker 1
What else do you know about huskies?

34:04
Speaker 3
Are you setting me up to talk about Sneaker Wolf? Are we allowed to do that?

34:08
Speaker 1
We can. No, I wasn't, but please, this is a neighborhood.

34:12
Speaker 3
Like, there's a dog in our neighborhood that my wife and I have basically elevated to the status of a minor supernatural creature that is a very big, very fluffy husky whose owners put it in those little shoes that dogs wear, like the little booties. And so we call him Sneaker Wolf. And if you see Sneaker Wolf all day long, you will have good luck.

34:31
Speaker 1
He's blessed.

34:32
Speaker 3
So, yes, I don't know if Cadillac's got it. Like Sneaker Wolf's got it, but they're powerful animals, but they're not uncomplicated animals.

34:40
Speaker 1
Talia is very against Cadillac being mayor because she thinks that a pet mayor should be able to go places and not create loud chaos.

34:51
Speaker 3
Right.

34:51
Speaker 1
That a pet mayor should be seen and not hurt.

34:54
Speaker 3
It's going to be hard with a husky.

34:56
Speaker 1
Huskies, they're yelling all the time. They've got shit to say.

35:00
Speaker 3
Yep.

35:01
Speaker 1
Hollering Talia's like, this is why cheese. It was the perfect mayor. He was inside a bowl. He never yelled.

35:10
Speaker 3
Literally incapable of doing it. All right, so, yeah, is this inspiring Talia to like? Because sometimes this is, I think, again, many political campaigns have started this way. There's two candidates. You don't think they're worthwhile. And so you would start to think to yourself, why not my half blind Chihuahua?

35:27
Speaker 1
No, this is not inspiring her right now.

35:30
Speaker 3
She just hates writing collar so much.

35:33
Speaker 1
Yes. And she hates Cadillac because she is against Cadillac's owner.

35:39
Speaker 3
Oh.

35:40
Speaker 1
Cadillac's owner is a man we are going to call Jungle Red.

35:44
Speaker 3
That's an ominous nickname here.

35:47
Speaker 1
His nickname came about because he was called red growing up because he had red hair. Then his nephew became the quarterback of the local football team. So then he was Uncle Red. But this man also owns a junkyard on the outside of town and makes strange and intriguing metal sculptures. So now he's called Junkle Red.

36:06
Speaker 3
All right, good.

36:07
Speaker 1
Yeah. So you could see that this is in the same spirit of the town that named someone flat few.

36:11
Speaker 3
Yeah, it's a town of punny people.

36:14
Speaker 1
Jungle red enters Cadillac the husky into the mayoral race. That's fine. The way that you enter your pet into the pet mayor race is you submit a photo and a bio, and those things go on the pet mayor's website.

36:29
Speaker 3
Okay.

36:29
Speaker 1
And then people will aggregate that onto the Facebook group for you to see. Right. So it says, like, vote for sir midnight, and here are his hobbies or whatever.

36:37
Speaker 3
Yep, he loves his little hat.

36:39
Speaker 1
Yes. Jungle Red is like, that is a not enough for me. Jungle Red begins campaigning hard immediately. He's posting to the Facebook group every day, reminding people to vote. He's texting people. He's making t shirts with Cadillac on them and handing them out.

36:58
Speaker 3
So the first two things make me think that Jungle Red needs to respect people's boundaries. But then the third thing makes me think that I should have a t shirt that has Cadillac on it. So it's complicated.

37:08
Speaker 1
It's confusing. Reasonable people are like, I'm very annoyed by this because this is a fake election for pet mayor. And this man is just destroying the Facebook group with all of his unreasonable people are also upset, but they are upset because they are like, this is disrespectful to the memory of cheese. It.

37:32
Speaker 3
They're like, nobody should serve as pet mayor.

37:35
Speaker 1
Yes.

37:36
Speaker 3
All right. Yeah, that's also an unreasonable position. But again, it's easier for me to understand that than the idea of just, like, bulk texting everyone that's ever been to your junkyard and being like, Cadillac wants you to roar your way to the pole. Shouldn't be doing that.

37:56
Speaker 1
One day, Talia is out in the square of this town with the wolfgang, and she sees jungle red running around handing out flyers. On the flyer is a meme. Why are you making that sound already?

38:15
Speaker 3
Memes are for computers and phones. Anyway, go ahead. So whatever.

38:21
Speaker 1
The meme is the meme of that guy pointing at a butterfly.

38:25
Speaker 3
Yep.

38:26
Speaker 1
The butterfly on the meme that she has handed on this flyer is titled Cadillac.

