Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, welcome back to Behind the Bastards, a podcast
Speaker 2: that uh is, you know, a podcast. I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't know what to say. Uh, you're not always
Speaker 2: knowing what to say at the start of a week,
Speaker 2: and that's where I am this week.
Speaker 1: You just don't seem like you're qualified to host the
Speaker 1: podcast today.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, that's that's why we've We've brought in a Ringer,
Speaker 2: our equivalent of Sophie, who's a baseball guy.
Speaker 1: That's not my sport.
Speaker 2: But that's not your sport.
Speaker 4: That is my sport. But I don't know.
Speaker 2: You're into baseball now, okay, okay, but not guys baseball.
Speaker 1: Interesting baseball, baseball.
Speaker 2: Nate Silver, he's into baseball, the Nate Silver of baseball.
Speaker 1: O Oh, what's the what's the guy's name from the
Speaker 1: Dodgers that my mom would be so disappointed in?
Speaker 2: Men? Of course? Total Yeah, I know who he is.
Speaker 1: My mom loves him.
Speaker 2: And Garrison is that guy of helping me out with
Speaker 2: my podcast for this week and next week, because you
Speaker 2: know Garrison. In my culture Italians, we have a ritual
Speaker 2: that's gone back thousands of years. When a young person
Speaker 2: turns twenty two to celebrate their entry into adulthood, where
Speaker 2: they research and write like a sixteen thousand word essay
Speaker 2: on a figure from Georgia state history. This goes back
Speaker 2: to ancient Roman times in which Georgia didn't exist as
Speaker 2: a state. So actually there were no adults in Italy
Speaker 2: for a very long period of time, which is a
Speaker 2: large part of why the Catholic Church got up to
Speaker 2: some of the trouble it got up to.
Speaker 4: Ooh, that's not good, absolutely not.
Speaker 2: Anyway, who are we learning about this week, buddy.
Speaker 4: So when I first moved to Georgia, kind of one
Speaker 4: of the first people I heard about that would be
Speaker 4: like a contender for a pretty fucked up guy is
Speaker 4: one of the old governors. Now. He served during the
Speaker 4: nineteen thirties, so you can already tell there's gonna be
Speaker 4: some fucked up stuff going on.
Speaker 2: Probably not going to be a happy story in several
Speaker 2: specific ways.
Speaker 4: Yeah. So I was first told that this was like,
Speaker 4: this was like Georgia's main.
Speaker 2: Fascist, and that's saying something.
Speaker 4: It is saying something. And the more I looked into him,
Speaker 4: the more he kind of just felt like kind of
Speaker 4: the template for like a conservative fascist like governorship, especially
Speaker 4: this kind of new wave that we're seeing in the
Speaker 4: United States, and he's kind of like America's first like
Speaker 4: real fascist in some way. Now, I know people point
Speaker 4: to Huey Long, Yeah, the governor of our neighboring state.
Speaker 2: And if you don't know, Huey Long was the governor
Speaker 2: of Louisiana who was like kind of a dictator of
Speaker 2: Louisiana but also rely definitely more on closer to further
Speaker 2: left at least than the guy we're talking about.
Speaker 4: He was much more socially liberal. He certainly was a
Speaker 4: dictator and in some ways kind of a more efficient dictator.
Speaker 4: He actually knew how to like be a dictator.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, he was the Tito of the United States.
Speaker 4: Yeah, our guy for these next few weeks that Eugene
Speaker 4: and Talmadge. Uh was not a super efficient dictator, but
Speaker 4: he really wanted to be and he certainly was a
Speaker 4: fascist excellent, And that's who we're going to be looking
Speaker 4: at for these next few weeks. And kind of how
Speaker 4: his reign over Georgia modeled what you know, these like
Speaker 4: like DeSantis and all these kind of new new kind
Speaker 4: of more fascist governors kind of how they have kind
Speaker 4: of replicated this sort of governing strategy. So that's that's
Speaker 4: what we're looking at today. Let's start by kind of
Speaker 4: going back to lay the groundwork for the area that
Speaker 4: that Jean grew up in. So Jean's great grandfather was
Speaker 4: born in New Jersey and moved to Georgia in the
Speaker 4: early eighteen twenties after first like traveling the South while
Speaker 4: serving under Andrew Jackson in his attack on the Creek Nation,
Speaker 4: where he drove Native Americans from Alabama and Georgia deep
Speaker 4: into Florida. Great Grandpa Talmuch decided to settle in central
Speaker 4: Georgia and started buying up hundreds of acres of land
Speaker 4: and began his career as a cotton farmer. Jean's biographer,
Speaker 4: Guy named William Anderson from Athens, Georgia, refers to this
Speaker 4: period as the birth of cotton culture. He was part
Speaker 4: of a large wave of settlers moving into the Deep
Speaker 4: South after the indigenous tribes were killed off and forcibly
Speaker 4: relocated by Andrew Jackson. During this period, there was certainly
Speaker 4: a desire for slaves as like a status symbol and
Speaker 4: obviously to help with like farm labor. Especially he didn't
Speaker 4: have a big family. Now it's unclear. If Jean's family
Speaker 4: had slaves, like they certainly would have liked them, but it.
Speaker 2: Wasn't the tower im economically to be able to afford them.
Speaker 4: At least not for like his grandparents. Yeah, and they
Speaker 4: had a large enough family that they kind of ran
Speaker 4: their farm that way. Now, it is a little tricky
Speaker 4: to find tons of information on this guy on Eugene Talmage,
Speaker 4: because he's really looked over as a historical figure because
Speaker 4: he represented a moment that people would rather just kind
Speaker 4: of blaze past. He was like an unfortunate obstacle in
Speaker 4: the inevitable progress of history, so people kind of just
Speaker 4: skipped over him largely in the history books. There's really
Speaker 4: only one one book that gets into him in depth.
Speaker 4: That's his biography of the Wild Man from Sugar Creek
Speaker 4: by Willie Anderson, which did a whole bunch of interviews
Speaker 4: with like friends, enemies, political associates, and rivals to kind
Speaker 4: of draw a picture of this guy. Now, that book
Speaker 4: was published in the seventies, but about like thirty years
Speaker 4: after Jean's demise, and it certainly criticizes Gene for his racism,
Speaker 4: but there's only so much you can do for being
Speaker 4: you know, a book about Southern history written by a
Speaker 4: guy raised in this period in.
Speaker 2: They were at a specific in that stage and it
Speaker 2: was not where we are now. Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I've also kind of supplemented some of the research
Speaker 4: that that Willie Anderson did in that book with a
Speaker 4: few other books like Race and Racism in the United
Speaker 4: States by Charles A. Gallagher and Cameron D. Liftd, as
Speaker 4: well as the book Labor in the South by f
Speaker 4: Ray Marshall.
Speaker 2: Now I am choosing to read that as Gallagher the
Speaker 2: stage comedian Garson. Do you know who Gallagher was?
Speaker 4: I have heard of a man named Gallagher.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a shame. He was well, he wasn't very good, actually,
Speaker 2: but he was a guy who hit fruit with a
Speaker 2: mallet anyway.
Speaker 1: Wow.
Speaker 4: So now to kind of demonstrate how there's certain periods
Speaker 4: of Southern history that's kind of just skipped over by
Speaker 4: the history books. We don't really know what Jean's family
Speaker 4: was up to during the Civil War. They were certainly
Speaker 4: certainly were pro Confederates.
Speaker 2: I think we know kind of what they were up
Speaker 2: to during the Civil War.
Speaker 4: Yes, it's just not discussed in great detail. Yeah, but
Speaker 4: Jean's father, a man named Thomas Ramalgous Talmadge, which is
Speaker 4: a fantastic Southern name. He grew up in the wake
Speaker 4: of the Civil War during the reconstruction era. Now Thomas
Speaker 4: had the then rare privilege of attending the University of Georgia,
Speaker 4: but returned to his grandfather's land to continue to farm
Speaker 4: and process cotton, and he got wealthy by learning that
Speaker 4: there was more money in the processing of cotton rather
Speaker 4: than just the growing of it. Now Thomas married a
Speaker 4: girl named Carrie Roberts, the daughter of the so called
Speaker 4: meanest man in Jasper County, a lawyer named Eugene Roberts,
Speaker 4: and the couple had their first son in eighteen eighty
Speaker 4: four and named him after Carrie's father. This is Geene Talmadge.
