Behind the Bastards - Part One: America's First Fascist Governor
Aired: 2024-10-08
Duration: 01:29:42


=== Welcome to Behind the Bastards (04:35) ===

[00:00:01]  Cool zone media.
[00:00:04]  Hey, everybody.
[00:00:05]  Welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast that is, you know, a podcast.
[00:00:12]  I don't know.
[00:00:12]  I don't know what to say.
[00:00:14]  You're not always knowing what to say at the start of a week.
[00:00:18]  And that's where I am this week.
[00:00:21]  You just don't seem like you're qualified to host the podcast today.
[00:00:24]  Yeah, no, that's why we've brought in a ringer, our equivalent of Sophie, who's a baseball guy.
[00:00:30]  That's not my sport, but that's not your sport.
[00:00:34]  That is my sport, but I don't know.
[00:00:35]  Don't know.
[00:00:37]  Okay, okay.
[00:00:38]  But not guys baseball.
[00:00:39]  Interesting.
[00:00:40]  Baseball, baseball.
[00:00:42]  Nate Silver.
[00:00:43]  He's into baseball.
[00:00:44]  The Nate Silver of baseball.
[00:00:47]  Oh, what's the guy's name from the Dodgers?
[00:00:51]  My mom would be so disappointed in me.
[00:00:53]  I don't have an answer for you.
[00:00:54]  Shohei.
[00:00:55]  Of course, totally.
[00:00:56]  Shohei Yutani.
[00:00:57]  Yeah, of course.
[00:00:59]  I know who he is.
[00:01:00]  My mom loves him.
[00:01:01]  And Garrison is the that guy of helping me out with my podcast for this week and next week.
[00:01:09]  Because, you know, Garrison, in my culture, Italians, we have a ritual that's gone back thousands of years when a young person turns 22 to celebrate their entry into adulthood, where they research and write like a 16,000 word essay on a figure from Georgia state history.
[00:01:28]  This goes back to ancient Roman times, in which Georgia didn't exist as a state.
[00:01:33]  So actually, there were no adults in Italy for a very long period of time, which is a large part of why the Catholic Church got up to some of the trouble it got up to.
[00:01:43]  Ooh, that's not good.
[00:01:47]  Absolutely not.
[00:01:50]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[00:01:53]  Guaranteed human.
[00:01:55]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[00:02:04]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:02:06]  He is not going to get away with this.
[00:02:08]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:02:10]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
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[00:02:27]  Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
[00:02:32]  Check out my newest episode with Josh Groban.
[00:02:35]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:02:38]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:02:40]  That's so funny.
[00:02:41]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:02:49]  Listen to Nora Jones is playing along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:02:57]  What's up, everyone?
[00:02:58]  I'm Ego Moda.
[00:02:59]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[00:03:03]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:03:06]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[00:03:07]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:03:14]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:03:17]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:03:24]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:03:26]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:03:27]  There's a lot of life.
[00:03:29]  Listen to Thanksgiving on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:03:36]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[00:03:43]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Ellens, correct?
[00:03:47]  I doctored the test once.
[00:03:48]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:03:53]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:03:56]  Ray Gillespie and Michael Mancini.
[00:03:58]  My mind was blown.
[00:03:59]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:04:01]  This is Love Trapped.
[00:04:02]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:04:04]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:04:08]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:04:16]  10-10 shots fired, city hall building.
[00:04:19]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:04:20]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:04:22]  A shocking public murder.
[00:04:24]  This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
[00:04:30]  They screamed, get down, get down.
[00:04:32]  Those are shots.
[00:04:34]  A tragedy that's now forgotten.