38:31
Speaker 3
Okay.

38:31
Speaker 1
And at the bottom, the text says, is this the pet mayor?

38:35
Speaker 3
That's not how you do that meme, though. I don't think. I think that is not correct. I mean, I love where jungle Red's head is at, I guess, in the abstract, but. Yeah, well, whatever.

38:47
Speaker 1
Can you explain why this is wrong in case someone doesn't know?

38:50
Speaker 3
Well, because the idea is somebody confusing the butterfly for some other thing, because they don't have any context. If you're the guy in the meme, you don't know shit. You don't know what a butterfly is. You think it's something else because you are for reasons of self interest.

39:08
Speaker 1
Do you tell jungle Red that this meme is wrong?

39:11
Speaker 3
Certainly not. But this is what separates me as somebody who is, I don't know, conflict diverse from somebody who is, like, going back and forth about whether or not their dog should be mayor. I'm hoping that Talia was like, hey, you don't understand how this meme works, do you?

39:29
Speaker 1
No. See, in this sense, you and Talia are aligned.

39:32
Speaker 3
Good.

39:32
Speaker 1
Talia is like, not my circus, not my monkey. I am not getting involved in this. Thank you for the flyer.

39:38
Speaker 3
I love it. That is the right move. Never correct someone on a meme. Like, at that. Like, you're both in the wrong.

39:46
Speaker 1
Yeah. That's not making you look good. No, to be. I'm actually. This is not how you use this meme. When Talia gets home, she's like, okay, whatever. I've had this the whole day. I'm going to look at the Facebook group, and it seems, based on vibes, that sir midnight is pulling ahead. But there have been several new additions to the Merrill race. And so she clicks through to the pet mayor's page, and she's scrolling through when she notices something. There on the page is Wolfgang. Oh, and it has his name. And it has her name. And it has a little bio that says that Wolfgang loves hiking.

40:26
Speaker 3
That certainly can't be true, though.

40:28
Speaker 1
He can't walk in a straight line.

40:30
Speaker 3
Right?

40:30
Speaker 1
And Talia is like, I did not submit this. I would never say that Wolfgang liked hiking. Who submitted this? What do you do here?

40:40
Speaker 3
I mean, this is what's kind of hard about it, because again, in the same way that correcting someone on a meme sort of implicates you in a conversation that you may not want to be implicated in, it feels like Talia has made her decision that she and Wolfgang will stay outside of this process. Obviously, someone jumped her into it, but now there's nothing that you can do to sort of extricate yourself that doesn't involve getting more and more is political intrigue the right word here? Getting that doesn't leave you knee deep in this political intrigue.

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43:53
Speaker 1
Talia is right in line with you. She's like, I am not thrilled about Wolfgang being on this page and being submitted. She's like, but probably it's just because he's, like, so cute that someone submitted him out of love. She's like, and there are a ton of other weird pets on this page, right? Like turtles and birds and all sorts of things that could be pet.

44:14
Speaker 3
Yep.

44:15
Speaker 1
So she's like, I'm not concerned about.

44:17
Speaker 3
This, but there's a risk there, too. I mean, obviously, you don't want to be, like, texting your buddies to be like, hey, did you run my fucking pet for mayor? But also, again, as soon as you start doing it, then you're doing it. So as somebody who is profoundly lazy, in many ways, there's a part of me that would be like, all right, well, let's see what happens here. The easy way out. Maybe it winds up with your pet being mayor, but it also just not doing anything doesn't require you to do anything.

44:46
Speaker 1
Then in July, the local news releases its second straw poll with two months till election day. It says, sir, midnight. The iguana is leading the poll results with 65%.

45:01
Speaker 3
That's a commanding lead Caddy.

45:04
Speaker 1
The husky has 35%, but Wolfgang has 5%.

45:12
Speaker 3
So Wolfgang is in not even a spoiler role. This is like a protest vote for people that have issues one way or the other. Still, there's a risk there. I understand that concern. But again, as somebody who likes to stay out of things, I'd be like, oh, well, it's 5%. He's not going to win, right? Although. Okay, go on.

45:37
Speaker 1
Talia is like, how did Wolfgang get 5% of this vote? She's like, I'm not campaigning. He's just on this page. How did he do this? So she goes to the Facebook page and she searches her dog's name, and she finds a post from someone who has posted Wolfgang's photo and bio and been like, this is the most ugly, cute dog I've ever seen.

45:59
Speaker 3
Which, again, ordinarily is the sort of thing that as the parent of an ugly dog, you'd be like, thank you. He really appreciates that.