Speaker 2: What a night. That's we really don't have that anymore,
Speaker 2: like being able to be like the meanest man in
Speaker 2: a county. He's the meanest man in Essper. I couldn't
Speaker 2: tell you what the meanest man in Moltnomah County was.
Speaker 2: I couldn't tell you the meanest man in any county
Speaker 2: I've ever lived in. Yeah, And that's that's really that's
Speaker 2: an example of how we've lost are the collective speed
Speaker 2: that once made this nation great.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's kind of a Eugene Talviadge believed he
Speaker 4: was right.
Speaker 1: We could make Robert the meanest man in Milton, Noma
Speaker 1: County easily.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
Speaker 4: That's true.
Speaker 2: I don't know. We have a lot of cops, although
Speaker 2: they don't live here.
Speaker 4: So also true. Now, Thomas wasn't raising his kids to
Speaker 4: just be simple farm hands, and he works to guarantee
Speaker 4: that his children had the highest quality education provided in
Speaker 4: the area. Now, Gene was kind of a sickly kid,
Speaker 4: and he remained a little bit sickly throughout his whole life.
Speaker 4: He was very, very lean, very thin, and it was
Speaker 4: apparent to his family from a very young age that
Speaker 4: he would not be one to labor away in the fields.
Speaker 4: Anderson writes he tried the plow as a boy, but
Speaker 4: his mind was recognizably his strong suit. Now, Jean's dictorial
Speaker 4: ambitions could be seen from quite an early age, as
Speaker 4: his childhood hero was none other than Napoleon. Ah see,
Speaker 4: which is a media red flag.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a red flag. That's a red flag.
Speaker 4: If your kid's into Napoleon, you gotta stop that ship
Speaker 4: cracked down hard.
Speaker 2: I spent all my time reading Hitler books as a
Speaker 2: little kid, and that only turned out marginally better.
Speaker 4: So, no, you you're the best case scenario for a
Speaker 4: kid Butler books.
Speaker 2: But Napoleon was definitely the Hitler of that period. And yeah,
Speaker 2: you just got He needed more, you know what, Garrison,
Speaker 2: he needed more time with the plow. You know, a
Speaker 2: little more time with that plow would have fixed him up,
Speaker 2: maybe enough that he gets threshed and he doesn't ever
Speaker 2: learn how to read better.
Speaker 4: He was not built for the plow. And Gene was
Speaker 4: really obnoxious about it too. I'm going to read a
Speaker 4: quote from Anderson here. Quote. He baited family members and
Speaker 4: house guests by betting them he could quote passages from
Speaker 4: a volume of Napoleon's biography that he constantly carried around. Absolutely,
Speaker 4: you don't think I can do it, he would say,
Speaker 4: until someone would answer that they didn't believe he could.
Speaker 4: A verbatim quote would then issue forth, and its length
Speaker 4: and precision never failed to impress all who heard it. Unquote.
Speaker 2: I think, Look, I'm not I'm not an expert parent here,
Speaker 2: but I think the right way to respond to that
Speaker 2: a parent, you get a you get a you get
Speaker 2: a sprayer and you you just spray him in the
Speaker 2: face a little bit. Every time they try to like
Speaker 2: get you, to get you to ask him a Napoleon quote,
Speaker 2: you just get him, right, yeah, yeah, bout like no, yeah,
Speaker 2: you know what it's like. You know when I heard him.
Speaker 2: You just want to teach them, like that's not how
Speaker 2: we behave in public. You know, a little bit of water.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Genga's cons on the line Napoleon hard no, yeah,
Speaker 4: hard no, just to say, well, we're time, Robert, you're
Speaker 4: not a parent.
Speaker 1: Let I have I have two entire cats, sure, and
Speaker 1: I raised them, and I mean definitely your parenting strategy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, nice cat spray. Uh uh huh. Cats are fine
Speaker 2: around tan, right, Garrison's other kinds of explosion.
Speaker 4: They might just use it as a litter box, honestly.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Essentially just started tracking at all over the house.
Speaker 2: You know, there's no reason you couldn't, and then you
Speaker 2: can blow it up afterwards. This is not anymore the
Speaker 2: litter Just shoot it just once a week. Take your
Speaker 2: box at ten right into the backyard. Just shoot it
Speaker 2: with a three o eight. This is perfect. Oh man,
Speaker 2: I think I've got a new product idea.
Speaker 4: That's certainly a better idea than what Gene was up
Speaker 4: to as a kid, because he was quite the little bastard.
Speaker 4: As a twelve year old, he had his private pony
Speaker 4: and buggy ride to his school, the Hillard Institute for Boys,
Speaker 4: just insufferable, and he was also a debate kid. Schoolmates
Speaker 4: recounted he was a very skilled debater who almost like
Speaker 4: never lost and had a very devilishous spirit. He was
Speaker 4: also quite a mean child, as the grandson of the
Speaker 4: meanest man in Jasper County. Jean said that the quote
Speaker 4: N word boys I grew up with would call me
Speaker 4: mean lou Jean because I was so damn mean unquote,
Speaker 4: and this continued all throughout his life. He was consistently
Speaker 4: not just like extremely racist, but like just in general
Speaker 4: a very cruel man. Yeah, Like for fun, he would
Speaker 4: he would just start fights between boys at school and
Speaker 4: he would just sit and watch them go at it.
Speaker 4: This is also something he continued to do late into
Speaker 4: his career. He didn't want to be a part of
Speaker 4: the fighting, he just wanted to watch it happen.
Speaker 2: I I He's reminded me a little bit of Peter
Speaker 2: Teal because I'm working on his episodes. Now, so I'm
Speaker 2: reading about him as a child, and Teal wasn't exactly
Speaker 2: this kind of kid, but there's this like this commonality
Speaker 2: and like they recognize that they're smarter than other people,
Speaker 2: and their primary, the primary thing that they take from
Speaker 2: that is I should fuck with them.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, no, he that's like.
Speaker 2: And I need to be ruling them.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: His capacity to manipulate people and gain pleasure out of that, yeah,
Speaker 4: and then eventually wheeled power over them. That's definitely like
Speaker 4: an early drive, and like that's why he liked Napoleon,
Speaker 4: Like that's when you found a Compoleon figure.
Speaker 2: We need to just all Napoleon books. We need to
Speaker 2: coat in like a form of lithium that just gets
Speaker 2: in through your skin and really just lithium. These kids
Speaker 2: the fuck out.
Speaker 4: Honestly, that's the right that might have happened to Geen
Speaker 4: because he spoiler alert, he didn't live super long, so
Speaker 4: he may have very well been poisoned by a great
Speaker 4: many things that were around this area of like rural
Speaker 4: Georgia in the twenties thirties.
Speaker 2: People talk about microplastics, just thinking about all the ways
Speaker 2: that they're going to damage our reproductive health. And lead
Speaker 2: to cancer clusters. YadA, YadA, YadA. Think of how many
Speaker 2: assholes are going to check out early thanks to that stuff.
Speaker 2: You know, we could really dodge a few major bullets there.
Speaker 2: Every week, I buy a palette of bottled water and
Speaker 2: I just hook it in the back of a high school.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 4: What is what?
Speaker 1: Continue Garrison.