=== The Forgotten City Hall Murder (15:35) ===

[00:04:36]  And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
[00:04:39]  That may have been about sex.
[00:04:41]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:04:52]  Anyway, who are we learning about this week, buddy?
[00:04:56]  So when I first moved to Georgia, kind of one of the first people I heard about that would be like a contender for a pretty fucked up guy is one of the old governors.
[00:05:08]  Now, he served during the 1930s, so you can already tell there's going to be some fucked up stuff going on.
[00:05:14]  Probably not going to be a happy story in several specific ways.
[00:05:18]  Yeah, so I was first told that this was like, this was like Georgia's main fascist.
[00:05:25]  And that's saying something.
[00:05:27]  It is saying something.
[00:05:29]  And the more I looked into him, the more he kind of just felt like kind of the template for like conservative fascist governorship, especially this kind of new wave that we're seeing in the United States.
[00:05:40]  And he's kind of like America's first like real fascist in some way.
[00:05:45]  Now, I know people point to Huey Long, the governor of our neighboring state.
[00:05:51]  And if you don't know, Huey Long was the governor of Louisiana who was like kind of a dictator of Louisiana, but also definitely more on closer to further left at least than the guy we're talking about.
[00:06:03]  He was much more socially liberal.
[00:06:05]  He certainly was a dictator and in some ways kind of a more efficient dictator.
[00:06:09]  He actually knew how to like be a dictator well.
[00:06:12]  Yeah.
[00:06:13]  He was the Tito of the United States.
[00:06:15]  Yeah.
[00:06:17]  Our guy for these next few weeks, Eugene Talmadge, was not a super efficient dictator, but he really wanted to be.
[00:06:24]  And he certainly was a fascist.
[00:06:26]  Excellent.
[00:06:27]  And that's who we're going to be looking at for these next few weeks and kind of how his reign over Georgia modeled what, you know, these like DeSantis and all these kind of new, new kind of more fascist governors kind of how they have kind of replicated this sort of governing strategy.
[00:06:45]  So that's, that's what we're looking at today.
[00:06:48]  Let's start by kind of going back to lay the groundwork for the area that that Gene grew up in.
[00:06:55]  So Gene's great grandfather was born in New Jersey and moved to Georgia in the early 1820s after first like traveling the South while serving under Andrew Jackson in his attack on the Creek Nation, where he drove Native Americans from Alabama and Georgia deep into Florida.
[00:07:12]  Great grandpa Talmadge decided to settle in central Georgia and started buying up hundreds of acres of land and began his career as a cotton farmer.
[00:07:21]  Gene's biographer, a guy named William Anderson from Athens, Georgia, refers to this period as the birth of cotton culture.
[00:07:28]  He was part of a large wave of settlers moving into the deep south after the indigenous tribes were killed off and forcibly relocated by Andrew Jackson.
[00:07:37]  During this period, there was certainly a desire for slaves as like a status symbol and obviously to help with like farm labor, especially if you didn't have a big family.
[00:07:44]  Now, it's unclear if Gene's family had slaves.
[00:07:50]  Like they certainly would have liked them, but it wasn't the norm economically to be able to afford them.
[00:07:56]  At least not for like his like grandparents.
[00:07:59]  Yeah, um, and they had a large enough family that they kind of ran their farm that way.
[00:08:02]  Now, it is a little tricky to find tons of information on this guy on Eugene Talmadge because he's really looked over as a historical figure because he represented a moment that people would rather just kind of blaze past.
[00:08:15]  He was like an unfortunate obstacle in the inevitable progress of history.
[00:08:20]  So, people kind of just skipped over him largely in the history books.
[00:08:23]  There's really only one book that gets into him in depth.
[00:08:27]  That's his biography, The Wild Man from Sugar Creek by William Anderson, which did a whole bunch of interviews with like friends, enemies, political associates, and rivals to kind of draw a picture of this guy.
[00:08:39]  Now, that book was published in the 70s, but about like 30 years after Gene's demise.
[00:08:47]  And it certainly criticizes Gene for his racism, but there's only so much you can do for being a book about Southern history written by a guy raised in this period.
[00:08:57]  We were at a specific point in that stage, and it was not where we are now.
[00:09:02]  Yeah, so I've also kind of supplemented some of the research that Willie Manderson did in that book with a few other books, like Race and Racism in the United States by Charles A. Gallagher and Cameron D. Liptard, as well as the book Labor in the South by F. Ray Marshall.
[00:09:16]  Now, I am choosing to read that as Gallagher, the stage comedian.
[00:09:23]  Garrison, do you know who Gallagher was?
[00:09:25]  I have heard of a man named Gallagher.
[00:09:28]  Oh, that's a shame.
[00:09:29]  He was, well, he wasn't very good, actually, but he was a guy who hit fruit with a mallet.
[00:09:35]  Anyway.
[00:09:37]  Wow.
[00:09:38]  So, now to kind of demonstrate how there's certain periods of Southern history that is kind of just skipped over by the history books, we don't really know what Gene's family was up to during the Civil War.
[00:09:48]  They were certainly certainly pro-Confederates.
[00:09:52]  I think we know kind of what they were up to during the Civil War.
[00:09:55]  Yes, it's just not discussed in great detail.
[00:09:59]  But Gene's father, a man named Thomas Ramalgus Talmadge, which is a fantastic southern name, he grew up in the wake of the Civil War during the Reconstruction era.
[00:10:10]  Now, Thomas had the then rare privilege of attending the University of Georgia, but returned to his grandfather's land to continue to farm and process cotton.
[00:10:17]  And he got wealthy by learning that there was more money in the processing of cotton rather than just the growing of it.
[00:10:23]  Now, Thomas married a girl named Carrie Roberts, the daughter of the so-called meanest man in Jasper County, a lawyer named Eugene Roberts.
[00:10:33]  And the couple had their first son in 1884 and named him after Carrie's father.
[00:10:38]  This is Eugene Talmadge.
[00:10:40]  What a nice that's we really don't have that anymore.
[00:10:43]  Like being able to be like the meanest man in a county, he's the meanest man in Jasper County.
[00:10:48]  I couldn't tell you what the meanest man in Multnomah County was.
[00:10:51]  I couldn't tell you the meanest man in any county I've ever lived in.
[00:10:54]  And that's that's really that's an example of like how we've lost our the collective spirit that once made this nation great.
[00:11:01]  I mean, that's kind of what Eugene Talmadge believed.
[00:11:04]  He was right.
[00:11:05]  Robert returned to tradition.
[00:11:07]  We could make Robert the meanest man in Multnomah County easily.
[00:11:11]  Yeah, that's true.
[00:11:12]  No.
[00:11:13]  That's true.
[00:11:13]  I don't know.
[00:11:14]  We have a lot of cops, although they don't live here.
[00:11:16]  So also true.
[00:11:20]  Now, Thomas wasn't raising his kids to just be simple farmhands.
[00:11:26]  And he works to guarantee that his children had the highest quality education provided in the area.
[00:11:31]  Now, Gene was kind of a sickly kid, and he remained a little bit sickly throughout his whole life.
[00:11:37]  He was very, very lean, very thin.
[00:11:40]  And it was apparent to his family from a very young age that he would not be one to labor away in the fields.
[00:11:47]  Anderson writes, he tried the plow as a boy, but his mind was recognizably his strong suit.
[00:11:54]  Now, Gene's dictatorial ambitions could be seen from quite an early age, as his childhood hero was none other than Napoleon.
[00:12:03]  Oh, see.
[00:12:04]  Which is an immediate red flag.
[00:12:06]  Yeah, huge red flag.
[00:12:08]  That's a red flag.
[00:12:09]  If your kid's into Napoleon, you got to stop that shit.
[00:12:12]  Crack down hard.
[00:12:13]  I spent all my time reading Hitler books as a little kid, and that only turned out marginally better.
[00:12:18]  So no, you were the best case scenario for a kid.
[00:12:22]  I was like, but Napoleon was definitely the Hitler of that period.
[00:12:27]  And yeah, you just got, he needed more.
[00:12:29]  You know what, Garrison?
[00:12:30]  He needed more time with the plow.
[00:12:32]  You know, a little more time with that plow would have fixed him up.
[00:12:35]  Maybe enough that he gets threshed and he doesn't ever learn how to read better.
[00:12:39]  He was not built for the plow.
[00:12:42]  And Gene was really obnoxious about it, too.
[00:12:45]  I'm going to read a quote from Anderson here.
[00:12:46]  Quote, he baited family members and house guests by betting them he could quote passages from a volume of Napoleon's biography that he constantly carried around.
[00:12:56]  Absolutely.
[00:12:58]  I bet you don't think I can do it, he would say, until someone would answer that they didn't believe he could.
[00:13:03]  A verbatim quote would then issue forth and its length and precision never failed to impress all who heard it.
[00:13:10]  Unquote.
[00:13:10]  I think, look, I'm not an expert parent here, but I think the right way to respond to that is you get one of those.
[00:13:17]  You get a sprayer and you just spray him in the face a little bit every time they try to get you to ask them a Napoleon quote.
[00:13:24]  You just get him right in the face.
[00:13:26]  Yeah.
[00:13:27]  You need a little spray bottle.
[00:13:28]  Like, no.
[00:13:28]  Yeah.
[00:13:28]  You don't want, it's like, you don't want to hurt him.
[00:13:30]  You just want to teach them like that's not how we behave in public.
[00:13:33]  You know, a little bit of water.
[00:13:34]  Yeah.
[00:13:35]  Genghis Khan's on the line.
[00:13:36]  Napoleon, a hard no.
[00:13:38]  Yeah.
[00:13:38]  Hard no.
[00:13:39]  Yeah.
[00:13:40]  And just to say one more time, Robert, you're not a parent.
[00:13:44]  Let alone an extra.
[00:13:45]  Yeah, I have, I have two entire cats.
[00:13:49]  Sure.
[00:13:50]  And I've raised them.
[00:13:51]  And this is roughly your parenting strategy.
[00:13:53]  Yeah.
[00:13:54]  Neither of them are very nice cats.
[00:13:56]  They get too bad.
[00:13:57]  They are tannerite.
[00:13:58]  Just spray, spray, spray.
[00:14:00]  Cats are fine around tannerite, Garrison.
[00:14:02]  It's other kinds of explosives.
[00:14:04]  They might just use it as a litter box, honestly.
[00:14:05]  Yeah, it's essentially.
[00:14:06]  Just start tracking that all over the house.
[00:14:08]  You know, there's no reason you couldn't, and then you can blow it up afterwards.
[00:14:11]  This is not a bad thing.
[00:14:12]  You don't have to be the litter anymore.
[00:14:13]  You don't have to do the litter.
[00:14:15]  Just shoot it.
[00:14:17]  Just once a week, take your box of tannerite into the backyard and just shoot it with a 308.
[00:14:23]  This is perfect.
[00:14:25]  Oh, man.
[00:14:27]  I think I've got a new product idea.
[00:14:32]  That's certainly a better idea than what Gene was up to as a kid, because he was quite the little bastard.
[00:14:38]  As a 12-year-old, he had his private pony and buggy ride to his school, the Hillard Institute for Boys.
[00:14:45]  Just insufferable.
[00:14:47]  And he was also a debate kid.
[00:14:49]  Schoolmates recounted he was a very skilled debater who almost like never lost and had a very devilish spirit.
[00:14:56]  He was also quite a mean child as the grandson of the meanest man in Jasper County.
[00:15:02]  Gene said that the quote, N-word boys I grew up with would call me mean Lou Gene because I was so damn mean, unquote.
[00:15:11]  And this continued all throughout his life.
[00:15:13]  He was consistently not just like extremely racist, but like just in general, a very cruel man.
[00:15:19]  Yeah.
[00:15:21]  Like for fun, he would just start fights between boys at school and then he would just sit and watch them go at it.
[00:15:26]  This is also something he continued to do late into his career.
[00:15:29]  He didn't want to be a part of the fighting.
[00:15:30]  He just wanted to watch it happen.
[00:15:33]  He's reminding me a little bit of Peter Thiel because I'm working on his episodes now.
[00:15:38]  So I'm reading about him as a child.
[00:15:40]  And Teal wasn't exactly this kind of kid, but there's this like, there's commonality and like they recognize that they're smarter than other people.
[00:15:46]  And their primary, the primary thing that they take from that is, I should fuck with them.
[00:15:53]  Yeah.
[00:15:53]  Yeah.
[00:15:54]  No, he, that's like.
[00:15:55]  And I need to be ruling them.
[00:15:57]  Yeah.
[00:15:57]  His capacity to like manipulate people and gain pleasure out of that.
[00:16:01]  Yeah.
[00:16:02]  Um, and then eventually wield power over them.
[00:16:04]  That's definitely like an early drive.
[00:16:07]  And like, that's why he liked Napoleon.
[00:16:08]  Like, that's why he found Napoleon a compelling figure.
[00:16:11]  We need to just all Napoleon books, we need to coat in like a form of lithium that just gets in through your skin and really just lithium these kids the fuck out.
[00:16:20]  Honestly, that's the right thing.
[00:16:22]  That might have happened to Gene because he, he, spoiler alert, he didn't live super long.
[00:16:28]  Um, so he, he may have very well been poisoned by a great many things that were around this area of like rural Georgia in the in the 20s, 30s.
[00:16:38]  People talk about microplastics just thinking about all the ways that they're going to damage our reproductive health and lead to cancer clusters, yada, yada, yada.
[00:16:47]  Think of how many assholes are going to check out early thanks to that stuff, you know?
[00:16:52]  We could really dodge a few major bullets there.
[00:16:54]  Every week I buy a pallet of bottled water and I just hook it in the back of a high school, you know?
[00:17:02]  What is what?
[00:17:03]  Continue, Garrison.
[00:17:05]  So although Napoleon was the childhood hero of Gene, a populist speaker named Tom Watson was his first real like political inspiration on the local level.
[00:17:16]  Anderson writes that Watson became Gene's quote unquote spiritual leader and that Gene was quote fascinated by his fiery style, understanding of the rural mind and his electrifying manner of speech.
[00:17:28]  Unquote.
[00:17:29]  Now, Watson later became like a kind of like politician and lawyer who, as he got older, got increasingly racist and increasingly anti-Semitic.
[00:17:40]  As liberalization was setting in in the 20th century, what he would do, he would go to a lot of Georgia, just blaming black people and Jewish people for like all of the resulting economic complications that like liberalism and modernism was like encroaching onto Georgia.
[00:17:57]  This is Gene's like real, like real like local hero.
[00:18:00]  The guy he actually he's like, Gene knows he's not going to be like an actual Napoleon, but he can be a Tom Watson.
[00:18:07]  Yeah.
[00:18:08]  So later in college, Gene would brag about how far he would walk to attend a Tom Watson speech, and he would just get so excited talking about it that he would start walking around and pacing around the room telling his friends.
[00:18:21]  So he was he was super into this guy.
[00:18:23]  Now, like his father, he attended the University of Georgia in Athens, where he served as football manager and was a champion debater.
[00:18:30]  He continued to continued to be a debate kid until his death.
[00:18:35]  After school, he started teaching in the small farming town of Auburn, Georgia, which he quickly found to be quite boring.
[00:18:42]  Gene loved debate and like intellectual combat.
[00:18:44]  So he decided to go back to Athens and enroll in law school to become a lawyer like his hero, Tom Watson.
[00:18:50]  He graduated in 1907 and moved to Atlanta to work in a law firm.
[00:18:54]  But he was still just very unsatisfied with work.
[00:18:57]  He just wasn't doing very well.
[00:19:00]  Gene's father didn't really know how to help him because he was quote unquote so goddamn mean.
[00:19:06]  It's like even his father knew like you just you just can't succeed in life because you're just like a cruel person.
[00:19:12]  Now, a friend of his father, a legislator named William Peterson, offered for Gene to stay at his home with his sister in the small town of Ailey in South Georgia to straighten him out.
[00:19:23]  There, he could live cheaply and start his own law practice.
[00:19:26]  Another woman was living in the house, a young widow with a child from South Carolina named Mitt or nicknamed Mitt.
[00:19:33]  What year was he in school?
[00:19:35]  What year was this?
[00:19:37]  He graduated law school in 1907.
[00:19:39]  Okay.
[00:19:40]  So he moved.
[00:19:42]  This is around like the late 1900s.
[00:19:47]  Yeah.
[00:19:47]  So technically he could have been a Rhodes Scholar, but he wasn't.
[00:19:52]  I guess so.
[00:19:53]  We all could have been a Rhodes Scholar.
[00:19:56]  I think Rhodes Scholar was like 1902, 1903 when it first started.
[00:20:00]  So technically he could have been, but he wasn't.
[00:20:02]  I guess so.
[00:20:02]  I guess so.
[00:20:03]  Okay.
[00:20:04]  So Mitt from South Carolina didn't really like that a city slicker was going to be living in the same house as her.