46:06
Speaker 1
Yes. Talia's like, wow, that's so true. He is an ugly, cute dog.

46:09
Speaker 3
Boy, his eyes stick out so much.

46:13
Speaker 1
But then she looks at the comment, and all of these people are, like, saluting. Like, I pledge my allegiance to Wolfgang because ugly, cute, and I want to see him out of it.

46:22
Speaker 3
So she's finding out that her dog's got shooters. Like, her dog has, like, a street team that she did not authorize.

46:29
Speaker 1
Yes.

46:30
Speaker 3
All right.

46:31
Speaker 1
So now, even though she shouldn't care, she's like, uhoh. I'm now in a dangerous position where Wolfgang is a grassroots movement that I did not approve.

46:44
Speaker 3
Many such cases for candidates where you suddenly find yourself beholden to a base that you didn't really consciously cultivate. Most of the people that have that happen to them, though, are, like, awful people that want to be in office and not dogs that sleep for 19 hours a day.

47:00
Speaker 1
Yes. Because of this, Talia is like, oh, I need to pay extra special, close attention to what's happening in this mayoral race, lest my dog be elected pet mayor. So she is very up on the drama. First, people are mad because Jungle Red is posting another bad meme every single day. Then they're mad because he's mad that only people get mad when he posts. Then someone accuses jungle red of running a dirty campaign.

47:34
Speaker 3
Like, of going negative.

47:36
Speaker 1
Yes. And then jungle Red accuses sir midnight of slandering him.

47:43
Speaker 3
So I want to be fair to all parties involved here, although I know that probably the smarter move is to be incredibly unfair to all parties involved, not just for podcast purposes, either. Just like, these are all. It's pretty deranged. Like, just at baseline here, I feel compelled to ask, has sir midnight slandered Cadillac at all?

48:04
Speaker 1
Very good question. So not directly.

48:08
Speaker 3
Okay, well, yeah, that's how your good candidates do it.

48:11
Speaker 1
And no one is really sure what Jungle Red is talking about. Right? Everyone's like, it's a guess. It's possible. But they all hate jungle red. Because of this slew of events, the moderators ban campaigning within the group.

48:28
Speaker 3
Smart. But it is weird to have there be, like, a no politics rule in your Facebook group, but it's entirely about things that have four legs.

48:37
Speaker 1
Yes. All right, this obviously does not help, because before Jungle Red could post, now he is being suppressed and he is being silent.

48:48
Speaker 3
Silenced his speech. Yeah, this is terrible. Whatever. I can feel sympathetic to this in the way that I feel like there's politics in everything. You write about baseball and you're really writing about capitalism, or you write about a movie, but you're really writing about the culture that produced the movie. That's probably harder with an election where all know, competitors are pets, but I feel like jungle Red could make that case.

49:15
Speaker 1
Yes. And he does. Almost overnight, jungle red installs, I would say, maybe public art exhibits around the town, where at every major intersection he plants car hoods in the ground. And one side he has painted pictures of Cadillac, and on the other side, he has spray painted vote Caddy.

49:45
Speaker 3
I mean, I would give him some credit for not going negative because I had this idea about being like, what do we really know about those ads where the image abruptly turns black and white?

49:58
Speaker 1
And it.

50:01
Speaker 3
I do think that said, you can't. With the power of having a lot of large format metal garbage on your property comes a certain amount of responsibility. You have to keep it there.

50:14
Speaker 1
Oh, so you don't like this?

50:17
Speaker 3
I mean, I respect it, but I don't like it. If that makes like, I feel like it's really good that he's advocating for his dog the way that he is, but also I feel like the way he's advocating for his dog is bad.

50:29
Speaker 1
Yes. This creates chaos in the Facebook group because the question is this an inventive way to campaign or is this vandalism? Yeah, but jungle Red isn't allowed to post anymore. So in order to defend himself and continue to campaign for Cadillac, he and Cadillac are now everywhere. All the.

50:47
Speaker 3
Oh, gosh. Like it's retail politics.

50:50
Speaker 1
Yes. They are at the bar. Cadillac is yelling. They're at church. Cadillac is not yelling. They're at a restaurant opening. Cadillac's yelling. Yeah, they're at every meeting for the fair and it's planning. At some of them, Cadillac is yelling.

51:09
Speaker 3
I mean, this is. It can't be helped. And yet at the same time, it could be helped. I was going to say, like, if you bring your dog. Let me amend that statement. If you bring your large howling wolf to shit, it might howl at the shit that you bring it to. That would be one way to avoid that scenario would be to not bring your dog everywhere.