Speaker 4: So, although Napoleon was the childhood hero of Gene, a
Speaker 4: populist speaker named Tom Watson was his first real like
Speaker 4: political inspiration on the local level. Anderson writes that Watson
Speaker 4: became Gene's quote unquote spiritual leader and that Gene was
Speaker 4: quote fascinated by his fiery style, understanding of the rural mind,
Speaker 4: and his electrifying manner of speech on quote Now, Watson
Speaker 4: later became like a kind of like politician and lawyer who,
Speaker 4: as as he got older, got increasingly racist and increasingly
Speaker 4: anti Semitic, as kind of as liberalization was setting in
Speaker 4: the twentieth century, what he would do. He just goes
Speaker 4: Georgia just blaming black people and Jewish people for like
Speaker 4: all of the resulting economic complications that like liberalism and
Speaker 4: modernism was was like encroaching onto Georgia. So this is
Speaker 4: this is Gene's like real, like real like local hero
Speaker 4: the guy he actually he's like. Gene knows he's not
Speaker 4: going to be like an actual Napoleon, but he can
Speaker 4: be a Tom Watson. So later in college, Gene would
Speaker 4: brag about how far he would walk to attend to
Speaker 4: Tom Watson's speech, and he would just get so excited
Speaker 4: talking about it that he would start walking around and
Speaker 4: pacing around the room telling his friends. So he was
Speaker 4: super into this guy now, Like his father, He attended
Speaker 4: the University of Georgia in Athens, where he served as
Speaker 4: football manager and was a champion debater. He continue to
Speaker 4: be a debate kid until his death. After school, he
Speaker 4: started teaching in the small farming town of Auburn, Georgia,
Speaker 4: which he quickly found to be quite boring. Jane loved
Speaker 4: debate and like intellectual combat, so he decided to go
Speaker 4: back to Athens enroll in law school to become a
Speaker 4: lawyer like his hero Tom Watson. He graduated in nineteen
Speaker 4: oh seven and moved to Atlanta to work in a
Speaker 4: law firm, but he was still just very unsatisfied with work.
Speaker 4: He just wasn't doing very well. Jean's father didn't really
Speaker 4: know how to help him because he was quote unquote
Speaker 4: so goddamn. Mean, it's like even his father knew, like
Speaker 4: you just can't succeed in life because you're just like
Speaker 4: a cruel person.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Now, a friend of his father, a legislator named William Peterson,
Speaker 4: offered for Gene to stay at his home with his
Speaker 4: sister in the small town of a Ley in South
Speaker 4: Georgia to straighten him out. There he could live cheaply
Speaker 4: and start his own law practice. Another woman was living
Speaker 4: in the house, a young widow with a child from
Speaker 4: South Carolina named Mitt or nicknamed Mitt.
Speaker 1: What what year is he in school? What year was this?
Speaker 4: He graduated law school in nineteen oh seven? Okay, so
Speaker 4: he moved this is this is around like the late
Speaker 4: like like seven nineteen aughts.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so technically he could have been a Rhodes Scholar,
Speaker 1: but he wasn't.
Speaker 2: I guess, so we all could have been a Rhodes
Speaker 2: school I.
Speaker 1: Think Rhodes scholar was like nineteen oh two, nineteen oh
Speaker 1: three when it first started, So technically he could have been.
Speaker 4: I guess.
Speaker 2: So I guess.
Speaker 4: So, okay, so Mitt from South from South Carolina didn't
Speaker 4: really like that a city slicker was going to be
Speaker 4: living in the same house as her. So when Gine arrived,
Speaker 4: she quickly met him first to charge him just an
Speaker 4: exuberant rent to scare him off, but he agreed, and
Speaker 4: the two, actually you started to get along quite well.
Speaker 4: Gene appreciated her for, as he said, her sassiness. Anderson
Speaker 4: writes that her independent nature as well as her quote
Speaker 4: infectious sense of humor, complimented the talmadge wit unquote. So
Speaker 4: they quickly got along and a courtship began, which resulted
Speaker 4: in Gene having to move out of the house, as
Speaker 4: it would be improper for the couple to be living
Speaker 4: under the same roof. Of course, so Jane relocated to
Speaker 4: the nearby community of Mount Vernon, where he had a
Speaker 4: small law office across from the courthouse with an older
Speaker 4: lawyer named Colonel Underwood, another great Southern name. This this,
Speaker 4: this whole story is is peppered with some just fantastic names.
Speaker 4: Now in Mount Vernon, he gained reputation for being a
Speaker 4: short tempered dick, which he was. There was one time
Speaker 4: he falsely blamed a neighbor kid for letting out his
Speaker 4: pony and threatened to beat the hell out of the kid.
Speaker 4: An old Mount Vernon local called him, quote the meanest
Speaker 4: son of a bitch I've ever met, unquote. So this
Speaker 4: is in Kikika did just to be like a really
Speaker 4: veen guy. And he was not a very popular man,
Speaker 4: not just because of his bubbly personality, but also because
Speaker 4: the sort of cases he took on, which were often
Speaker 4: ones that like older and more established lawyers could afford
Speaker 4: to pass up on. So like murders, muggings, and dealing
Speaker 4: with clients just so poor that they could only pay
Speaker 4: in chicken, eggs and milk, Jene took just nearly every
Speaker 4: case offered. Anderson writes of one instance where Eugene defended
Speaker 4: a black woman quote who was so poverty stricken that
Speaker 4: she gave him her four young boys as partial payment,
Speaker 4: or perhaps because she could not afford to keep them.
Speaker 2: I mean, first off, I gotta say, what else are
Speaker 2: you gonna do with four young boys? Garrison?
Speaker 4: It's it's this is this is a pretty uncomfortable little,
Speaker 4: uh little tidbit here. Uh, I don't Robert Jean took
Speaker 4: the boys and fixed a place for them in a
Speaker 4: small barn behind his house.
Speaker 2: Sounds nice. That's like an a du Sure, the.
Speaker 4: Boys did odd jobs around the house, and stories still
Speaker 4: circulated about how he used to beat the hell out
Speaker 4: of them when they bade him.
Speaker 2: Now it's gotten problematic, you know.
Speaker 4: Oh not the not the kind of sort of slavery.
Speaker 2: It was starting starting to sound like, couldn't look there
Speaker 2: was no slavery here, you know, babes Robert, it's absolutely slavery. Curious,
Speaker 2: it is like its adjacent to slavery. I was thinking
Speaker 2: it was like the reverse of three men in a baby,
Speaker 2: four kids, and a guy who wants to be the
Speaker 2: dictator of Georgia.
Speaker 4: I don't think it's that charming, now, Okay. Ederson closes
Speaker 4: is this litle anecdote by saying, there's no proof that
Speaker 4: he kept them, but the rumor still does for six children.
Speaker 2: What a horrible thing to have someone say about you.
Speaker 4: We have also, we also just have no clue like
Speaker 4: what happened to these kids, where did they go? How
Speaker 4: long he had them? They just kind of they just
Speaker 4: kind of disappeared from his biography after like a few paragraphs.
Speaker 4: They're just like, oh, well, sure, so you.
Speaker 2: Children do something we'll never know to them, Yeah.
Speaker 1: Don't finish that thought.
Speaker 2: But I don't. I can't.
Speaker 4: We don't know what happened to them now. Geene and
Speaker 4: Mit got married in nineteen oh nine, and she and
Speaker 4: her son John moved into the small Mountain Vernon home,
Speaker 4: where they lived for two years as Gina struggled as
Speaker 4: a lawyer. Now they were just doing so poorly that
Speaker 4: Gene decided to quit law altogether and move onto midst
Speaker 4: deceased husband's farm on Sugar Creek, about twenty three miles
Speaker 4: away in the town of Gray. Mitt says, quote, we
Speaker 4: weren't hardly in the place and starting to plant before
Speaker 4: Jeane decided he didn't want to be no farmer. You
Speaker 4: could say he liked being a farmer, but he didn't
Speaker 4: like farming unquote. And I think this is one of
Speaker 4: the truest statements about Jane's career. He loved like the
Speaker 4: political idea of being a farmer. He hated farm work.
Speaker 4: He did not enjoy it at all. He would almost
Speaker 4: do anything to avoid it. But he found like great
Speaker 4: solace in like in like the concept of being a farmer. Now.
Speaker 4: Mitt eventually just took over farming operations to support the
Speaker 4: family as Jane returned to his struggling career in law.
Speaker 4: Do you know what else I struggle with?
Speaker 2: Robert Wow saying several of the words in that last sentence.
Speaker 2: But yes, that is true. Who am I to judge
Speaker 2: on that account?