=== Slavery and Young Boys in Georgia (04:39) ===

[00:20:11]  So when Gene arrived, she quickly met him first to charge him just an exuberant rent to scare him off.
[00:20:18]  But he agreed, and the two actually started to get along quite well.
[00:20:24]  Gene appreciated her for, as he said, her sassiness.
[00:20:30]  Anderson writes that her independent nature, as well as her, quote, infectious sense of humor, complemented the Talmudge wit, unquote.
[00:20:38]  So they quickly got along and a courtship began, which resulted in Gene having to move out of the house as it would be improper for the couple to be living under the same roof.
[00:20:46]  Of course.
[00:20:46]  So Gene relocated to the nearby community of Mount Vernon, where he had a small law office across from the courthouse with an older lawyer named Colonel Underwood, another great southern name.
[00:20:58]  This whole story is peppered with some just fantastic names.
[00:21:02]  Now, in Mount Vernon, he gained a reputation for being a short-tempered dick, which he was.
[00:21:07]  There was one time he falsely blamed a neighbor kid for letting out his pony and threatened to beat the hell out of the kid.
[00:21:14]  An old Mount Vernon local called him, quote, the meanest son of a bitch I've ever met, unquote.
[00:21:20]  So this is, and he continued just to be like a really mean guy.
[00:21:23]  And he was not a very popular man, not just because of his bubbly personality, but also because of the sort of cases he took on, which were often ones that like older, more established lawyers could afford to pass up on.
[00:21:34]  So like murders, muggings, and dealing with clients just so poor that they could only pay in chicken, eggs, and milk.
[00:21:41]  Gene took just nearly every case offered.
[00:21:44]  Anderson writes of one instance where Eugene defended a black woman, quote, who was so poverty-stricken that she gave him her four young boys as partial payment, or perhaps because she could not afford to keep them.
[00:21:58]  I mean, first off, I gotta say, what else are you gonna do with four young boys, Garrison?
[00:22:04]  This is a pretty uncomfortable little tidbit here.
[00:22:10]  Robert, Gene took the boys and fixed a place for them in a small barn behind his house.
[00:22:16]  Sounds nice.
[00:22:17]  That's like an ADU.
[00:22:18]  Sure.
[00:22:19]  The boys did odd jobs around the house, and stories still circulate about how he used to beat the hell out of them when they disobeyed him.
[00:22:27]  Now it's gotten problematic, you know?
[00:22:29]  Oh, not the kind of sort of slavery.
[00:22:32]  No, it was starting to sound like, look, there was no slavery here, you know?
[00:22:37]  David, Robert.
[00:22:39]  It's absolutely slavery curious.
[00:22:41]  It is slavery.
[00:22:42]  It's adjacent to slavery.
[00:22:45]  I was thinking it was like the reverse of three men and a baby, four kids, and a guy who wants to be the dictator of Georgia.
[00:22:52]  I don't think it's that charming.
[00:22:54]  Now, Anderson closes.
[00:22:57]  Okay.
[00:22:57]  Anderson closes this little anecdote by saying, there's no proof that he kept them, but the rumor still does persist.
[00:23:03]  Proof that he can kill children.
[00:23:06]  What a horrible thing to have someone say about you.
[00:23:10]  We also just have no clue what happened to these kids.
[00:23:12]  Yeah, where did they go?
[00:23:14]  How long he had them.
[00:23:16]  They just kind of, they just kind of disappear from his biography after like a few paragraphs.
[00:23:20]  They're just like, oh, well, sure.
[00:23:24]  So when life gives you children, do something that we'll never know to them.
[00:23:31]  Yeah.
[00:23:31]  Don't finish that thought.
[00:23:36]  I can't.
[00:23:36]  We don't know what happened to them.
[00:23:38]  Now, Gene and Mitt got married in 1909, and she and her son John moved into the small Mount Vernon home where they lived for two years as Gene struggled as a lawyer.
[00:23:48]  Now, they were just doing so poorly that Gene decided to quit law altogether and move on to Mitt's deceased husband's farm on Sugar Creek, about 23 miles away in the town of McRae.
[00:24:00]  Mitt says, quote, we weren't hardly in the place and starting to plant before Gene decided he didn't want to be no farmer.
[00:24:07]  You could say he liked being a farmer, but he didn't like farming, unquote.
[00:24:12]  And I think this is one of the truest statements about Gene's career.
[00:24:15]  He loved like the political idea of being a farmer.
[00:24:19]  He hated farm work.
[00:24:21]  He did not enjoy it at all.
[00:24:23]  He would almost do anything to avoid it.
[00:24:25]  But he found like great solace in like, in like the concept of being a farmer.
[00:24:31]  Now, Mitt eventually just took over farming operations to support the family as Gene returned to his struggling career in law.
[00:24:40]  Do you know what else I struggle with, Robert?
[00:24:42]  Wow.
[00:24:44]  Saying several of the words in that last sentence, but that is true.
[00:24:49]  Who am I to judge on that account?

=== Loving Politics, Hating Farm Work (05:18) ===

[00:24:51]  Words are often a struggle, as well as the products and services that support this podcast, the eternal struggle for advertising, I guess.
[00:25:00]  Yes, yes.
[00:25:01]  I'm writing a book in German about nope.
[00:25:03]  Okay.
[00:25:04]  Anyway, here's some ads.
[00:25:09]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
[00:25:13]  Rule one, never mess with a country girl.
[00:25:17]  You play stupid games, you get stupid prizes.
[00:25:20]  And rule two, never mess with her friends either.
[00:25:23]  We always say, trust your girlfriends.
[00:25:27]  I'm Anna Sinfield, and in this new season of The Girlfriends...
[00:25:31]  Oh my God, this is the same man.
[00:25:33]  A group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist.
[00:25:38]  I felt like I got hit by a truck.
[00:25:39]  I thought, how could this happen to me?
[00:25:41]  The cops didn't seem to care.
[00:25:43]  So they take matters into their own hands.
[00:25:46]  I said, oh, hell no.
[00:25:48]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[00:25:50]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[00:25:55]  Listen to the girlfriends.
[00:25:56]  Trust me, babe.
[00:25:57]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:26:07]  Hey, I'm Nora Jones, and I love playing music with people so much that my podcast called Playing Along is back.
[00:26:13]  I sit down with musicians from all musical styles to play songs together in an intimate setting.
[00:26:18]  Every episode's a little different, but it all involves music and conversation with some of my favorite musicians.
[00:26:23]  Over the past two seasons, I've had special guests like Dave Grohl, Leve, Mavis Staples, Remy Wolf, Jeff Tweedy, really too many to name.
[00:26:33]  And this season, I've sat down with Alessia Cara, Sarah McLaughlin, John Legend, and more.
[00:26:38]  Check out my new episode with Josh Grobin.
[00:26:41]  He related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:26:44]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:26:46]  That's so funny.
[00:26:47]  Share each day with me each night, each morning.
[00:26:56]  Say you love me.
[00:26:58]  You know.
[00:27:00]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:27:07]  What's up, everyone?
[00:27:08]  I'm Ago Modem.
[00:27:09]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:27:17]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:27:20]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:27:24]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:27:29]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:27:31]  I'm working my way up through it.
[00:27:32]  I know it's a place they come look for up and coming talent.
[00:27:35]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:27:40]  Yeah.
[00:27:41]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:27:43]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:27:45]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:27:53]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:27:56]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hang in there.
[00:28:03]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:28:05]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:28:06]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:28:08]  Listen to Thanks Stat on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:28:16]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:28:22]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
[00:28:28]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:28:31]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:28:35]  I doctored the test once.
[00:28:36]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:28:40]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
[00:28:43]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:28:46]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:28:48]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:28:50]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Marancini.
[00:28:53]  My mind was blown.
[00:28:54]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:28:56]  This is Love Trap.
[00:28:58]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:29:00]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:29:04]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news out of Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:29:11]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:29:16]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:29:25]  10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
[00:29:28]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:29:33]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach, murder at City Hall.
[00:29:39]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:29:40]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:29:41]  Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:29:43]  July 2003, Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:29:50]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:29:53]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:30:01]  Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
[00:30:04]  A shocking public murder.
[00:30:05]  I scream, get down, get down.
[00:30:07]  Those are shots.
[00:30:08]  Those are shots.

=== The Rural Courthouse Gang (02:51) ===

[00:30:09]  Get down.
[00:30:09]  A charismatic politician.
[00:30:11]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
[00:30:13]  I still have a weapon, and I could shoot you.
[00:30:18]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:30:20]  He alleged he was a victim of flatmail.
[00:30:23]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:30:25]  That may have been about sex.
[00:30:27]  Listen to Rorschach, murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app.
[00:30:31]  Apple Podcasts are wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:30:39]  Garrison.
[00:30:40]  It's hard not to make a Mein Kampf joke when someone says the word struggle.
[00:30:44]  You know, that's my struggle.
[00:30:46]  We're going to be a little bit more.
[00:30:50]  We will at some later point learn about Gene's Mein Kampf opinions because he did have them.
[00:30:55]  Yeah, I was going to ask you, did Gene get a chance to read to read the follow-up?
[00:31:01]  That's like an episode three or four thing.
[00:31:04]  But Gene did have Mein Kampf opinions.
[00:31:06]  Yeah.
[00:31:07]  They weren't great.
[00:31:08]  All right.
[00:31:09]  Hitler.
[00:31:09]  Okay.
[00:31:10]  Sorry.
[00:31:11]  So at this point in Georgia, it was essentially just a one-party state wholly controlled by the white supremacist Southern Democratic Party.
[00:31:20]  The whites-only primary election dictated who occupied governmental positions.
[00:31:26]  In the late 1800s, Georgia informally adopted a primary election system called the county unit system, which was formally signed into law in 1917.
[00:31:35]  It functioned kind of like Georgia's own version of the Electoral College, allowing each county a certain number of votes in party primaries, which could overrule the popular vote.
[00:31:45]  The eight most populated counties had six votes each.
[00:31:48]  30 medium-sized counties had four votes, and the last 121 counties with very small rural populations had two votes each.
[00:31:58]  So this system was designed and worked to maintain rural control over the whole state, as only a few tiny counties had the same voting power as the entire population of Atlanta and other growing urban centers.
[00:32:11]  The county unit system tied Georgia to the past amidst a period of rapid industrialization and urban growth.
[00:32:18]  The system was managed by local county officials who were often corrupt and demanded favors or promises in exchange for votes, acting as a sort of lobbying group for the county.
[00:32:27]  I'm going to quote from Anderson here: quote, the rural power source created a group of power wielders known as the Courthouse Gang.
[00:32:35]  Comprised of city and county officials, the newspaper editor, the sheriff, and county lawyers, the gang represented the common denominator of Georgia's power structure.
[00:32:44]  Each gang had its own idiosyncratic ways of operating, of obtaining power and losing it.
[00:32:49]  Members were the power brokers for the community.
[00:32:51]  The gangs formed complex associations of power with the state's money sources in urban Atlanta that grew stronger during the first two decades of the century as technology moved into Georgia.