51:29
Speaker 1
Yeah. In August, few weeks before the election, someone posts to the town Facebook group two photos. One of them is a picture of Caddy from a restaurant opening on the main street. One of them is a photo of Caddy at a city council meeting. The text with these photos reads, restaurant opening, August 4 07:00 p.m. City council meeting, August 4 07:00 p.m.. Nice. 17 question marks.

52:10
Speaker 3
So the concern here is that not just that junkle Red is running a dirty campaign, but that possibly we're in second shooter grassy knoll territory here. Is there another dog. That's like, this is happening at different places across town.

52:30
Speaker 1
Yes.

52:31
Speaker 3
Intriguing. Go on.

52:33
Speaker 1
The accusation here is that there is more than one caddy, and this rapidly evolves. People are like, wow, Caddy has been everywhere. Why does Caddy only yell sometimes?

52:46
Speaker 3
It's a good question, though.

52:48
Speaker 1
Could it be that one caddy yells and one is, this feels a.

52:55
Speaker 3
Little flat earth, Matthew, to me. I'm going to be honest with, like, I feel like I'm seeing his fingerprints on this, and yet I feel like these are totally valid questions. How is jungle red going to answer these accusations? This is the test of a campaign, I think.

53:11
Speaker 1
Yes. Everyone is like, is jungle red pulling some kind of weird husky parent trap where he's sending all these huskies out into the world?

53:20
Speaker 3
You got to ask the question, right?

53:22
Speaker 1
Jungle red posts to the Facebook group. He says, I thought campaigning wasn't allowed in.

53:29
Speaker 3
Well, well.

53:30
Speaker 1
Then he posts again and is like, if anyone wants to come over to my house and look through all my stuff, you could see that there's only one husky here.

53:40
Speaker 3
Cadillac has nothing to hide.

53:42
Speaker 1
Exactly. The moderators lock the comments on both of these posts. This does not assuage anyone.

53:50
Speaker 3
No, it never does. There's no way to be a good moderator in a scenario like this. But once the question of the second husky is in the air, you have to let people have it out.

54:01
Speaker 1
I feel like, yeah, they got to hash it out. They got to figure it out whether there's one husky or two huskies. Then one week out from the election, someone posts an article that says that when iguanas are stressed, they can bite people.

54:18
Speaker 3
See, that's dirty pool. That's what I was expecting from the negative campaigning thing.

54:23
Speaker 1
No one mentioned sir midnight in this post, but everyone knows it's about him because the post is added by anonymous account titled mothers against iguana mayors, which you may notice has an acronym name.

54:41
Speaker 3
Yeah. Again, we've been over the fact that everybody involved in this needs to just be powered down for a little while, time to work on their shit. And yet at the same time, maim is like, it's not even really a forced acronym. I guess you'd have to see that the people involved are mothers, but solid. It works.

55:06
Speaker 1
Yeah. Do you believe that this is oppo research being deployed against sir midnight?

55:10
Speaker 3
It absolutely feels like. I mean, I think there probably are valid concerns about getting bit by iguanas. I didn't realize that I myself had those concerns until just now. Now I kind of do.

55:21
Speaker 1
Well, you are afraid of alligators yeah, right.

55:24
Speaker 3
But that's because I saw alligators when I was a kid. I'd never been pursued by an iguana.

55:30
Speaker 1
It's not too late.

55:31
Speaker 3
Yeah, I was going to say I got a lot of living to do. This feels almost like beyond the jungle red method, because it seems like his type of politics and campaigning has been very old fashioned. Press the flesh, put your dog on a float at the July 4 parade type version of doing it, whereas this has more of a contemporary campaign. Kind of like a political action committee.

55:59
Speaker 1
Yes.

56:00
Speaker 3
Would have put this ad up.

56:02
Speaker 1
What do you think the effect of this is going to be?

56:06
Speaker 3
I think whatever validity there is to the argument of someone could get bit at the sushi restaurant opening if an iguana is there and stressed.

56:17
Speaker 1
Yes.

56:17
Speaker 3
Which any of us who in the position of that kind of responsibility. I'm getting stressed out just thinking about it. But the idea of Cadillac's negatives are known. Right. Which is that he never shuts up and he makes wolf sounds everywhere he goes. He probably sheds, but that's, like, secondary. So at this point, I feel like it would reflect negatively on the campaign that is trying to bury its own known weaknesses by accentuating the weaknesses of the other. I think it seems like in poor taste, I guess.