Speaker 4: Words are often a struggle, as well as the products
Speaker 4: and services that support this podcast, the eternal struggle for advertising.
Speaker 2: I guess yes, yes, I'm writing a book in German
Speaker 2: about Nope. Okay, anyway, here's some ads. Garrison. It's hard
Speaker 2: not to make a mind comp joke when someone says
Speaker 2: the word struggle. You know, that's my struggle.
Speaker 4: We we will add some later point. Learned about genes
Speaker 4: mine comp opinions because he did have them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I was. I was going to ask you ye
Speaker 2: to read to read the follow up, that's like an
Speaker 2: episode three or four thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, but she did have mine comp opinions. Yeah,
Speaker 4: they weren't great.
Speaker 2: All right, okay, sorry.
Speaker 4: So at this point in Georgia, it was essentially just
Speaker 4: a one party state wholly controlled by the white pharmacist
Speaker 4: Southern Democratic Party. The white's only primary election dictated who
Speaker 4: occupied governmental positions. In the late eighteen hundreds, Georgia informally
Speaker 4: adopted a primary election system called the county unit system,
Speaker 4: which was formally signed into law in nineteen seventeen. It
Speaker 4: functioned like Georgia's own version of the electoral college, allowing
Speaker 4: each county a certain number of votes in party primaries
Speaker 4: which could overrule the popular vote. The eight most populated
Speaker 4: counties had six votes each, thirty medium sized counties had
Speaker 4: four votes, and the last one hundred and twenty one
Speaker 4: counties with very small rural populations had two votes each.
Speaker 4: So this system was designed and worked to maintain rule
Speaker 4: control over the whole state, as only a few tiny
Speaker 4: counties had the same voting power as the entire population
Speaker 4: of Atlanta and other growing urban centers. The county unit
Speaker 4: system tied Georgia to the past amidst a period of
Speaker 4: rapid industrialization and urban growth. The system was managed by
Speaker 4: local county officials, who were often corrupt and demanded favors
Speaker 4: or promises in exchange for votes, acting as a sort
Speaker 4: of lobbying group for the county. I'm going to quote
Speaker 4: from Anderson here. Quote The rule power source created a
Speaker 4: group of power wielders known as the Courthouse Gang, comprised
Speaker 4: of city and county officials, the newspaper editor, the sheriff
Speaker 4: and county lawyers. The gang represented the common denominator of
Speaker 4: Georgia's power structure. Each gang had its own idiosyncratic ways
Speaker 4: of operating, of obtaining power and losing it. Members were
Speaker 4: the powerbrokers for the community. The gangs formed complex associations
Speaker 4: of power with the state's money sources in urban Atlanta
Speaker 4: that grew stronger during the first two decades of the
Speaker 4: century as technology moved into Georgia. So there was like
Speaker 4: this tension between the political power which was held in
Speaker 4: rural counties and the monetary influence which resided in Atlanta.
Speaker 4: What marked a good politician or power broker was one's
Speaker 4: ability to thread that needle. Now. Almost immediately upon arriving
Speaker 4: in McRae, Jen began asking around about the local courthouse gang.
Speaker 4: In his old towns of Aley in Mount Vernon, the
Speaker 4: courthouse gang there was under the control of the Peterson Fans,
Speaker 4: who facilitated Jean's moved to the area, so he wisely
Speaker 4: avoided getting into unnecessary fights with the local establishment, But
Speaker 4: in McRae this ceased to be the case. This was
Speaker 4: his first opportunity to play at politics, as he sensed
Speaker 4: the local political structure was unstable, and positions of power
Speaker 4: were often in flux. Now Jean had very naked ambitions
Speaker 4: of power, but he preferred picking fights with the courthouse
Speaker 4: gang rather than appeasing them. He was so immediately disliked
Speaker 4: by this exclusive collection of powerbrokers that the other lawyers
Speaker 4: saw him as quote the N word, who came to town.
Speaker 4: So just using racism as a way to call someone
Speaker 4: essentially like an unwonted stranger. So that's how they started
Speaker 4: to That's how they started referring to Jean. Now, he
Speaker 4: also just became so unpopular that it became hard for
Speaker 4: him to win a case before the jury. Jean continued
Speaker 4: to struggle with his law practice as he managed his
Speaker 4: farm through the years up and through World War One.
Speaker 4: At this point, he operated what they call a two
Speaker 4: mule farm. He grew cotton and sugar cane, and then
Speaker 4: moved on to peanuts. He hired white and black farm hands,
Speaker 4: none of which were treated great whoa but dby, But
Speaker 4: the black ones were treated much worse.
Speaker 2: Okay, but worse than the neighboring farms. See okay, well, okay,
Speaker 2: there you go. Woke.
Speaker 4: It woke on the idea that everyone was all pretty
Speaker 4: racist and pretty violent and pretty fucked up.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So if that's what woke means, then yes, done
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 4: In an anonymous interview from nineteen forty one, a close
Speaker 4: friend of Jean recalled quote, Jean was like a lot
Speaker 4: of farm bosses back then. He'd knock the hell out
Speaker 4: of a black if he crossed him.
Speaker 2: Oops.
Speaker 4: I remembered when he was governor, he hit one of
Speaker 4: his farm inwards upside the head with a pistol, and
Speaker 4: the pistol went off. The N Word ran under the
Speaker 4: house holding his head, and Jean got a little scared
Speaker 4: that he killed him. He told me to go look
Speaker 4: under the house to see if he was all right.
Speaker 4: By the time I got there, the N word had
Speaker 4: run home, packed its bags and left unquot.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's one of those remarkable passages. Were like every
Speaker 2: additional clause makes it worse.
Speaker 4: Yes, Yeah, Instances like this were not uncommon for Jane,
Speaker 4: Anderson writes quote. Jane later admitted to flogging a Negro
Speaker 4: man and appeared ashamed of it, saying good people could
Speaker 4: be misguided and do bad things. Disregarding this remerseful apology,
Speaker 4: Talmadge's attitude towards blacks was that they were childlike, basically stupid,
Speaker 4: barely moved from a savage ancestry, and should be closely controlled. Now,
Speaker 4: Gene was just well known locally to have racist outbursts
Speaker 4: of violence. During World War One, a Jewish man and
Speaker 4: his wife from the North were accompanied by their black
Speaker 4: butler traveling back home from Florida. While passing through mcray,
Speaker 4: the woman and her butler walked through town snacking on apples,
Speaker 4: and the display of white wool and a black man
Speaker 4: alone eating food together shocked and angered the local shop owners.
Speaker 4: As news reached the courthouse, Gene busted out the door,
Speaker 4: brandishing an axe. With another lawyer armed with a hammer,
Speaker 4: Gene charged towards the butler, screaming, I'm gonna get you
Speaker 4: n word, and the white lady threw apples at Jean,
Speaker 4: and a mob descended and demanded the couple leave town,
Speaker 4: which they did, abandoning the black butler, who was left
Speaker 4: to flee on his own. H Anderson notes that quote
Speaker 4: no one ever did find the poor servant unquote, So
Speaker 4: it's another one of these incidents, and like you can't
Speaker 4: like name all of them. This is just like such
Speaker 4: a common common occurrence now, Anderson writes, quote this incident
Speaker 4: reflects the complexity and the cruelty of the racial situation.
Speaker 4: Jeane saw nothing wrong with having negroes to eat lunch
Speaker 4: at his table and cook his food, as long as
Speaker 4: they don't sit next to his wife. But he considered
Speaker 4: it unthinkable to have a black man accompany a white
Speaker 4: woman down the street eating apples together, no matter how
Speaker 4: innocent their motives. To explain this position towards black people
Speaker 4: in the nineteen twenties is to explain that of most georgiansuote.