=== Gene's Libertarian Undercurrent (15:41) ===

[00:33:01]  Unquote.
[00:33:03]  So there was like this tension between the political power, which was held in rural counties, and the monetary influence, which resided in Atlanta.
[00:33:11]  What marked a good politician or power broker was one's ability to thread that needle.
[00:33:17]  Now, almost immediately upon arriving in McRae, Gene began asking around about the local courthouse gang.
[00:33:24]  In his old towns of Ailey and Mount Vernon, the courthouse gang there was under the control of the Peterson family, who facilitated Gene's move to the area, so he wisely avoided getting into unnecessary fights with the local establishment.
[00:33:36]  But in McRae, this ceased to be the case.
[00:33:38]  This was his first opportunity to play at politics, as he sensed the local political structure was unstable and positions of power were often in flux.
[00:33:48]  Now, Gene had very naked ambitions of power, but he preferred picking fights with the courthouse gang rather than appeasing them.
[00:33:55]  He was so immediately disliked by this exclusive collection of power brokers that the other lawyers saw him as, quote, the N-word who came to town.
[00:34:03]  So just using racism as a way to call someone essentially like an unwanted stranger.
[00:34:08]  So that's how they started to...
[00:34:10]  That's how they started referring to Gene.
[00:34:13]  Now, he also just became so unpopular that it became hard for him to win a case before the jury.
[00:34:19]  Gene continued to struggle with his law practice as he managed his farm through the years, up and through World War I. At this point, he operated what they call a two-mule farm.
[00:34:29]  He grew cotton and sugarcane and then moved on to peanuts.
[00:34:32]  He hired white and black farmhands, none of which were treated great.
[00:34:36]  Woke!
[00:34:38]  But the black ones were treated much worse, but not much worse than the neighboring farms.
[00:34:45]  Okay.
[00:34:45]  Well, okay, there you go.
[00:34:47]  Woke.
[00:34:48]  It woke on the idea that everyone was all pretty racist and pretty violent and pretty fucked up.
[00:34:54]  So if that's what woke means, then yes.
[00:34:57]  I mean, in an anonymous interview from 1941, a close friend of Gene recalled, quote, Gene was like a lot of farm bosses back then.
[00:35:07]  He'd knock the hell out of a black if he crossed him.
[00:35:10]  Oops.
[00:35:11]  I remembered when he was governor, he hit one of his farm N-words upside the head with a pistol, and the pistol went off.
[00:35:19]  The N-word ran under the house holding his head, and Gene got a little scared that he killed him.
[00:35:25]  He told me to go look under the house to see if he was all right.
[00:35:28]  By the time I got there, the N-word had run home, packed his bags, and left.
[00:35:33]  Unquote.
[00:35:34]  Wow.
[00:35:34]  That's one of those remarkable passages where like every additional clause makes it worse.
[00:35:41]  Yes.
[00:35:42]  Yeah.
[00:35:43]  Instances like this were not uncommon for Gene.
[00:35:47]  Anderson writes, quote, Gene later admitted to flogging a Negro man and appeared ashamed of it, saying, Good people could be misguided and do bad things.
[00:35:56]  Disregarding this remorseful apology, Talmadge's attitude towards blacks was that they were childlike, basically stupid, barely moved from a savage ancestry, and should be closely controlled.
[00:36:07]  Unquote.
[00:36:09]  Now, Gene was just well known locally to have racist outbursts of violence.
[00:36:14]  During World War I, a Jewish man and his wife from the north were accompanied by their black butler traveling back home from Florida.
[00:36:22]  While passing through McRae, the woman and her butler walked through town snacking on apples.
[00:36:27]  And the display of a white woman and a black man alone eating food together shocked and angered the local shop owners.
[00:36:35]  As news reached the courthouse, Gene busted out the door brandishing an axe with another lawyer armed with a hammer.
[00:36:41]  Gene charged towards the butler, screaming, I'm gonna get you, N-word.
[00:36:46]  And the white lady threw apples at Gene, and a mob descended and demanded the couple leave town, which they did, abandoning the black butler who was left to flee on his own.
[00:36:57]  Now, Anderson notes that, quote, no one ever did find the poor servant, unquote.
[00:37:04]  So it's another one of these incidents.
[00:37:06]  And like, you can't like name all of them.
[00:37:07]  This is just like such a common, common occurrence.
[00:37:10]  Now, Anderson writes, quote, this incident reflects the complexity and the cruelty of the racial situation.
[00:37:15]  Gene saw nothing wrong with having Negroes eat lunch at his table and cook his food, as long as they don't sit next to his wife.
[00:37:22]  But he considered it unthinkable to have a black man accompany a white woman down the street eating apples together, no matter how innocent their motives.
[00:37:30]  To explain his position towards black people in the 1920s is to explain that of most Georgians, unquote.
[00:37:36]  By 1918, Gene's, or rather Mitt's, farming venture was a steady operation, but his law practice was still largely a failure, and his political aspirations remained completely unrequited.
[00:37:49]  His first real brush with politics arose when the office of solicitor to the city court became vacant.
[00:37:56]  Now, it wasn't a big position, but it could provide a foot in the door.
[00:37:59]  Now, Gene had the perfect idea to secure his spot in the open post.
[00:38:03]  He wrote to his father, who was a very well-connected and well-respected man in Atlanta, and asked him to speak with the governor about appointing Eugene to the position.
[00:38:13]  Now, the governor was apparently happy to oblige, but instead of this impressing the local courthouse gang, this only made them hate Gene more.
[00:38:21]  Because, of course, you're just asking your fancy dad to give you this post instead of actually having to work for it yourself.
[00:38:29]  Now, they were so unhappy with this state of affairs that they had the office voted out of existence by the legislature.
[00:38:36]  They really wanted nothing to do with Gene.
[00:38:38]  Now, one of the stories about how Gene got into politics was that the local courthouse gang was refusing to grade the roads around his farm, so he sought office to do it himself.
[00:38:48]  Now, this is like most certainly not the main reason he got into politics.
[00:38:52]  He was always interested in politics, but this is a story that was deployed for his own political gain over time.
[00:38:58]  Now, at this point in Georgia, rail, oil, and power were the main political industries.
[00:39:05]  But with the advent of the automobile, the age of the road was around the bend.
[00:39:09]  Georgia roads were famously quite bad in the 1920s, and rural roads were often way too rough for like buggies and cars and really only good for horses and walking.
[00:39:20]  Same today, honestly.
[00:39:22]  I mean, sometimes in certain areas.
[00:39:26]  Gene made friends with multiple early road builders, including a man named John Whitley, who would later become one of his best friends.
[00:39:32]  Gene also struck up a friendship with the so-called most knowledgeable road builder in the area, a man named J.C. Thrasher, another fantastic.
[00:39:42]  That's an amazing name.
[00:39:44]  Oh, Thrasher.
[00:39:45]  I'm going to steal that man's name to write a fucking TV show.
[00:39:50]  Like, let's say 45-minute episodes, 26 a season, about a guy who repossesses cars in Miami.
[00:39:57]  Yeah, that's a good like repo man name.
[00:40:00]  JC Thrasher.
[00:40:01]  Yeah.
[00:40:02]  Now, Thrasher and Gene bonded over their shared aspirations of getting into the courthouse gang, both feeling like they've been screwed over by the local establishment.
[00:40:11]  Now, Thrasher wanted to run for county commissioner, and Gene volunteered to be his campaign manager.
[00:40:16]  He ran Thrasher as an independent since the Democratic Party was tied in with the local courthouse gang, but he managed to get Thrasher elected.
[00:40:24]  As soon as he took office, Thrasher appointed Gene as attorney for the county.
[00:40:29]  The courthouse gang had finally been broken, and the pair began their successful road building program.
[00:40:36]  But after only being county attorney for like just a few months, Gene wanted more.
[00:40:42]  He decided to run for state representative.
[00:40:45]  Now, his wife, Mitt, wasn't thrilled.
[00:40:47]  She didn't really care much for Gene's political aspirations and felt that he was abandoning the farm that they had spent a decade building, which he absolutely was.
[00:40:55]  But nevertheless, Gene persisted and announced his candidacy in a short statement.
[00:41:00]  I'm going to quote from Anderson here.
[00:41:03]  Quote, much of the Talmudge future in politics can be read in this first announcement.
[00:41:08]  Know the poor voter, articulate few problems and fewer solutions, and bear down heavily on your own honesty.
[00:41:15]  Do nothing, but do it with honor, unquote.
[00:41:19]  And yeah, Gene kind of had like a libertarian-esque undercurrent to a whole bunch of his campaign.
[00:41:28]  Which is like funny because he is a dictator, but he's like a libertarian dictator.
[00:41:33]  It's a thing in U.S. politics in particular.
[00:41:35]  Kind of no matter who you are, you have to have some libertarian, even to the present day, some libertarian signposting in your I mean, Kamala just did this with her.
[00:41:44]  Like, I have a gun.
[00:41:45]  I'd shoot someone who broke into my house.
[00:41:47]  Someone who comes into my house.
[00:41:48]  You have to do it a little bit because it's just so baked into what Americans are, you know?
[00:41:54]  So I get that.
[00:41:55]  Yeah.
[00:41:56]  Gene mostly ran his campaign alone.
[00:41:58]  He would get up early and ride around on county roads talking with farmers, rail workers, and shopkeepers.
[00:42:03]  Anderson notes, quote, Gene knew that he had to counter years of bad publicity from the gang and many unpopular court fights, unquote.
[00:42:12]  And despite Gene's work to counter this bad publicity, he did lose 756 votes to 1,187 votes, which gives you an idea of like the voting population of this area.
[00:42:25]  Yeah, yeah.
[00:42:27]  But Gene took the loss well, knowing that he did reasonably well for his first run, and he didn't want to damage the positive reputation that he had worked hard to build up that summer.
[00:42:38]  With his newly garnered goodwill, Gene became friends with the old leader of the gang, Lamar Murdeau, eventually moving into his law office.
[00:42:47]  Gene's second attempt to run for office was in 1922, this time for the state senate.
[00:42:53]  In an attempt to discredit him during the race, the courthouse lawyers convened a grand jury to accuse Talmadge of having sex with his plowing mule, which is a tried and true political tactic It's just accusing your opponent of having sex with animals.
[00:43:11]  It is an old one that simply will not go away.
[00:43:15]  Still, Gene was improving as a politician, evidenced by winning the popular vote in the three-county race.
[00:43:22]  Yet, the courthouse gang decided that this election would be subject to the county unit system and chose to overrule the popular vote just to spite Gene.
[00:43:32]  Gene was now 40 years old.
[00:43:34]  He couldn't manage to get elected to local office and really only got where he was via the courtesy of family and friends and was continuously outmaneuvered by his enemies.
[00:43:43]  But despite his losses, he kept thinking bigger.
[00:43:47]  Around 1924, Gene took a trip to Atlanta to, in the words of his friend and long-term political ally, Henry Sperlin, quote, find the biggest dog he could to decide who to run against.
[00:43:59]  Now, while in Atlanta, Gene encountered the agricultural commissioner, old JJ Brown, another great, another great name, who's described as a huge man wearing a huge hat surrounded by a personal posse.
[00:44:16]  Now, Gene was like strong pimp vibes.
[00:44:19]  Yeah, of course.
[00:44:19]  Who's not?
[00:44:20]  Yes, who is this?
[00:44:21]  Very much so.
[00:44:21]  Very much so.
[00:44:22]  And Gene was enamored by this, right?
[00:44:25]  You see your first pimp.
[00:44:27]  That's an important moment in every young boy's life.
[00:44:29]  Gene wants to be a guy with a big hat surrounded by a personal posse.
[00:44:32]  That's like all he wants.
[00:44:34]  Who doesn't?
[00:44:37]  No, Anderson notes that, quote, in rural Georgia, with its weak central government and strong agricultural economy, the office of agricultural commissioner had emerged as one of the more powerful, unquote.
[00:44:48]  And old J.J. Brown was in with big fertilizer.
[00:44:51]  And while he was like famously corrupt, he was also one of the most powerful men in the state, controlling a very fierce political lobby and awarded supporters with cushy oil and fertilizer inspector jobs.
[00:45:05]  To stand a chance against JJ, Gene would need substantial political assistance.
[00:45:10]  Luckily, he'd become friendly with the editor of the very, very influential Atlanta Constitution newspaper, who, like many others, wanted to see old JJ go.
[00:45:20]  But sympathetic coverage wasn't enough to go up against JJ.
[00:45:25]  Now, old JJ Brown's open display of corruption was turning more and more lawmakers against him.
[00:45:31]  A state legislator named Tom Linder was heading up an effort to find someone to run against Brown.
[00:45:37]  On a trip home to South Georgia, Linder happened to encounter Talmadge while going farm to farm selling fertilizer.
[00:45:43]  Talmadge had heard of Linder, and the two started talking politics.
[00:45:47]  He mentioned that he was looking for someone to run up against old JJ with the backing of 100 legislators, but everyone was just too scared to run.
[00:45:55]  Now, Gene quickly ran over and told Lamar Mordeaux about this coincidental opportunity, and a few nights later, both men showed up outside Linder's house, announcing that Gene would like a run for agricultural commissioner.
[00:46:08]  Though he didn't have the best political track record, Gene was feisty, and more importantly, literally no one else was willing to go up against JJ at this point.
[00:46:16]  Now, Gene's wife was not pleased, and she only found out about his candidacy while shopping in town one day.
[00:46:21]  At this point, Gene and Mitt were not talking much about Gene's political career.
[00:46:26]  That's sad.
[00:46:29]  Yeah, I mean, Mitt's very busy having to run Gene's farm, so she has a lot to do.
[00:46:35]  Fair enough.
[00:46:37]  Being a girl boss.
[00:46:40]  Kinda, kinda.
[00:46:41]  Although Gene will take all the credit for the farm.
[00:46:44]  Well, that's what being a boy boss is.
[00:46:46]  That is what being a boy boss is.
[00:46:49]  Real Zuckerberg energy from our man Gene here.
[00:46:53]  Now, some in the local courthouse gang were very quick to snitch on Gene, but a fair amount of them were wrangled into supporting him.
[00:47:00]  Anderson notes that for Gene's haters, it was kind of a win-win scenario for him to run against a powerful man like JJ.
[00:47:06]  Because if he lost, which he most certainly would, his ambitions would once again be completely crushed.
[00:47:13]  And if he somehow won, then Gene just wouldn't be their problem anymore.
[00:47:17]  Now, Murdeau headed up intercounty relations, going around talking to different newspapers, courthouse gangs, and churches.
[00:47:23]  And the election had a few other local boys from across the state eventually running on a similar platform against Brown.
[00:47:29]  But Gene stood out because of his presentation and theatrics, reminiscent of the populist Tom Watson, as well as the favorable coverage in the Constitution.
[00:47:37]  And Murdeau later just paid off two candidates to drop out of the race.
[00:47:43]  This way, Gene was able to present himself as the lone combatant standing against all odds.
[00:47:48]  Talmadge was absolutely trying to fill in the populist power vacuum left by the death of his adolescent inspiration, Tom Watson.
[00:47:56]  Gene started using little nicknames to attack his opponents, calling JJ's corrupt oil inspectors oily boys.
[00:48:05]  That's not his finest work.
[00:48:08]  That's a good start.
[00:48:09]  That's a good start.
[00:48:10]  It's a good start.
[00:48:12]  Oily boys.
[00:48:13]  It's like how Trump started with Christian Hillary before he reached his apothecis with meatball Ron.
[00:48:22]  Meatball Ron.
[00:48:23]  That was his finest hour.
[00:48:24]  That's his battle.
[00:48:26]  You can see the uptick, right?
[00:48:28]  Crooked Hillary, Sleepy Joe, meatball Ron.
[00:48:32]  You did it.
[00:48:33]  Just nuked him.
[00:48:35]  That was the verbal equivalent of a fucking cruise missile.