56:53
Speaker 1
Are you saying when they go low, we go high?

56:57
Speaker 3
I know from actual politics with people in it that shit does not. Absolutely, categorically does not work. I want to believe that a pure democracy, when there's pets involved and the height of the stakes are like, you get wheeled out at a restaurant.

57:18
Speaker 1
The next day, Sir Midnight's owner posts to the group a statement which reads, I nominated Sir Midnight for mayor because I thought it would be funny, but this is dirty campaigning and I will not stand for it. Sir Midnight is withdrawing from the race.

57:43
Speaker 3
Terrible. They went low and sir midnight just absolutely dropped out of public life.

57:49
Speaker 1
He got hit one time and he's knocked out. He's done.

57:52
Speaker 3
How many good candidates have we lost for not exactly the same reasons. Because there's not usually biting, but for the same reasons. It's terrible to think about.

58:03
Speaker 1
Sir Midnight's owner, also in this statement, announces that Sir Midnight will be endorsing wolfgang for my.

58:11
Speaker 3
No, I should have been able to anticipate this, and I absolutely did not. I was kind of like, at least Wolfgang's got nothing to do with this shit. Nope. Susie just got fucking jumped into the campaign now. Terrible.

58:26
Speaker 1
The delegates have been released. This is not good.

58:31
Speaker 3
If I'm Talia, I'm freaking out.

58:33
Speaker 1
At this, Talia is freaking out. She's like, I know that politics is a vibes based sport, and I know that the week before elections matter. And now right here in the week before elections, the vibes are turning for Wolfgang, who I do not want to be mayor.

58:50
Speaker 3
This is worrying. And also, she's not in charge of the campaign. She can't do a thing about it. It's all the Wolfgang sickos are completely in command of the dialogue now.

59:00
Speaker 1
But she's like, I'm not in charge of this, and I don't want Wolfgang to be mayor. But she's also, like, a little conflicted because she's like, I also don't want Cadillac and perhaps his secret twin Buick to be mayor.

59:13
Speaker 3
Yeah, this is tough. So do you take one for the civil society?

59:19
Speaker 1
Here she goes to drinks with her friend, and she's like, I'm really stressed. And her friend is like, why are you so stressed? Like, wolfgang seems to be doing really well in the polls. Everyone's calling him ugly cute. It seems like he might win. And Talia is like, I don't want my dog to be mayor. And the friend is like, you don't? And Talia is like, no, I don't want to write the column. And her friend is like, that's so weird. Because sir midnight, the iguana's owner, keeps telling everyone that you really want Wolfgang to be mayor?

59:52
Speaker 3
No, man. Come on. Wait, so Wolfgang was a stalking horse candidate? There's a lot of machinations here that I had not. And I'm a listener to this podcast. There's just a lot of. Go on.

01:00:07
Speaker 1
What do you do?

01:00:09
Speaker 3
I mean, at this point, you have to reach out to the formally deactivated serve midnight campaign and be like, explain to me your values now.

01:00:19
Speaker 1
You're going to call him. How are you going to make this man explain his values to you?

01:00:24
Speaker 3
Well, you're talking to the person now. Yeah, I think that it would be like, hey, could you rescind your endorsement or otherwise explain to me how you reached. I guess that probably sir midnight was just like, who else is polling? I don't want anything to do with this. All right. Find the Chihuahua whose eyes stick out. But, yeah, you need to talk to a person. Basically, yes. Because the pets don't know that any of this is happening. Right? Yeah, you can't get there with them.

01:00:51
Speaker 1
Talia drives to Sir Midnight's house. She knocks on the door. Sir Midnight's owner answers and is like, what's up, Talia? And she's like, why would you tell people that I wanted Wolfgang to be mayor? And Sir Midnight, the iguana's owner, is like, listen, were concerned.

01:01:11
Speaker 3
The first person plural is crazy to suggest that this is a conversation that the person had with the iguana or.

01:01:19
Speaker 1
The iguana's whole campaign, right?

01:01:21
Speaker 3
Yeah, the whole team, outreach director, the pr team. Yeah.

01:01:28
Speaker 1
Sir Midnight, the iguana's owner, is like, listen, I know that you didn't want Wolfgang to be mayor, but he's kind of a cute dog that a lot of people like. He's ugly cute. The thing, like, were really concerned that Cadillac would run away with the election because people love dogs, and the dog vote is too strong and it had to be split.