Speaker 4: By nineteen eighteen, Jeens, or rather myts farming venture was
Speaker 4: a steady operation, but his law practice was still largely
Speaker 4: a failure, and his political aspirations remained completely unrequited. His
Speaker 4: first real brush with politics arose when the office of
Speaker 4: Solicitor to the City Court became vacant. Now, it wasn't
Speaker 4: a big position, but it could provide a foot in
Speaker 4: the door. Now Jean had the perfect idea to secure
Speaker 4: his spot in the open post. He wrote to his father,
Speaker 4: who was a very well connected and well respected man
Speaker 4: in Atlanta, and asked him to speak with the governor
Speaker 4: about appointing e Gene to the position. Now, the governor
Speaker 4: was apparently happy to oblige, but instead of this impressing
Speaker 4: the local courthouse gang, this only made them hate Gene
Speaker 4: Moore because like, of course, you're just asking your like
Speaker 4: fancy dad to like it give you, give you this
Speaker 4: post instead of actually having like a work for it yourself.
Speaker 4: They were so unhappy with this state of affairs that
Speaker 4: they had the office voted out of existence by the legislature.
Speaker 4: They really wanted nothing to do with Jean. One of
Speaker 4: the stories about how Jean got into politics was that
Speaker 4: the local courthouse gang was refusing to grade the roads
Speaker 4: around his farm, so he sought office to do it himself. Now,
Speaker 4: this is most certainly like not the main reason he
Speaker 4: got into politics. He was always interested in politics, but
Speaker 4: this is a story that was deployed for his own
Speaker 4: political gain over time. Now, at this point in Georgia, rail,
Speaker 4: oil and power were the main political industries, but with
Speaker 4: the advent of the automobile, the age of the road
Speaker 4: was around the bend. Georgia roads were famously quite bad
Speaker 4: in the nineteen twenties, and rural roads were often way
Speaker 4: too rough for like buggies and cars and really only
Speaker 4: good for horses and.
Speaker 2: Walking same today, honestly, I.
Speaker 4: Mean sometimes in certain areas, Jane made friends with multiple
Speaker 4: early roadbuilders, including a man named John Whitley, who would
Speaker 4: later become one of his best friends. Jean also struck
Speaker 4: up a friendship with the so called most knowledgeable roadbuilder
Speaker 4: in the area, a man named J. C. Thrasher.
Speaker 2: Another fantastic name, amazing name. Oh, I'm gonna steal that
Speaker 2: man's name to write a fucking TV show like I
Speaker 2: was say, forty five minute episodes twenty six this season
Speaker 2: about a guy who repossesses cars in Miami.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's a good like repoman the name JC Thrasher.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Now. Thrasher and Jean bonded over their shared aspirations of
Speaker 4: getting into the Courthouse Gang, both feeling like they've been
Speaker 4: screwed over by the local establishment. Now. Thrasher wanted to
Speaker 4: run for county commissioner, and Jean volunteered to be his
Speaker 4: campaign manager. He ran Thrasher as an independent since the
Speaker 4: Democratic Party was tied in with the local Courthouse Gang,
Speaker 4: but he managed to get Thrasher elected. As soon as
Speaker 4: he took office, Thrasher appointed Jen as attorney for the county.
Speaker 4: The court host gang had finally been broken, and the
Speaker 4: pair began their successful road building program. Now, but after
Speaker 4: only being a county attorney for like just a few months,
Speaker 4: Jean wanted more. He decided to run for state representative. Now.
Speaker 4: His wife, Met wasn't thrilled. She didn't really care much
Speaker 4: for Jean's political aspirations and felt that he was abandoning
Speaker 4: the farm that they had spent a decade building, which
Speaker 4: he absolutely was. But nevertheless, Jane persisted and announced his
Speaker 4: candidacy in a short statement. I'm going to quote from
Speaker 4: Anderson here. Quote. Much of the Talmadge future in politics
Speaker 4: can be read in this first announcement. Know the poor voter,
Speaker 4: articulate few problems and fewer solutions, and bear down heavily
Speaker 4: on your own honesty. Do nothing but do it with honor. Unquote.
Speaker 4: And yeah, Gene had kind of had like a libertarian
Speaker 4: esque undercurrent to a holemunchie of his campaign.
Speaker 2: He certainly do.
Speaker 4: He's which is like funny because like he is a dictator,
Speaker 4: but he's like a libertarian dictator.
Speaker 2: It's a thing in US politics in particular kind of
Speaker 2: no matter who you are, you have to have some
Speaker 2: libertarian even to the present day. Some libertarian sign posting
Speaker 2: in your I mean, Kamao just did this with her
Speaker 2: like I have a gun, I'd shoot someone who.
Speaker 4: Broke it, who comes into my house.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you have to do it a little bit, because
Speaker 2: it's just so baked into what Americans are, you know,
Speaker 2: So I get that.
Speaker 4: Yeah. Jane mostly ran his campaign alone. He would get
Speaker 4: up early and right around on county roads, talking with farmers,
Speaker 4: rail workers, and shopkeepers. Anderson notes, quote Gina knew that
Speaker 4: he had to counter years of bad publicity from the
Speaker 4: gang and many unpopular court fights unquote, And despite Jean's
Speaker 4: work to counter this bad publicity, he did lose seven
Speaker 4: hundred and fifty six votes to one hundred and eighty
Speaker 4: seven votes, which gives you an idea of like the
Speaker 4: voting population of this area.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Yeah, But Jean took the loss well, knowing that he
Speaker 4: did reasonably reasonably well for his first run, and he
Speaker 4: didn't want to damage the positive reputation that he'd worked
Speaker 4: hard to build up that summer with his newly garnered goodwill,
Speaker 4: Jean McKim friends with the old leader of the gang,
Speaker 4: Lamar Murdeaux, eventually moving into his law office. Gene's second
Speaker 4: attempt to run for office was in nineteen twenty two,
Speaker 4: this time for the state Senate. In attempts to discredit
Speaker 4: him during the race, the courthouse lawyers convened a grand
Speaker 4: jury to accuse Talmage of having sex with his plowing mule, which,
Speaker 4: as a tried and true political tactic, is just accusing
Speaker 4: your opponent of having sex with animals. It is an
Speaker 4: old one that simply will not go away. Still, Gene
Speaker 4: was improving as a politician, evidenced by winning the popular
Speaker 4: vote in the three county race. Yet the courthouse gang
Speaker 4: decided that this election would be subject to the county
Speaker 4: unit system and chose to over rule the popular vote.
Speaker 4: Just despite Jean Jean was now forty years old. He
Speaker 4: couldn't manage to get elected to local office and really
Speaker 4: only got where he was via the courtesy of family
Speaker 4: and friends, and was continuously outmaneuvered by his enemies. But
Speaker 4: despite his losses, he kept thinking bigger. Around nineteen twenty four,
Speaker 4: Jeane took a trip to Atlanta to, in the words
Speaker 4: of his friend and long term political ally, Henry Sperlin, quote,
Speaker 4: find the biggest dog he could to decide who to
Speaker 4: run against. Now. While at Atlanta, Gene encountered the Agricultural Commissioner,
Speaker 4: Old JJ Brown, another great another great name, who's who's
Speaker 4: described as a huge man wearing a huge hat surrounded
Speaker 4: by a personal posse.
Speaker 3: Now, Jean, so he was he was like strong pimp vibes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: of course, who's yes, very much so, very much so.
Speaker 3: And Jane was enamored by this, right, of course, Gene pimps.
Speaker 3: That's an important moment. Never young boys live.
Speaker 4: Gene to be a guy with a big hat surrounded
Speaker 4: by a personal posse.
Speaker 2: That's like all he wants. Who doesn't.
Speaker 4: Now, Andrew sid notes that quote. In rural Georgia, with
Speaker 4: its weak central government and strong agricultural economy, the office
Speaker 4: of Agricultural Commissioner had emerged as one of the more
Speaker 4: powerful unquote, and Old JJ Brown was in with big
Speaker 4: fertilizer and while he was like famously corrupt, he was
Speaker 4: also one of the most powerful men in the state,
Speaker 4: controlling a very fierce political lobby and awarded supporters with
Speaker 4: cushy oil and fertilizer inspector jobs. To stand to stand
Speaker 4: a chance against JJ, Gene would need substantial political assistance Luckily,
Speaker 4: he'd become friendly with the editor of the very very
Speaker 4: influential Atlantic Constitution newspaper, who, like many others, wanted to
Speaker 4: see Old JJ go. But sympathetic coverage wasn't enough to
Speaker 4: go up against JJ. Now, Old JJ Brown's open display
Speaker 4: of corruption was turning more and more lawmakers against him.