=== Playing the Role of a Hick (08:01) ===

[00:48:43]  No, Anderson does write.
[00:48:45]  Again, he wrote this in the 70s.
[00:48:47]  Quote, Gene had an unusual talent for coming up with simple, easy to remember, funny phrases, unquote.
[00:48:54]  Politics?
[00:48:55]  Yeah, that's a staple of politics.
[00:48:59]  To continue from Anderson, quote, Gene had developed an uncanny intuition about the emotional motivation of the farmer.
[00:49:06]  He knew they were gut-motivated, responsive to emotional appeals and extremes, and had a strong propensity for irrationality.
[00:49:14]  They possessed great pride, a fantastic sense of their past, and an appreciation for it.
[00:49:19]  And they were suspicious of things strange and alien.
[00:49:23]  The strategy of erecting faceless enemies and conspiracies, warring against the little man, the haves against the have-nots, had been used definitively by Watson, and the disciple had learned well from the master.
[00:49:34]  His language could be earthy, profane, grammatically atrocious, and very provincial.
[00:49:39]  In risolated rural areas, it was tailored to be understood by the most ignorant farmhand.
[00:49:44]  Simple, uncluttered, blunt discourse punctuated with bio passages and rural humor.
[00:49:50]  His language was also very adaptable.
[00:49:52]  He was a highly educated man, capable of polish and refinement and sophisticated dialogue.
[00:49:57]  Unquote.
[00:49:59]  So he kind of looked like, he kind of like code switched.
[00:50:03]  In talking to like rural farmers, he would talk a certain way.
[00:50:05]  In talking to like people in Atlanta, he would talk a different way.
[00:50:08]  Because he wasn't a hick.
[00:50:10]  He went to the University of Georgia.
[00:50:12]  He went to Lawrence.
[00:50:13]  He was a very well-educated guy.
[00:50:15]  He was playing one.
[00:50:16]  No, no, no, no.
[00:50:17]  Because he literally said he wants people to think he's a farmer, but he hates farming.
[00:50:22]  That's exactly what he's saying.
[00:50:22]  Yeah, I'm saying he wanted people to.
[00:50:25]  He understood the value of playing as a hick.
[00:50:28]  Exactly.
[00:50:28]  Exactly.
[00:50:31]  He kind of introduced, if not introduced, he kind of popularized this very theatrical style of politics for the U.S. governor.
[00:50:39]  Like this is where he made his bread and butter was being a very like theatrical, I think Anderson calls it a politics of crisis, like a theatrical politics of crisis.
[00:50:51]  That was his main tactic.
[00:50:53]  Yeah.
[00:50:54]  And do you know what our main tactic is, Robert?
[00:50:57]  Well, it's actually that, Garrison.
[00:50:59]  I'm a big fan of the politics of crisis, which is why I'm trying to convince everybody listening that there's a high-stakes presidential election occurring when you and I both know the lizards picked the winner months ago.
[00:51:12]  Oh, God.
[00:51:14]  Anyway.
[00:51:14]  Okay, here's some ass.
[00:51:17]  It's a good bit.
[00:51:18]  I'm just not going to continue.
[00:51:19]  I just can't.
[00:51:19]  No, There's only so far we should go into that.
[00:51:22]  Otherwise, somebody's going to send us a message on Reddit that makes me regret the last several years of work I've done.
[00:51:29]  Anyway, here's some ads.
[00:51:35]  There's two golden rules that any man should live by.
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[00:53:07]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[00:53:10]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[00:53:12]  That's so funny.
[00:53:13]  Sherry stay with me each night, each morning.
[00:53:22]  Say you love me.
[00:53:24]  You know I.
[00:53:26]  So come hang out with us in the studio and listen to Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:53:33]  What's up, everyone?
[00:53:34]  I'm Ego Modem.
[00:53:35]  My next guest, you know, from Step Brothers, Anchorman, Saturday Night Live, and the Big Money Players Network.
[00:53:43]  It's Will Farrell.
[00:53:46]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[00:53:50]  I went and had lunch with him one day, and I was like, and dad, I think I want to really give this a shot.
[00:53:55]  I don't know what that means, but I just know the groundlings.
[00:53:57]  I'm working my way up through it.
[00:53:58]  I know it's a place to come.
[00:54:00]  Look for up and coming talent.
[00:54:01]  He said, if it was based solely on talent, I wouldn't worry about you, which is really sweet.
[00:54:06]  Yeah.
[00:54:07]  He goes, but there's so much luck involved.
[00:54:09]  And he's like, just give it a shot.
[00:54:11]  He goes, but if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[00:54:19]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[00:54:22]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat.
[00:54:28]  Just hang in there.
[00:54:29]  Yeah, it would not be.
[00:54:31]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[00:54:32]  There's a lot of luck.
[00:54:34]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:54:42]  In 2023, former bachelor star Clayton Eckard found himself at the center of a paternity scandal.
[00:54:49]  The family court hearings that followed revealed glaring inconsistencies in her story.
[00:54:54]  This began a years-long court battle to prove the truth.
[00:54:57]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[00:55:01]  I doctored the test once.
[00:55:02]  It took an army of internet detectives to crack the case.
[00:55:05]  I wanted people to be able to see what their tax dollars were being used for.
[00:55:09]  Sunlight's the greatest disinfectant.
[00:55:12]  They would uncover a disturbing pattern.
[00:55:14]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[00:55:16]  Greg Gillespie and Michael Maracini.
[00:55:19]  My mind was blown.
[00:55:20]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[00:55:22]  This is Love Trap.
[00:55:24]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[00:55:26]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[00:55:30]  Ladies and gentlemen, breaking news out of Maricopa County as Laura Owens has been indicted on fraud charges.
[00:55:37]  This isn't over until justice is served in Arizona.
[00:55:42]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:55:51]  10-10 shots fired, City Hall building.
[00:55:54]  A silver .40 caliber handgun was recovered at the scene.
[00:55:59]  From iHeart Podcasts and Best Case Studios, this is Rorschach.
[00:56:04]  Murder at City Hall.
[00:56:05]  How could this have happened in City Hall?
[00:56:07]  Somebody tell me that.
[00:56:07]  Jeffrey Hood did.
[00:56:09]  July 2003.
[00:56:11]  Councilman James E. Davis arrives at New York City Hall with a guest.
[00:56:16]  Both men are carrying concealed weapons.
[00:56:19]  And in less than 30 minutes, both of them will be dead.
[00:56:27]  Everybody in the chamber's ducks.
[00:56:30]  A shocking public murder.
[00:56:31]  They scream, get down, get down.
[00:56:33]  Those are shots.
[00:56:34]  Those are shots.
[00:56:35]  Get down.
[00:56:35]  A charismatic politician.
[00:56:37]  You know, he just bent the rules all the time, man.
[00:56:39]  I still have a weapon.
[00:56:41]  And I could shoot you.