01:01:53
Speaker 3
This is like oliver stone grade reveal, especially because it's happening in the form of a grandiose monologue being given by a mysterious guy under what I can only assume is, like, dramatic lighting. But this is different in terms of the content, but not different in terms of the general shape of the long Donald Sutherland monologue in JFK. He was like, the CIA could not permit this to happen. We're now at least starting to get a sense of who's behind everything.

01:02:26
Speaker 1
She's like, so you nominated my dog for pet mayor without my consent because you wanted to split the dog vote. And this guy is like, I'm sorry. I really didn't think your dog could win. I thought this was, like, innocuous. And Talia is like, you're like James Carville. Like, your name was right.

01:02:50
Speaker 3
What's crazy about this is that this person is calculating enough and dedicated enough to do all of this to run a stalking horse campaign, a spoiler campaign for a dog who's ugly cute.

01:03:02
Speaker 1
Yes.

01:03:03
Speaker 3
I think it's important to underline. Yes, it's a very ugly and cute dog. But the moment that they got hit in the mouth by negative campaigning, they were like, actually, I was wrong. I don't want anything to do with this.

01:03:12
Speaker 1
Yes. Talia is so mad, and she's like, how dare you? And Sirmind Ibuana's owner is like, well, are you just, like, going to let jungle Red's maybe two dogs be dog mayor? And dog is like, that's not my business. I don't care. Why did you endorse Wolfgang if you don't want a dog to be mayor?

01:03:35
Speaker 3
It's a good question.

01:03:37
Speaker 1
And sir midnight, the iguana's owner, he's like, well, Wolfgang was the only other person with, like, percentage points.

01:03:42
Speaker 3
Terrible. I mean, that doesn't excuse it. Even though politically it is probably the right move. Like, you kind of have to respect. I don't like it, but goddamn if I don't respect it.

01:03:55
Speaker 1
I tell you what, that's smart campaign right there.

01:03:57
Speaker 3
It is. The person's instincts are both very bad. And then in this one narrow way, like, unassailably good. Yeah, that said, it's like, what do you do? Unless you want to write that column? And I think you and I can both vibe with somebody who's like, I really don't want to write a.

01:04:17
Speaker 1
Blog, miss a deadline.

01:04:19
Speaker 3
Right. I was going to say in both of our cases, like, whatever it takes. So I don't have to write 400 words about conserving water. But if that's the case, you have to drop out. But you never got in the first place. I don't even know. So you'd have to ask them. But obviously this person has shown their willingness to do whatever it takes.

01:04:40
Speaker 1
Talia goes back and talks to her friend, and she's like, what do I do? And her friend is like, well, the thing is, you do really like to go to restaurants. Her friend's like, and because this is all happening, because Cheezit died, you're only inheriting one year of the term. So it's just one year, which means you'd only have to write, like, three columns.

01:05:08
Speaker 3
These are good points.

01:05:10
Speaker 1
And Talia's, like, the concern with this.

01:05:13
Speaker 3
Though, and I can definitely see going forward, what if everybody loves Wolfgang as mayor and then Wolfgang's, like, serving the president for life role.

01:05:24
Speaker 1
Yes. Talia decides she will campaign.

01:05:28
Speaker 3
Wow.

01:05:29
Speaker 1
She has, like, five days. How do you campaign your dog for mayor with five days until the election when you cannot post in the Facebook group? People do not like Cadillac hood advertisements. And they also don't like.

01:05:48
Speaker 3
Might like if you use the memes. Right. But it's not about mean, unfortunately. I think this means you have to take your kind of, like, roomy Chihuahua out and meet the general public. Right. Which is exactly what she did not want to do. But some things are more important. Democracy matters.

01:06:05
Speaker 1
You got to meet some real Americans. You got to sit at a diner.

01:06:08
Speaker 3
Go to a state fair, eat something on a stick.

01:06:11
Speaker 1
Yeah. Wolfgang's got to do shaking hands. He's got to do his little trick. Pop.

01:06:17
Speaker 3
Shaking hands. In this case, I was going to say, this is actually the most adorable version of that. I would not let the dog kiss a baby, but I would maybe let it lick appear or whatever. Yeah. Anyway, go on.

01:06:31
Speaker 1
Yeah. Talia's having people take their photos with Wolfgang, like, sticking their tongue out, like him. She's like, this will work for sure. But she's like, the thing is, Wolfgang, he needs crucial. Like, he has to work very right.

01:06:45
Speaker 3
So how do you do that in five days? Is she just committing to staying awake.

01:06:50
Speaker 1
For five straight days, she is committing to staying awake. She goes door to door. This is shoe leather work. She's getting out there. She's making friends. She's kissing a baby. She's letting people hold her dog.