Speaker 4: A state legislator named Tom Linder was heading up an
Speaker 4: efforts to find someone to run against Brown. On a
Speaker 4: trip home to South Georgia, Linder happens to encounter Talmadge
Speaker 4: while going farm to farm selling fertilizer. Talmdge had heard
Speaker 4: of Linder, and the two started talking politics. He mentioned
Speaker 4: that he was looking for someone to run up against
Speaker 4: Old JJ with the backing of one hundred legislators, but
Speaker 4: everyone was just too scared to run now. Jane quickly
Speaker 4: right over and told Lamar Murdau about this coincidental opportunity,
Speaker 4: and a few nights later, both men showed up outside
Speaker 4: Linder's house announcing that Jean would like a run for
Speaker 4: Agricultural Commissioner. Though he didn't have the best political track record,
Speaker 4: Jeane was feisty, and more importantly, literally no one else
Speaker 4: was willing to go up against JJ at this point. Now,
Speaker 4: Jeane's wife was not pleased, and she only found out
Speaker 4: about his candidacy while shopping in town one day. At
Speaker 4: this point, Jean admit, we're not talking much about Jane's
Speaker 4: political career.
Speaker 2: That's sad.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean Mit, MIT's very busy having to run
Speaker 4: Jean's farm, so she has a lot to do.
Speaker 2: Yeah, fair enough, being a girl boss.
Speaker 4: Kinda although Gene will take all the credit for the farm.
Speaker 2: Well, that's what being a boy bosses.
Speaker 4: That is what being a boy bosses.
Speaker 2: Real Zuckerberg energy from our man Jean here.
Speaker 4: Now, some in the local courthouse gang were very quick
Speaker 4: to snitch on Jean, but a fair amount of them
Speaker 4: were wrangled into supporting him. Anderson notes said, for Jean's haters,
Speaker 4: it was kind of a wind wind scenario for him
Speaker 4: to run against a powerful man like JJ, because if
Speaker 4: he lost, which he most certainly would, his ambitions would
Speaker 4: once again be completely crushed. And if he somehow won,
Speaker 4: then Gene just wouldn't be their problem anymore. Now, Murdeaux
Speaker 4: headed up Inner County relations, going around talking to different newspapers,
Speaker 4: courthouse gangs, and churches, and the election had a few
Speaker 4: other local boys from across the state, eventually running on
Speaker 4: a similar platform against Brown, but Jean stood out because
Speaker 4: of his presentation and theatrics reminiscent of the populist Tom Watson,
Speaker 4: as well as the favorable coverage in the Constitution and
Speaker 4: Murdeaux later just paid off two candidates to drop out
Speaker 4: of the race. This way, Gene was able to present
Speaker 4: himself as the lone combatant standing against all odds town,
Speaker 4: which was absolutely trying to fill in the populist power
Speaker 4: vacuum left by the death of his adolescent inspiration, Tom Watson.
Speaker 4: Jean started using little nicknames to attack his opponents, calling
Speaker 4: JJ's corrupt oil inspectors oily boys. Work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's a good start. Start, It's a good start.
Speaker 4: Did start oily boys?
Speaker 2: Start with Hillary before he reached his apothesis with Joe
Speaker 2: meatball Ron. That was his finest hour. That's his battle.
Speaker 4: You can see the uptick right, got crooked Hillary, sleepy Joe.
Speaker 2: You did just just nuked him. That That was the
Speaker 2: verbal equivalent of a fucking cruise missile. Now Anderson does
Speaker 2: right again. He wrote this in the seventies quote. Jean
Speaker 2: had an unusual talent for coming up with simple, easy
Speaker 2: to remember, funny phrases. Unquote, Yeah, that's that's a staple
Speaker 2: of politics.
Speaker 4: To continue from Anderson quote, Jane had developed an uncanny
Speaker 4: intuition about the emotional motivation of the farmer. He knew
Speaker 4: they were gut motivated, responsive to emotional appeals and extremes,
Speaker 4: and had a strong propensity for irrationality. They possessed great pride,
Speaker 4: a fantastic sense of their past and an appreciation for it.
Speaker 4: And they were suspicious of things strange and alien. The
Speaker 4: strategy of erecting faceless enemies and conspiracies warring against the
Speaker 4: little man, the haves against the have nots, had been
Speaker 4: used definitively by Watson, and the disciple had learned well
Speaker 4: from the master. His language could be earthy, profane, grammatically atrocious,
Speaker 4: and very provincial in isolated rural areas. It was tailored
Speaker 4: to be understood by the most ignorant farmhand, simple, uncluttered,
Speaker 4: blunt discourse punctuated with bile passages and rule humor. His
Speaker 4: language was also very adaptable. He was a highly educated man,
Speaker 4: capable of polish and refinement and sophisticated dialogue. So he
Speaker 4: kind of like he kind of like code switched and
Speaker 4: talking to like rural farmers, he would talk a certain way,
Speaker 4: and talking to like people in Atlanta, he would talk
Speaker 4: a different way because he wasn't a hick, like he
Speaker 4: went to the University of Georgia. He was educated.
Speaker 1: No, no, no, no, because like he literally said, he
Speaker 1: wants people to think he's a farmer, but he hates farming.
Speaker 2: That's exactly Yet he understood the value of playing as
Speaker 2: a hick.
Speaker 4: Exactly exactly he was. He had he kind of introduced
Speaker 4: if I introduced, he kind of popularized this very like
Speaker 4: theatrical style of politics for the US governor, Like this
Speaker 4: is this is where he made his bread and butter
Speaker 4: was being a very like theatrical Uh I think, I
Speaker 4: think I think Anderson calls it a politics of crisis,
Speaker 4: like a theatrical politics of crisis. That was his main tactic. Yeah,
Speaker 4: And do you know what our main tactic is, Robert.
Speaker 2: Well, it's actually that Garrison. I'm a big fan of
Speaker 2: the politics of crisis, which is why I'm trying to
Speaker 2: convince everybody listening that there's a high stakes presidential election
Speaker 2: occurring when you and I both know the lizards picked
Speaker 2: the winner months ago.
Speaker 4: God, anyway, Okay, you're semess. It's a good bit. I'm
Speaker 4: just not going to continue.
Speaker 2: I just can no, no, no, no, no, there's only
Speaker 2: so far we should go into that. Otherwise somebody's gonna
Speaker 2: send us a message on Reddit that makes me regret
Speaker 2: in the last several years of work I've done. Anyway,
Speaker 2: here's some ass.
Speaker 4: So that's why I think if the electoral count is tied,
Speaker 4: the Senate's obviously going to pick Tim Walls. That was
Speaker 4: That's been the plan the whole time. It's already illustrated.
Speaker 4: It's very because Oh sorry, hey guys, welcome's behind the bastards.
Speaker 4: We're returning once once again.
Speaker 2: A podcast about how Tim Walls absolutely is not descended
Speaker 2: from an iguana. Look, I haven't gone through his childhood photos,
Speaker 2: seen pictures of his parents. I can't prove to you
Speaker 2: that he's part of guana. You know, that's just not
Speaker 2: a thing I'm going to do. He's population DNA. Absolutely,
Speaker 2: it has a lot of like you can keep an
Speaker 2: iguana in a trarium. Garrison, don't be racist.