=== The Failed Hog Scheme Disaster (16:24) ===

[00:56:44]  And an outsider with a secret.
[00:56:46]  He alleged he was a victim of flat down.
[00:56:49]  That may or may not have been political.
[00:56:51]  That may have been about sex.
[00:56:53]  Listen to Rorschach.
[00:56:54]  Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[00:57:07]  So that's why I think if the electoral account is tied, the Senate's obviously going to pick Tim Walz.
[00:57:12]  That's been the plan the whole time.
[00:57:13]  It's already been architected.
[00:57:15]  It's very...
[00:57:15]  Oh, we'll get back.
[00:57:16]  Oh, because Walls.
[00:57:17]  Oh, sorry.
[00:57:18]  Hey, guys.
[00:57:19]  Guys, guys, guys.
[00:57:20]  Welcome.
[00:57:20]  This is Behind the Bastards.
[00:57:21]  We're returning once again.
[00:57:24]  A podcast about how Tim Walz absolutely is not descended from an iguana.
[00:57:28]  Look, I haven't gone through his childhood photos, seen pictures of his parents.
[00:57:32]  I can't prove to you that he's part iguana, you know?
[00:57:36]  That's just not a thing I'm going to do.
[00:57:38]  He's the Nebraska famously known for the iguana population.
[00:57:41]  DNA, absolutely.
[00:57:42]  It has a lot of, like, you can keep an iguana in a terrarium garrison.
[00:57:46]  Don't be racist.
[00:57:48]  Jesus.
[00:57:50]  Speaking of racism, Eugene Talmadge.
[00:57:52]  Yes.
[00:57:53]  Oh, boy.
[00:57:54]  So now, to Gene's delight, again, we are in the race for the agricultural commissioner.
[00:58:00]  And to Gene's delight, JJ Brown challenged him to multiple debates, the first of which would take place in McRae.
[00:58:09]  Now, this is exactly what Gene was wanting.
[00:58:11]  Now, JJ had heard that Gene was unpopular in his hometown and thought it would be like an easy win.
[00:58:17]  But JJ made the mistake of only hearing from Gene's local critics and failed to realize the ability of a small town to rally together against a big, slimy, like big city politician.
[00:58:28]  This was going to be the biggest political event in the town's history, and folks were genuinely excited to see that fiery Gene Talmadge go at it again.
[00:58:36]  Gene absolutely dominated in the debate, using the hometown crowd to his advantage.
[00:58:42]  And not that that was needed, though, as the second debate was in JJ's hometown in North Georgia.
[00:58:47]  And once again, Talmadge handed J.J. Brown a humiliating defeat.
[00:58:51]  Anderson writes that, quote, Brown had been run off the stump in his own hometown, unquote.
[00:58:57]  Now, Gene returned to McRae for election day, where he won 123,000 votes to 66,000 votes.
[00:59:06]  Gotta say, the number of voters has really leapt up since the last election.
[00:59:12]  Yes, indeed.
[00:59:13]  Gene also just completely dominated in the county unit system, getting 362 county unit votes to Brown's meager 52.
[00:59:22]  To quote Anderson, quote, the Atlanta press and the Georgia legislature provided flesh and blood to a skeleton conceived and bound together by the tremendous energies and aspirations of Eugene Talmadge, unquote.
[00:59:36]  And I think this is really crazy.
[00:59:38]  Interesting place for a skeleton metaphor, but I'm on board.
[00:59:40]  Gene was often very skeletal.
[00:59:42]  Like, he kind of looked like a walking skeleton.
[00:59:44]  Who doesn't love a good skeleton?
[00:59:45]  I like skeletons, you know?
[00:59:47]  Everyone loves someone with a skeleton.
[00:59:50]  I think it's important to point out that like both the Atlanta press and the Georgia legislature would later like hate Gene Talmadge.
[01:00:01]  And yet they are the ones responsible for first getting him into power.
[01:00:05]  It was only through their coverage and only through their assistance that he was made into the monster that he would like become.
[01:00:12]  Without their participation, he probably would have stayed just a small country lawyer.
[01:00:19]  It was specifically their help that allowed him to get to where he was.
[01:00:24]  Now, Gene fulfilled his campaign promises of cutting the bloated number of inspectors.
[01:00:28]  And while he removed any remnants of the old corrupt JJ regime, he did tend to hire a lot of his own family members.
[01:00:36]  And he won re-election in 1928.
[01:00:39]  But for a man in such a high political position, he had a very juvenile understanding of the state economy.
[01:00:46]  He cannot understand why Southern bankers favored appeasing Wall Street over helping local farmers.
[01:00:51]  Gene weaponized fears of Southern inferiority and oppression, preaching that rich northerners were using their influence to keep the agricultural South subservient to the North.
[01:01:01]  Anderson writes that this belief, quote, drove him beyond old South conservatism to the point of know-nothingism and a semi-rejection of all things geographically and idealistically removed from the South, unquote.
[01:01:14]  He ran a column in the department's own newspaper, the Market Bulletin, which ostensibly existed to communicate directly with farmers, but he mostly used it to spread his economic and political philosophy, right?
[01:01:25]  This is how he's supposed to send like updates on like farming and like agricultural information because the internet doesn't exist.
[01:01:32]  But Gene has used this as his own Twitter feed, just posting his economic opinions.
[01:01:38]  This is a thing with the very worst people in the 20th century is they all found ways to independently create Twitter for themselves.
[01:01:46]  This is Twitter.
[01:01:48]  Yeah, everyone wants to be able to do it.
[01:01:48]  Everyone wants Twitter.
[01:01:50]  And all of the worst people figured out how to make their own.
[01:01:53]  Yes.
[01:01:54]  Yes, absolutely.
[01:01:57]  Now, Gene won re-election a third time in 1930.
[01:02:01]  And this year marked the first time in the state's history that a majority of the population weren't living on a farm.
[01:02:08]  Basically, since the Civil War, Georgia, especially rural Georgia, was stuck in a culturally imposed political isolation.
[01:02:16]  But now, people were fleeing the countryside in droves as a mixture of economic hardships, developing technology, and urban growth, as Anderson puts it, quote, brought the reality of the world to Georgia, unquote.
[01:02:29]  And basically, this forced modernism that was encroaching provided a compelling alternative to farm life for the rural population.
[01:02:37]  At the start of the Depression, the average price of farmland and cotton fell by one half.
[01:02:43]  And Gene still did basically nothing to help his supporters weather these bad times.
[01:02:48]  He mostly just encouraged people to stay on the farm and he lambasted the keep farming, starve out there, you know.
[01:02:54]  Yeah, because like he thought that was more noble than taking help from the federal government, like literally.
[01:02:59]  Um, he spent all of his time just complaining about the Federal Farm Bureau's recommendations and attempts to help people, uh, saying that their efforts were like un-American, right?
[01:03:09]  Trying to like give people like money to like get food, trying to start lending cooperatives, trying to encourage people to just farm a little bit less land so they have a sustainable uh like supply and demand ecosystem.
[01:03:18]  Now, it's just very clear, like Gene lacked the economic knowledge to effectively enact any change, so instead, he blamed all of the state's agricultural and economic woes on Wall Street and bankers.
[01:03:32]  Um, the poor economic situation seriously put into question the image of individual frontier self-sufficiency.
[01:03:39]  So, why were people still supporting Talmadge, even though he was so ill-equipped to understand their current economic situation, with the farmers often just ignoring his advice but voting for him anyway?
[01:03:52]  I'm gonna quote from Anderson to kind of answer that question: Gene was saying, We do not want to become dependent on our government, and they were desperately looking for relief.
[01:04:01]  The Georgia farmer had lost the will to care for himself because he had lost the ability.
[01:04:06]  This forced him to think beyond himself and realize that this was now a world of alternatives to staying on the farm.
[01:04:12]  These new directions in which the farmer was moving were apparently creating a problem of conscience.
[01:04:18]  And by supporting the voice of the past, Gene Talmadge, they were absolving guilty feelings about leaving the past.
[01:04:24]  Unquote.
[01:04:26]  So, while farmers were struggling, Gene was actually having quite a bit of fun.
[01:04:31]  He would take road trips with his friends.
[01:04:32]  That's good.
[01:04:33]  I hate it when people like put their back into their work and just are miserable.
[01:04:37]  You know, if you're going to be a dictator, you might as well enjoy the path to dictation.
[01:04:42]  He was having a good time.
[01:04:43]  At this point, he was less of a dictator and more just like an absent figure.
[01:04:47]  He was on the road.
[01:04:48]  Yeah.
[01:04:49]  He just wasn't doing it.
[01:04:50]  Like, this is like, in terms of his libertarian approach, this is him being a libertarian.
[01:04:54]  He's just not doing anything.
[01:04:56]  He's that's the dream of every ruler.
[01:04:58]  People are in like a severe agricultural crisis.
[01:05:01]  And as the commissioner, he's just being like, good luck, stay out there.
[01:05:05]  Don't stop farming.
[01:05:06]  And like, that's it.
[01:05:08]  Meanwhile, he's taking road trips with his friends and family to places like Charleston's Botanical Gardens to quote unquote study to quote unquote study agriculture.
[01:05:19]  Sure.
[01:05:21]  The commissioner's hard at work.
[01:05:24]  Yeah.
[01:05:25]  Yeah.
[01:05:27]  And he just kept hiring family members and had this state pay for cars that they crashed.
[01:05:34]  And he also didn't report the tax money he collected to the state treasury, instead, putting it into his friends' bank accounts.
[01:05:42]  Well, that's being a good friend.
[01:05:44]  The state doesn't need to handle this money.
[01:05:46]  I'll deal with it.
[01:05:46]  I'll just put it in Bill's account.
[01:05:48]  That's not because look, Garrison, the state, you know, could get up to all sorts of corrupt shenanigans, but Bill, he's just going to spend that on hooch and chew.
[01:05:57]  Hooch and chew.
[01:05:59]  Not beer.
[01:06:00]  Beer is big no-no.
[01:06:02]  Look, if Joe Biden had just sent $20 billion to the guy who provides him with Zins, none of us would have an issue with it, right?
[01:06:09]  You know, that's all I'll say.
[01:06:12]  So, what got Gene into real trouble, though, was when he completely unauthorized, used the state's money to buy 82 carloads of hogs from Georgia farmers.
[01:06:23]  If Joe Biden had bought 82 carloads of hogs, we'd be fine with it.
[01:06:28]  Hold on, I've lost my place in this group.
[01:06:30]  Sure.
[01:06:31]  That's a good number of carloads of hogs.
[01:06:33]  Although a car back then, you're only fitting what?
[01:06:35]  Two to four hogs max.
[01:06:37]  That's really not that many hogs.
[01:06:38]  It's about $14,000 worth of hogs in 1920s money.
[01:06:42]  So it's a lot of hogs.
[01:06:45]  That seems like a decent quantity of hogs.
[01:06:47]  Yeah.
[01:06:48]  Now, this was an illegal and just bizarre attempt to help the local hog market by buying these hogs and shipping them to Chicago to sell at a higher price.
[01:06:58]  This was done all behind the governor's back.
[01:07:01]  This scheme lost the state anywhere from $12,000 to $20,000, depending who you ask, which is between $225,000 to $375,000 in today's money.
[01:07:13]  So he's going to be a good idea.
[01:07:14]  This is the kind of scam Eric Adams would get caught doing today.
[01:07:17]  Yes.
[01:07:21]  He lost the state basically at least the equivalent of like a quarter of a quarter of a million dollars with this weird hog scheme.
[01:07:28]  And in the summer of 1931, his questionable practices finally caught up with him with a Senate investigation tasked to look into his conduct.
[01:07:36]  I'm going to quote from Anderson here: the committee disclosed that Gene had paid $40,000, just $800,000 in today's money, in salaries to himself and members of his family over a three-year period.
[01:07:47]  This also includes their expenses, such as yearly trips to the Kentucky Derby.
[01:07:52]  Sure, of course.
[01:07:53]  Well, that's necessary, though.
[01:07:54]  You can't impair agricultural research.
[01:07:58]  There's a certain minimum number of mint juleps you need to be effective in Georgia government.
[01:08:03]  And you're only going to get that density if you go to the Gare.
[01:08:07]  Maybe next year you and I will go to the Derby.
[01:08:10]  I'd be very down for that.
[01:08:12]  We can get matching tailored white suits.
[01:08:15]  I am already down for that.
[01:08:17]  Let's do it.
[01:08:18]  That'll be fun.
[01:08:19]  That'll be a good buy.
[01:08:20]  It's a calm year of 2025 where hopefully nothing will happen.
[01:08:23]  It'll be the only interesting thing occurring is our trip to the Derby.
[01:08:26]  God, God, I hope so.
[01:08:28]  You and I are both going to learn about new kinds of racism.
[01:08:31]  Not new kinds of racism, but new to us.
[01:08:34]  Yeah, new to me, a Canadian.
[01:08:38]  Well, there's racism in the South, and then there is like family money racism in the South.
[01:08:44]  And that, you really gotta, you really gotta go to the Derby to catch a load of that.
[01:08:48]  I believe that.
[01:08:49]  Or one of those plantation weddings.
[01:08:51]  It is like Gene's favorite place to go.
[01:08:53]  So yeah, I can see that.
[01:08:55]  Now, the Senate committee eventually called for a second hearing to investigate Gene's use of fertilizer tax money, which instead of sending into the treasury, he was depositing into the accounts of his friends.
[01:09:07]  Gene refused to appear before the second hearing, claiming the committee had no power to demand his appearance, which the committee responded by asking for contempt proceedings and vaguely threatening impeachment.
[01:09:18]  And this was all a little ironic after Gene ran as like the big anti-corruption candidate.
[01:09:23]  But Talmadge was eventually forced to show up at the investigative committee hearing, where he proudly stated, If I stole, it was for farmers like yourselves, unquote.
[01:09:33]  And this like determination and dedication to helping farmers by, again, stealing hogs was enough to strike down an impeachment resolution by 114 votes to 22.
[01:09:44]  So all of at this point, the Senate was also kind of full of farmers who weren't very smart.
[01:09:51]  So they were like, yeah, Gene, you go.
[01:09:54]  So he was fine.
[01:09:56]  But to appease a few of the angry senators who wanted the governor to take action in court, Governor Russell tasked his AG to undergo his own investigation, which eventually recommended that Talmadge pay back the state $15,000 for the hogs and his stepson's job as a clerk.
[01:10:12]  But the governor didn't actually take action on this because he was planning a run for the U.S. Senate and didn't want to anger the farmers.
[01:10:18]  So Gene essentially just got away with all of this, emerging as a sort of like Robin Hood figure who would steal from the state to help the farmers.
[01:10:26]  Now, come 1932, the governor was running for a U.S. Senate, and Gene had his eyes on the governor's office.
[01:10:34]  The hometown crowd from McRae traveled to Atlanta to pay for the qualifying fee and announce his candidacy.
[01:10:39]  Gene had largely been able to get around the courthouse gangs by appealing directly to the vast swaths of the rural population.
[01:10:46]  And as commissioner, he made enough contacts in various counties that an election campaign organization could rather spontaneously take form.
[01:10:53]  The state's largest road builder, John Whitley, who was old friends with Gene, got close to his political circle once again with the prospect of Gene taking over the highway department.
[01:11:02]  Gene was really obsessed in this campaign with paying off state debt, which he viewed as an evil long plaguing the South.
[01:11:10]  Gene was also worried by the then presidential candidate Franklin Delanor Roosevelt's calls for a more involved federal government.
[01:11:17]  To quote from Anderson, Gene knew that if the starving farmer were given food money as a handout, the Southern farmer would therefore remain in subjugation, only this time to the government instead of the local bank or Wall Street.
[01:11:30]  Psychological indebtedness far worse than the region's traditional financial indebtedness.
[01:11:35]  Gene's obsession with debt as evil was an example of his inability to distinguish the symptom from the disease.
[01:11:41]  His 1932 platform was flawed by this failing, and thus he attacked peripheral issues that ironically served to maintain the very problems he was trying to cure.
[01:11:50]  Gene had entered the race, naming the issue high taxes and high government spending.
[01:11:55]  The other candidates joined him in unison.
[01:11:57]  The entire slate were by the book old line conservatives who saw the answers to the day's problems in yesterday's solutions.
[01:12:04]  Unquote.
[01:12:05]  The one piece of government spending that Gene did earnestly support was pensions for Confederate veterans, which he did like, this was actually something he sincerely advocated for.
[01:12:16]  This wasn't like a political gesture.
[01:12:18]  No, this was clearly something that was important to him.
[01:12:21]  It was.
[01:12:22]  He saw Confederate veterans as like paragons of the lost world that Gene was like fighting to return to.
[01:12:28]  You know, some of us, some of us, I just don't think we should give out participation trophies, you know?
[01:12:35]  So true, brother.
[01:12:36]  So true.
[01:12:38]  Now, on July 4th, a massive barbecue rally was held in McRae, drawing huge numbers with the Atlantic Constitution providing extremely thorough coverage, which they did for no other candidate this race.
[01:12:50]  As Gene traveled the state giving speeches, he was dubbed the wild man from Sugar Creek.
[01:12:55]  Even though he was politically ill-prepared, his personality was perfect for the depression period.
[01:13:01]  His performance was a distraction from the harsh reality of rural life, and if not much else, offered the sweet taste of nostalgia.