01:07:01
Speaker 3
She's letting flat Earth Matthew regale her with his theories.

01:07:06
Speaker 1
Yes. She's giving Wolfgang a little meat treat every day. Like, thank you for your work. Good job, buddy. Election day is now upon.

01:07:14
Speaker 3
This is. I'm on the edge of my damn seat.

01:07:17
Speaker 1
Cadillac has the support of Mame, the big Dog alliance, United Metal Workers, the Teamsters, the uptown branch of the library, and the police union.

01:07:34
Speaker 3
Well, that last bit is inevitable, right? But yes. All right, so these are powerful factions. But I want to believe that people power, which Wolfgang seems to have on his side, could maybe. Well, tell me what happens.

01:07:49
Speaker 1
Wolfgang has the support of Planned Parenthood, the teachers union, small dog alliance. They do Mrs. Harrison's third grade class, the downtown branch of the library, and a weird glass blowing shop.

01:08:05
Speaker 3
Again, powerful factions.

01:08:09
Speaker 1
How do you feel about Wolfgang's chances?

01:08:11
Speaker 3
So my concern, as somebody who has hoped for candidates that were sort of in bad situations, drawing dead registration deficits, all of these sorts of things, I want to believe. But I also know that much time on the trail, that much name recognition, it's a lot to overcome. But I feel like the thing that we keep coming back to where Wolfgang is concerned is that the dog is both very misbegotten and very cute.

01:08:39
Speaker 1
Yeah.

01:08:40
Speaker 3
And Cadillac might be annoying, right?

01:08:42
Speaker 1
He's always yelling.

01:08:43
Speaker 3
Yeah. So I have to think it's possible.

01:08:47
Speaker 1
Day of the election, Cadillac and jungle Red go to the uptown branch of the library. Wolfgang Antalya go to the downtown branch of the library. They are passing out little pieces of paper with links on them, reminding people to vote, because obviously, you vote online for this election.

01:09:05
Speaker 3
Yeah.

01:09:06
Speaker 1
The polls close at midnight the next morning. It is announced that, sir, midnight, who you may remember, dropped out, got 72 votes. Anyway, Wolfgang received 118 votes. Cadillac received 328 votes. You asked me a question at the top of this story. Do you remember what it was?

01:09:38
Speaker 3
I don't. Tell me. What did I get right that I've since forgotten?

01:09:44
Speaker 1
You asked, are people outside of this town allowed to vote?

01:09:50
Speaker 3
Oh, no.

01:09:52
Speaker 1
And do you remember the answer?

01:09:54
Speaker 3
Yes. They're not. And yet I'm getting the sense that there could have been some sort of, like, corruption. We're back on George Santos at this point. So what happened?

01:10:04
Speaker 1
Allegations emerge.

01:10:05
Speaker 3
As well they might.

01:10:06
Speaker 1
Jungle Red has been sending texts with the link to the poll to people outside the town, which means we have a recount. The vote goes to a recount. We must consider the email addresses that people put in. We must make sure they have residency within the town by the end of the day. They have found the official results, sir. Midnight. Who had dropped out, got 72 votes. Right. Wolfgang received 111 votes. So seven votes were removed.

01:10:45
Speaker 3
Okay.

01:10:46
Speaker 1
Cadillac received only 121 votes.

01:10:50
Speaker 3
Wow. Paper tiger.

01:10:51
Speaker 1
But that means that he still won.

01:10:53
Speaker 3
Yeah. Boy, that is. I mean, it's deflating. As long as you forget the fact that Talia didn't really want her dog to be mayor. It's funny though, because I want to see the process work the way that I want it to work at this point. I want that poor Chihuahua to be mayor.

01:11:14
Speaker 1
Yeah. Wolfgang for mayor. We are almost at the end of this story. Whose side are you on and how do you feel?

01:11:21
Speaker 3
I feel like I'm opposed to jungle Red's tactics. And yet I feel like I need to take myself outside of the flow of this story, which has been really pulling me more towards the Wolfgang side of things. I want to see.

01:11:39
Speaker 1
It's important to consider bias.

01:11:41
Speaker 3
Yeah. And for the community, I think it would be important to have a dog that can't walk good as its mayor.

01:11:47
Speaker 1
I think that would be great.

01:11:49
Speaker 3
But at the same time, I feel like I have turned against. Like, if you were to tell me, there's a man, he lives in the desert, he's always welding weird shit together. And he has a wolf that lives with him. And the wolf never shuts up.