Speaker 4: Speaking speaking of racism, Eugene Talbach. Oh boy, So now
Speaker 4: to Jean's delight again, we are we are in the
Speaker 4: race for the Agricultural Commissioner, and to Jean's delight, JJ
Speaker 4: Brown challenged him to multiple debates, the first of which
Speaker 4: would take place in McRae. Now, this is exactly what
Speaker 4: Gene was wanting. Now, JJ had heard that Gene was
Speaker 4: unpopular in his hometown and thought it would be like
Speaker 4: an easy win. But JJ made the mistake of only
Speaker 4: hearing from Jean's local critics and failed to realize the
Speaker 4: ability of a small town to rally together against a big,
Speaker 4: slimy like, big city politician. This was going to be
Speaker 4: the biggest political event in the town's history, and folks
Speaker 4: were genuinely excited to see that fiery Gene Talmadge go
Speaker 4: at it again. Jeane absolutely dominated in the debate, using
Speaker 4: the hometown crowd to his advantage, and not that that
Speaker 4: was needed though, as the second debate was in JJ's
Speaker 4: hometown in North Georgia, and once again Talmadge handed JJ
Speaker 4: Brown a humiliating defeat. Anderson writes that quote Brown had
Speaker 4: been run off the stump in his own hometown unquote. Now,
Speaker 4: Jane returned to McRae for election day, where he won
Speaker 4: one hundred and twenty three thousand votes to sixty six
Speaker 4: thousand votes.
Speaker 2: Gotta say the number of voters has really leapt up
Speaker 2: since the last election.
Speaker 4: Yes, indeed, Gene also just completely dominated in the county
Speaker 4: unit system, getting three hundred and sixty two county unit
Speaker 4: votes to Brown's meager fifty two out to quote Anderson quote,
Speaker 4: the Atlanta Press and the Georgia Legislature provided session blood
Speaker 4: to a skeleton conceived and bound together by the tremendous
Speaker 4: energies and aspirations of Eugene Talmadge unquote, and I think
Speaker 4: this is this is this is really.
Speaker 2: Interesting place for a skeleton metaphor. But I'm on board.
Speaker 4: Gene was often very skeleton like. He kind of looked
Speaker 4: like a walking skeleton.
Speaker 2: It doesn't look a good skeleton. I like skeletons, you know.
Speaker 2: I think it's something with a skeleton.
Speaker 4: So I think it's important to point out that like
Speaker 4: both the Atlanta Press and the Georgia and the Georgia
Speaker 4: Legislature would later like hate Gene Talmadge, and yet they
Speaker 4: are the ones responsible for first getting him into power.
Speaker 4: It was only through their coverage and only through their assistance,
Speaker 4: that he was made into the monster that he would become.
Speaker 4: Without their participation, he probably would have stayed just a
Speaker 4: small country lawyer. It was specifically their help that allowed
Speaker 4: him to get to where he was now. Gene fulfilled
Speaker 4: his campaign promises of cutting the bloated number of inspectors,
Speaker 4: and while he removed any remnants of the old corrupt
Speaker 4: JJ regime, he didn't tend to hire a lot of
Speaker 4: his own family members, and he won reelection in nineteen
Speaker 4: twenty eight. But for a man in such a high
Speaker 4: political position, he had a very juvenile understanding of the
Speaker 4: state economy. He cannot understand why southern bankers favored appeasing
Speaker 4: Wall Street over helping local farmers. Gene weaponized fears of
Speaker 4: Southern inferiority and oppression, preaching that rich Northerners were using
Speaker 4: their influence to keep the agricultural South subserving to the North.
Speaker 4: And Orison writes that this belief quote drove him beyond
Speaker 4: old South conservatism to the point of know nothingism and
Speaker 4: a semi rejection of all things geographically and idealistically removed
Speaker 4: from the South. Unquote. He ran a column in the
Speaker 4: department's own newspaper, the Market Bulletin, which ostensibly existed to
Speaker 4: communicate directly with farmers, but he mostly used it to
Speaker 4: spread his economic and political philosophy. Right, this is how
Speaker 4: you used to send like updates on like farming and
Speaker 4: like agricultural information because the Internet doesn't exist. But Gene
Speaker 4: used this as his own Twitter feed, just just posting
Speaker 4: posting his like economic opinions.
Speaker 2: This is a thing like with the very worst people
Speaker 2: in like the Night of the twentieth century is they
Speaker 2: all found ways to independently create Twitter for themselves.
Speaker 4: This is a Twitter.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone on Twitter, and all of the worst people
Speaker 2: figured out how to make their own.
Speaker 4: Yes, yes, absolutely now. Gene one reelection a third time
Speaker 4: in nineteen thirty and this year marked the first time
Speaker 4: in the state's history that a majority of the population
Speaker 4: weren't living on a farm. Basically, since the Civil War, Georgia,
Speaker 4: especially rural Georgia, was stuck in a culturally imposed political isolation.
Speaker 4: But now people were fleeing the countryside in droves as
Speaker 4: a mixture of like economic hardships, developing technology, and urban growths.
Speaker 4: As Anderson puts it, quote brought the reality of the
Speaker 4: world to Georgia unquote and basically this like forced modernism
Speaker 4: that was encroaching provided a compelling alternative to farm life
Speaker 4: for the rural population. At the start of the depression,
Speaker 4: the average price of farmland and cotton fell by one half,
Speaker 4: and Jane still did basically nothing to help his supporters
Speaker 4: weather these bad times. He mostly just encouraged people to
Speaker 4: stay on the farm, and he embassaed the farmer starve
Speaker 4: out there, you know, yeah, because like he thought that
Speaker 4: was more noble than taking help from the federal government.
Speaker 4: Like literally he spent all of his time just complaining
Speaker 4: about the Federal Farm bureaus recommendations and attempts to help people,
Speaker 4: saying that their efforts were like Unamerican right, trying to
Speaker 4: give people like money to get food, trying to start
Speaker 4: lending cooperatives, trying to encourage people to just farm a
Speaker 4: little bit less land so they have a sustainable like
Speaker 4: supplying to man ecosystem. Now, it's just very clear like
Speaker 4: Gene lacked the economic knowledge to effectively enact any change,
Speaker 4: so instead he blamed all of the state's agricultural and
Speaker 4: economic woes on Wall Street and bankers quote unquote. The
Speaker 4: poor economic situation seriously put into question the image of
Speaker 4: individual frontier self sufficiency. So Why were people still supporting
Speaker 4: Talmage even though he was so ill equipped to understand
Speaker 4: their current economic situation, with the farmers often just ignoring
Speaker 4: his advice but voting for him anyway. I'm going to
Speaker 4: quote from Anderson to kind of answer that question. Quote
Speaker 4: Gene was saying, we do not want to become dependent
Speaker 4: on our government, and they were desperately looking for relief.
Speaker 4: The Georgia farmer had lost the will to care for
Speaker 4: himself because he had lost the ability. This forced him
Speaker 4: to think beyond himself and realized that this was now
Speaker 4: a world of alternatives to staying on the farm. These
Speaker 4: new directions in which the farmer was moving were apparently
Speaker 4: creating a problem of conscience, and by supporting the voice
Speaker 4: of the past, Gene Talmadge, they were absolving guilty feelings
Speaker 4: about leaving the past. So while farmers were struggling, Gina
Speaker 4: was actually having quite a bit of fun. He would
Speaker 4: take road trips.
Speaker 2: With his friends.
Speaker 4: Good.
Speaker 2: I hate it when people like put their back into
Speaker 2: their work and just are miserable. You know, if you're
Speaker 2: going to be a dictator, you might as well enjoy
Speaker 2: the path to dictation.
Speaker 4: He was having a good time at this point, he
Speaker 4: was less of a dictator and more just like I
Speaker 4: saw on the road, he just wasn't doing it Like
Speaker 4: this is like in terms of his like libertarian approach,
Speaker 4: this is him being a libertarian. He's he's just not
Speaker 4: doing anything.
Speaker 2: That's the dream of every ruler.
Speaker 4: People are in like a vere agricultural crisis, and as
Speaker 4: the commissioner, he's just being like, good luck, stay out there,
Speaker 4: don't stop farming, and like that's it. Meanwhile, he's taking
Speaker 4: road trips with his friends and family to places like
Speaker 4: Charleston's Botanical Gardens to quote unquote study to quote unquote
Speaker 4: study agriculture. Sure, the commissioner's hard out, yeah, yeah, And
Speaker 4: he just kept hiring family members and had this state
Speaker 4: pay for cars that they crashed. And he also didn't
Speaker 4: report the tax money he collected it to the state
Speaker 4: treasury instead of putting it into his friend's bank accounts.