=== Executive Power and Old Laws (11:52) ===

[01:13:09]  Anderson writes that, quote, those who attached their dreams to his words could, in a small part, escape those realities by believing in Eugene Talmadge, unquote.
[01:13:19]  Gene was seen as the clear frontrunner, and his platform relied on his ability to make a speech so impactful, so unforgettable in the lives of the attendees that they would immediately become Talmadge loyalists.
[01:13:31]  Gene utilized his supporters planted in the crowd to queue him up for certain topics and encourage audience interaction.
[01:13:38]  All of his opponents attacked Talmadge's personal record instead of his platform, focusing on his near impeachment, his Senate and AG investigation, and the whole hog incident.
[01:13:48]  But Gene was able to flip this around and turn the hog incident into a sort of rallying cry.
[01:13:53]  Planted members in the crowd would queue up by shouting, Tell us about them pigs you stole, Gene.
[01:13:59]  And Gene would lean in and point his finger at the crowd and say, They say I stole.
[01:14:04]  Yeah, it's true I stole, but I stole for you, you men in overalls, you dirt farmers.
[01:14:09]  And the crowd would just be like, amazing stuff, man.
[01:14:13]  Yeah.
[01:14:13]  You know, Garrison, I should announce here: when I run for president, I want to promise the American people one thing, which is that there will be a hog-based scandal within my first year in office.
[01:14:25]  I guarantee you.
[01:14:26]  I trust you.
[01:14:27]  I settled on the specific hog-based scandal, but there will be a hog-based scandal.
[01:14:33]  I guarantee it.
[01:14:34]  No, I do think it is important to note, like, how all of these attacks on Gene's record, he's able to completely flip around and turn into like assets, right?
[01:14:43]  Like he's he's smart.
[01:14:45]  And there's the ways that people attack him as ways to make himself stronger.
[01:14:49]  Well, yeah, it's the kind of thing Trump's able to do, too.
[01:14:52]  It's political judo, right?
[01:14:53]  It's like using the momentum of your enemy's attacks in order to advance.
[01:14:59]  Yeah, it's you hate because it, because it does seem to be there's a degree with both Trump and with Talmadge, because there's not like a class on this, and you really don't get this.
[01:15:10]  I don't even know what they would have been reading that would have taught them this.
[01:15:13]  I mean, there's bits of history where you get pieces of this.
[01:15:16]  I always have the feeling with most of the guys who are good at this, it's instinctive to a significant degree.
[01:15:22]  Yeah, no, it's like, it has to be just kind of how like how their general like demeanor is.
[01:15:28]  And it just has a degree of like uncanny overlap.
[01:15:31]  Yep.
[01:15:32]  Now, Gene's supporters were also sometimes sometimes troublemakers.
[01:15:36]  To quote Anderson, quote, although they were never instructed by Gene to disrupt the opponent's speeches, the Talmudge plants could wreak havoc on the other candidates.
[01:15:46]  Their tactics did not include booing, but they did go in for causing suspicious accidents, like setting a car on fire during an opponent's speech.
[01:15:56]  The resulting smoke and sirens would invariably send the crowd racing towards the fire, leaving the hapless speaker without an audience.
[01:16:04]  Unquote.
[01:16:05]  So instead of like heckling the speaker, they would just start a fire to distract everybody, which is actually a pretty effective tactic.
[01:16:13]  Yeah, it does work.
[01:16:14]  People love running towards fires.
[01:16:16]  Yeah.
[01:16:18]  Portland kids in 2020, Eugene Talmadge.
[01:16:21]  Demonstrative fires to distract from other actions.
[01:16:25]  Yeah.
[01:16:25]  Beautiful.
[01:16:27]  Now, Gene was also obsessed with crowd size.
[01:16:30]  He would intentionally book venues that were too small for the expected crowd so that reporting would say that there was an overflowing crowd at every event.
[01:16:39]  So to newspaper readers, Gene would seem like he was just exceedingly popular.
[01:16:43]  He would also ask local sheriffs to count how many people were in attendance, usually about 15,000, which was bigger than the size of like an average county, which would get the sheriff to proudly proclaim that each event was a record crowd size.
[01:16:57]  Again, it's very, very similar, like overlap, right?
[01:17:00]  There's no class that like teaches you you should really care about crowd size.
[01:17:03]  It's just it's just what these guys go for.
[01:17:06]  Now, in less than two months, Gene made over 50 speeches and talked in front of more than 75,000 Georgians.
[01:17:13]  I'm going to quote a little anecdote from Anderson.
[01:17:15]  Quote, so completely has he sold his image as one of the boys that in one small town, the big limousine in which he was riding was turned back because they thought that Talmadge would resent so much wealth being displayed at a speech.
[01:17:28]  Gene was not recognized in the back seat.
[01:17:31]  So the driver turned around and drove outside town where a farmer driving an oxcart was hailed down.
[01:17:38]  Gene climbed on board and in a more acceptable transportation was enthusiastically welcomed at the gate from which he had just been turned away.
[01:17:45]  Unquote.
[01:17:46]  So yeah, this was all theater.
[01:17:48]  This was all play acting for Gene.
[01:17:50]  Theater, Garrison.
[01:17:52]  You live in the South now.
[01:17:53]  Talk like it.
[01:17:55]  Theater?
[01:17:56]  Theater.
[01:17:57]  Is that how you say it, Robert?
[01:17:58]  I'm going to the theater tonight.
[01:18:02]  That's not how people in Georgia talk.
[01:18:04]  I often get made fun of for my southern country lawyer accent.
[01:18:08]  You Georgia Yankees just don't understand the truth south, which exists for roughly around two and a half hours around the small town I grew up in in Oklahoma.
[01:18:18]  Texas and Oklahoma.
[01:18:20]  Everything else is Yankees.
[01:18:21]  Sure, sure, Robert.
[01:18:23]  Fucking El Paso carpetbaggers.
[01:18:26]  We got one page to go through, buddy.
[01:18:28]  Let's wrap this up.
[01:18:29]  Okay.
[01:18:30]  Now, as the race went on, Gene started pushing a conspiracy theory that all the other candidates were conspiring to split up the county unit vote, causing a runoff.
[01:18:40]  Smart, smart.
[01:18:41]  Anderson notes, quote, the picture of a sinister movement afoot had high appeal for the entertainment-starved farmers, who knew enemies had to be on the land, but could never identify them, unquote.
[01:18:54]  Which is just a perfect, perfect insight into the mind of the conservative voter.
[01:18:59]  Now, although a runoff election was expected, as the results began coming in, it was clear that Gene had achieved a huge victory.
[01:19:07]  He handily won the popular vote by 30,000, along with 246 county unit votes against all his opponents, combined total of 146.
[01:19:16]  Now, there was only 240,000 votes in total.
[01:19:19]  So that's the voting population of Georgia in 1932.
[01:19:23]  Now, Gene's wife Mitt never moved to Atlanta while he served as commissioner.
[01:19:28]  But after this election, she reluctantly moved to Atlanta with their kids.
[01:19:32]  And the Talmadge family turned the governor's mansion in the upscale Ansley Park into a sort of makeshift farm, but mostly as like a political gesture.
[01:19:40]  Mitt built a chicken coop in the backyard, and they put an old cow on the front lawn.
[01:19:45]  During cocktail parties, the cow would often escape to run off and chow down and tear up the nearby golf course, which is great because this area, I think this is now kind of like around like Piedmont Park.
[01:19:57]  If there should be way more cows walking around this area of Atlanta, just ruining the golf courses, that would be fantastic.
[01:20:04]  Almost immediately, the Senate was not too fond of Gene and largely ignored his proposed programs.
[01:20:10]  The legislature refused to pass his reduced tax and utility rates, his highway department reorganization bill, but most devastating to Gene, his promise for a $3 car tag, which was a staple of his election campaign.
[01:20:22]  Though he did get back pay for Confederate veterans passed.
[01:20:25]  So there you go.
[01:20:26]  The Georgia legislature is always coming through for what really matters.
[01:20:30]  That's good.
[01:20:30]  That's good.
[01:20:31]  I'm sure there's still somebody in Georgia's legislature working on that bill.
[01:20:35]  Oh, absolutely.
[01:20:38]  We're just leaving checks on the graves.
[01:20:41]  Gene also vetoed his fair share of bills, I think around 40.
[01:20:45]  And Anderson notes that a complete breakdown had occurred between the executive and legislative branches of government.
[01:20:52]  Essentially, nothing was really getting done.
[01:20:55]  But with this weakened legislature, Gene's dictatorial methods began to manifest.
[01:21:01]  Gene thought that there was like a conspiracy against him by the former governor and his allies for Gene to fail.
[01:21:06]  So as soon as the legislature adjourned, he began to utilize archaic executive power.
[01:21:12]  Talmadge suspended all regular state taxes for two years, citing authority granted in a 1821 law.
[01:21:20]  This is how he was able to force his promised $3 license plate by ordering that all automotive tax be dropped to $3.
[01:21:28]  Now, Gene had a lot of guys throughout his career who would just troll through like really, really old, outdated laws to find like what loopholes of executive power like existed.
[01:21:39]  This is like one of his core tactics was finding like any way to exercise the fullest extent of executive power by often going through laws that were like over 100 years old.
[01:21:49]  To quote Anderson, quote, it was a coup that made the lawmakers look even worse and in the public's eye propelled Gene out of the whole mess.
[01:21:57]  The Motor Vehicle Commission didn't like the idea and refused to sell tags for $3.
[01:22:01]  Gene immediately told the man that he was off the state payroll.
[01:22:04]  And almost as quickly, the commissioner notified the governor that the tags would be sold for $3 after all.
[01:22:10]  Unquote.
[01:22:11]  Now, even without him getting his bills passed, Gene would attempt to exert control by directly puppeteering state agencies.
[01:22:18]  The first he needed to coup was the unwieldy highway department, which was taking 53% of the state budget.
[01:22:24]  It was essentially the biggest political lever in the state because roads controlled where everyone went and you could use road funds as like a bargain for like county courthouse gangs and to get like election favors.
[01:22:37]  Gene bargained with the board to fire road engineers to cut down on costs, with Gene just refusing to approve budgets and issue payments until his demands were fulfilled.
[01:22:47]  At this time, Gene was also being pressured to call for a special session to legalize beer, an issue that Gene largely found inconsequential, saying, beer?
[01:22:55]  Why, this is hard liquor country.
[01:22:57]  Beer is a fad.
[01:22:58]  Unquote.
[01:22:59]  If you find it weird that beer was ever illegal in Georgia, there's a documentary.
[01:23:05]  Pretty good documentary.
[01:23:06]  Smokey and the bandit that you can watch that will explain this to you.
[01:23:11]  Now, Gene mostly didn't want to call this extra session, mostly out of fear that they would strike down his $3 car tag and remove his ability to leverage power over the highway department.
[01:23:20]  Now, during this spat, Gene was also picking a fight with the Public Service Commission over high utility rates, saying that there was a conspiracy between the five commissioners to charge high rates.
[01:23:30]  And by alleging this, he was able to take action under Georgia Code to remove state officials who were derelict in their duties and appoint their successors.
[01:23:37]  You should maybe notice a trend here that he often was convinced, or at least claimed, that there was all kinds of conspiracies against him.
[01:23:46]  Always, no matter what.
[01:23:47]  There was always a conspiracy against him.
[01:23:50]  So as things were heating up in Atlanta, Eugene Talmadge traveled to New York City in mid-June, accompanied by four National Guard bodyguards.
[01:24:00]  Rumors circulated that Talmadge was undergoing a military occupation of the Capitol and the Treasury.
[01:24:06]  To quote Anderson, quote, National Guardsmen were seen quietly moving about the Capitol grounds, armed with machine guns.
[01:24:13]  Simultaneously, it was leaked that $2 million had been taken from banks and placed in the treasury vault because the Highway Department was going to sue in federal court.
[01:24:21]  If the court granted in their favor, the money could not be touched if it was on state property.
[01:24:26]  Unquote.
[01:24:27]  Now, Gene was questioned about these odd occurrences of like moving money and armed men, to which he only smiled and replied, Military matters must necessarily be kept secret.
[01:24:39]  Unquote.
[01:24:40]  Yeah, that's scans.
[01:24:42]  This whole sequence of events is extremely prophetic for what Gene's reign over Georgia would look like in the next like 10 years.
[01:24:50]  Now, look, if I'm in power, am I going to have the National Guard follow me around so that there's always a body of soldiers meeting me wherever I show up, like the emperor in Star Wars?
[01:25:00]  Absolutely.