01:12:00
Speaker 1
Yeah.

01:12:01
Speaker 3
I would party with that guy. He seems fine. That seems okay. And so maybe in some ways you kind of do. Got to hand it to jungle Red.

01:12:11
Speaker 1
Is that fair? Some people might say that. You do. Gotta hand it to that said, I don't.

01:12:17
Speaker 3
I don't approve of the tactics. I don't approve of going negative on the. Like. There's a lot of stuff in there that I feel like is not the sort of conduct you want to see in an election like this.

01:12:26
Speaker 1
Yeah. Cadillac did become the pet mayor. Talia's intuition was right in that he yelled all the time.

01:12:36
Speaker 3
It's clearly unsuited for office.

01:12:38
Speaker 1
Yeah. At his inauguration ceremony, he yelled so much that they had to cut the mic. And he had to be sworn in silence. Would you like my final update?

01:12:50
Speaker 3
Yes. I was going to ask. So there's a second election coming? Like this was just a special election.

01:12:56
Speaker 1
Yes. Very good memory. Cadillac served his special election year very happily, but jungle Red hated doing the column. So at the end of Cadillac's stint, jungle red did not run him again.

01:13:12
Speaker 3
If elected, I will not to. This is a stand on principle. I like that. I also like that all of this is about how shitty blogging is.

01:13:19
Speaker 1
Yeah, it is. And that's true to us and everyone. One candidate ran for mayor the year after Cadillac because cheese, its owner, got another goldfish.

01:13:34
Speaker 3
Okay?

01:13:35
Speaker 1
And this goldfish won the next campaign easily. And last year, the city swore in cheese w it as its official fifth.

01:13:45
Speaker 3
Mayor for the best. I mean, obviously, in some ways, it's, like, frustrating. It's like the same families producing leaders over and over again.

01:13:53
Speaker 1
Yeah.

01:13:54
Speaker 3
And that's frustrating in some ways. But at the same time, I feel like this is the version that everybody, it's the quietest and least deranged outcome, which I feel like in general, in elections, is to be hoped for.

01:14:09
Speaker 1
I do have one final update for you.

01:14:11
Speaker 3
Okay.

01:14:12
Speaker 1
Which is that the precedent set during the Cadillac, wolfgang, sir. Midnight the iguana election year led to a little bit know dirty work in the future. And so during the campaign of cheese w it, some digging revealed a lie about the original cheeset who served five terms as pet mayor.

01:14:41
Speaker 3
Wait.

01:14:42
Speaker 1
Was actually six different cheez its four goldfish.

01:14:46
Speaker 3
I knew that was because there was a part of it where, obviously, I know that the pet mayor does not make laws or whatever, but if a goldfish has figured out how to outperform the average goldfish lifespan by a factor of, whatever, ten, then I was like, I would vote for that fish for any office.

01:15:06
Speaker 1
Yeah.

01:15:08
Speaker 3
God, it's a dirty business, isn't it? Politics.

01:15:10
Speaker 1
It's dirty. Which means that cheese w it was the fifth cheese it dynasty goldfish.

01:15:20
Speaker 3
Got to respect it. You don't have to like it, but God damn if you gotta respect it.

01:15:24
Speaker 1
Roth, thank you so much for coming to the podcast. It was a pleasure to have you.

01:15:28
Speaker 3
Blowing my mind and expanding my understanding of the possibilities of democracy and also for having me. That was great.

01:15:35
Speaker 1
Appreciate it.

01:15:41
Speaker 4
Thank you for listening to normal gossip. If you have a gossip story to share with us, email us at normalgosip@defector.com. Or you can leave us a voicemail at 2679 gossip. If you love this podcast and want us to keep making it become a friend or a friend of a friend@supportnormalgossip.com. You can follow the show on Instagram and TikTok at normalgosip. You can follow Kelsey on all social media at mckinneykelsey. This podcast was produced by Alex Sujong Loughlin. Justin Ellis is defector's projects editor. Jasper Wang and Sean Kuhn are defectories business guys. Tom Lay is our editor in chief. Jay Tolviera is our associate producer. Abigail Siegel is our intern. Dan McQuaid runs our merch store, which you can find at Normalgossep store. Tara Jacobi designed our show art thanks to the rest of the defector staff.

01:16:35
Speaker 4
Defector Media is a collectively owned, subscriber based media company. Normal Gossip is a proud member of Radiotopia. Normal Gossip is hosted by Kelsey McKinney. I'm Emma, and remember, you did not hear this from me.

01:16:52
Speaker 1
Radiotopia from PRx.