=== Military Secrets and Future Coups (04:40) ===

[01:25:02]  But they're going to be dressed like those red guys, you know?
[01:25:05]  You know, the red guys from Star Wars garrison?
[01:25:07]  That's the same thing.
[01:25:07]  Oh, I'm very familiar.
[01:25:08]  Uh-huh.
[01:25:09]  Yeah.
[01:25:09]  Yeah.
[01:25:09]  With the Imperial Guard.
[01:25:11]  Robert, excuse me.
[01:25:13]  Excuse me.
[01:25:13]  I'm retooling.
[01:25:14]  We're selling all of the National Guard's tanks and weapons in order to buy screen-accurate Imperial Guard uniforms from Star Wars.
[01:25:23]  You can get a pretty good one for about a thousand bucks.
[01:25:25]  I already know this.
[01:25:26]  See, all we got to sell is like three or four MRAPs, you know?
[01:25:31]  So that is where we're going to end our story today with Gene's kind of military coup.
[01:25:39]  And we will learn what he did with this military coup in the next episode.
[01:25:46]  What a man.
[01:25:48]  What a man.
[01:25:48]  What a mighty, not very good man.
[01:25:51]  No.
[01:25:52]  Does that song ring a bell to you, Garrison?
[01:25:54]  No.
[01:25:55]  No.
[01:25:56]  Anyway, I'm on Twitter at Underbowtie, still posting for the void.
[01:26:00]  Yeah.
[01:26:00]  Yeah.
[01:26:01]  I'm on Twitter too, but I don't really post that much anymore.
[01:26:04]  No, you've been good.
[01:26:05]  I've gotten it.
[01:26:06]  I took it off my phone.
[01:26:07]  I've been breaking the habit, just like that Lincoln Park song, even though Lincoln Park's been canceled.
[01:26:14]  All right, I'm done.
[01:26:15]  Tragic.
[01:26:19]  Behind the Bastards is a production of CoolZone Media.
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[01:26:37]  Subscribe to our channel, youtube.com slash at behind the bastards.
[01:26:44]  When a group of women discover they've all dated the same prolific con artist, they take matters into their own hands.
[01:26:52]  I vowed I will be his last target.
[01:26:55]  He is not going to get away with this.
[01:26:57]  He's going to get what he deserves.
[01:26:59]  We always say that, trust your girlfriends.
[01:27:03]  Listen to the girlfriends.
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[01:27:06]  On the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:27:15]  Hey, it's Nora Jones, and my podcast, Playing Along, is back with more of my favorite musicians.
[01:27:20]  Check out my newest episode with Josh Grobin.
[01:27:23]  You related to the Phantom at that point.
[01:27:26]  Yeah, I was definitely the Phantom in that.
[01:27:28]  That's so funny.
[01:27:30]  Share with me each night, each morning.
[01:27:37]  Listen to Nora Jones' Playing Along on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:27:45]  What's up, everyone?
[01:27:46]  I'm Ego Modem.
[01:27:47]  My next guest, it's Will Farrell.
[01:27:52]  My dad gave me the best advice ever.
[01:27:55]  He goes, just give it a shot.
[01:27:56]  But if you ever reach a point where you're banging your head against the wall and it doesn't feel fun anymore, it's okay to quit.
[01:28:03]  If you saw it written down, it would not be an inspiration.
[01:28:05]  It would not be on a calendar of, you know, the cat just hanging in there.
[01:28:13]  Yeah, it would not be.
[01:28:15]  Right, it wouldn't be that.
[01:28:16]  There's a lot of life.
[01:28:17]  Listen to Thanks Dad on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:28:25]  In 2023, bachelor star Clayton Eckard was accused of fathering twins, but the pregnancy appeared to be a hoax.
[01:28:32]  You doctored this particular test twice, Miss Owens, correct?
[01:28:35]  I doctored the test once.
[01:28:37]  It took an army of internet detectives to uncover a disturbing pattern.
[01:28:42]  Two more men who'd been through the same thing.
[01:28:44]  Ray Gillespie and Michael Manchini.
[01:28:46]  My mind was blown.
[01:28:48]  I'm Stephanie Young.
[01:28:49]  This is Love Trapped.
[01:28:51]  Laura, Scottsdale Police.
[01:28:53]  As the season continues, Laura Owens finally faces consequences.
[01:28:57]  Listen to Love Trapped podcast on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:29:04]  10-10 shots fired in the City Hall building.
[01:29:07]  How did this ever happen in City Hall?
[01:29:09]  Somebody tell me that.
[01:29:11]  A shocking public murder.
[01:29:12]  This is one of the most dramatic events that really ever happened in New York City politics.
[01:29:19]  They screamed, get down, get down.
[01:29:21]  Those are shots.
[01:29:22]  A tragedy that's now forgotten.
[01:29:25]  And a mystery that may or may not have been political.
[01:29:27]  That may have been about sex.
[01:29:29]  Listen to Rorschach, Murder at City Hall on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.
[01:29:38]  This is an iHeart podcast.
[01:29:41]  Guaranteed human.