Speaker 2: A good friend.
Speaker 4: The state doesn't need to handle this money. I'll deal
Speaker 4: with that. I'll just put it in Bill's account.
Speaker 2: That's not because you look Garrison, the state you know,
Speaker 2: could get up to all sorts of corruption andigans. But Bill,
Speaker 2: he's just gonna spend that on hooch and chew chew,
Speaker 2: not beer.
Speaker 4: Beer is big. No.
Speaker 2: No, Look, if Joe Biden had just sent twenty billion
Speaker 2: dollars to the guy who provides him with zins, none
Speaker 2: of us would have an issue with it, right, you know,
Speaker 2: That's all I'll say.
Speaker 4: So what got Gene into real trouble though, was when
Speaker 4: he completely unauthorized used the state's money, took by eighty
Speaker 4: two car loads of hogs from Georgia farmers and get
Speaker 4: if Joe.
Speaker 2: Biden carloads of hogs, we'd be fine with it.
Speaker 4: Oh, holdd I've lost my place in this.
Speaker 2: Sure, that's a good number of car loads of hogs.
Speaker 2: Although a car back then you're only fitting what two
Speaker 2: to four hogs max. That's really not that many hogs.
Speaker 4: It's about fourteen thousand dollars worth of hogs in nineteen
Speaker 4: twenties money. So it's it's it's a lot of hogs.
Speaker 2: That is a that's that seems like a decent quantity
Speaker 2: of hogs. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Now this was an illegal and just bizarre attempt to
Speaker 4: help the local hog market by buying these hogs and
Speaker 4: shipping them to Chicago to sell at a higher price,
Speaker 4: and us all behind the governor's back. This scheme lost
Speaker 4: the state anywhere from twelve to twenty thousand dollars, just
Speaker 4: depending who you ask is which is between a two
Speaker 4: hundred and twenty five thousand to three hundred and seventy
Speaker 4: five thousand dollars in today's money.
Speaker 2: So this is the kind of scam Aney Adams would
Speaker 2: get caught doing today.
Speaker 4: Yes, he lost the state basically the at least the
Speaker 4: equivalent of like a quarter of a quarter of a
Speaker 4: million dollars with this weird hog scheme. And in the
Speaker 4: summer of nineteen thirty one, his questionable practice is finally
Speaker 4: caught up with him with a Senate investigation tesked to
Speaker 4: look into his conduct. I'm going to quote from Anderson here. Quote.
Speaker 4: The committee disclosed that Gene had paid forty thousand dollars
Speaker 4: eight hundred thousand in today's money in salaries to himself
Speaker 4: and members of his family over a three year period.
Speaker 4: This also includes their expenses such as yearly trips to
Speaker 4: the Kentucky Derby.
Speaker 2: Sure, of course, well that's that's a bit that's necessary.
Speaker 2: Though you can't can run agricultural research. There's a certain
Speaker 2: minimum number of mint julips you need to be effective
Speaker 2: in Georgia government. And you're only gonna get that density
Speaker 2: if you go to the care. Maybe next year you
Speaker 2: and I will go to the Derby.
Speaker 4: That I would. I'd be very down for that. We
Speaker 4: can get.
Speaker 2: Matching tailored white suits.
Speaker 4: I am already down for that. Let's let's do it.
Speaker 2: That'll be fun. That'll be a good.
Speaker 4: Calm year of twenty twenty five. Or hopefully nothing will happen.
Speaker 2: It'll be the only interesting thing occurring is our trip
Speaker 2: to the Derby.
Speaker 4: God, God, I hope.
Speaker 2: So you and I are both going to learn about
Speaker 2: new kinds of racism, not new kinds of racism, but
Speaker 2: new to us.
Speaker 4: Yeah, new do me a Canadian?
Speaker 2: Uh, Well, there's there's racism in the South, and then
Speaker 2: there is like family money racism in the South, and
Speaker 2: that you really gotta you really gotta go to the
Speaker 2: Derby to catch a load of that.
Speaker 4: I believe that one of those plantation weddings, it is.
Speaker 4: It is like Gene's favorite place to go. So yeah,
Speaker 4: I can see that. Yeah. The Senate Committee eventually called
Speaker 4: for a second hearing to investigate Jean's use of fertilizer
Speaker 4: tax money, which, instead of sending into the treasury he
Speaker 4: was depositing into the accounts of his friends. Jane refused
Speaker 4: to appear before the second hearing, claiming the committee had
Speaker 4: no power to demand his appearance, which the committee responded
Speaker 4: by asking for contempt proceedings and vaguely threatening impeachment. This
Speaker 4: was all a little ironic after Jen ran as like
Speaker 4: the big anti corruption candidate, but Talmdge was eventually forced
Speaker 4: to show up at the Investigative Committee hearing, where he
Speaker 4: proudly stated, quote, if I stole it was for farmers
Speaker 4: like yoursels un quote, And this like determination and dedication
Speaker 4: to helping farmers by against stealing hogs was enough to
Speaker 4: strike down an appeachment resolution by one hundred and fourteen
Speaker 4: votes to twenty two. So all of at this point,
Speaker 4: the Senate was also kind of full of farmers who
Speaker 4: weren't very smart, so they were like, yeah, Gene, you go.
Speaker 4: So he was fine. But to appease a few of
Speaker 4: the angry senators who wanted the governor to take action
Speaker 4: in court, Governor Russell tasked his AG to undergo his
Speaker 4: own investigation, which eventually recommended that Talmadge pay back the
Speaker 4: state fifteen thousand dollars for the hogs and his stepson's
Speaker 4: job as a clerk. But the governor didn't actually take
Speaker 4: action on this because he was planning a run for
Speaker 4: the US Senate and didn't want to anger the farmers.
Speaker 4: So Gene essentially just got away with all of this,
Speaker 4: emerging as a sort of like Robin Hood figure who
Speaker 4: would steal from the stage to help the farmers. Now,
Speaker 4: come nineteen thirty two, the governor was running for a
Speaker 4: US Senate and Jean had his eyes on the governor's office.
Speaker 4: The hometown crowd from McRae traveled to Atlanta to pay
Speaker 4: for the qualifying fee and announce his candidacy. Jeane had
Speaker 4: largely been able to get around the courthouse gangs by
Speaker 4: appealing directly to the vast swaths of the rural population,
Speaker 4: and as commissioner, he made enough contacts in various counties
Speaker 4: that an election campaign organization could rather spontaneously take form.
Speaker 4: The state's largest roadbuilder, John Whitley, who was old friends
Speaker 4: with Gene, got close to his political circle once again
Speaker 4: with the prospect of Gene taking over the Highway Department.
Speaker 4: Jane was really obsessed in this campaign with paying off
Speaker 4: state debt, which he viewed as an evil long plaguing
Speaker 4: the South. Gene was also worried by the then presidential
Speaker 4: candidate Franklin Deleanor Roosevelt's calls for a more involved federal government.
Speaker 4: To quote from Anderson quote, Jane knew that if the
Speaker 4: starving farmer were given food money as a handout, the
Speaker 4: Southern farmer would therefore remain in subjugation, only this time
Speaker 4: to the government instead of the local bank or Wall
Speaker 4: Street psychological indebtedness far worse than the region's traditional financial indebtedness.
Speaker 4: Gene's obsession with debt as evil was an example of
Speaker 4: his inability to distinguish the symptom from the disease. His
Speaker 4: nineteen thirty two platform was flawed by this failing, and
Speaker 4: thus he attacked peripheral issues that ironically served to maintain
Speaker 4: the very problems he was trying to cure. Jean had
Speaker 4: entered the race naming the issue high taxes and high
Speaker 4: government spending. The other candidates joined him in unison. The
Speaker 4: entire slate were by the book, old line conservative who
Speaker 4: saw the answers to the day's problems in yesterday's solutions unquote.
Speaker 4: The one piece of government spending that Jane did earnestly
Speaker 4: support was pensions for Confederate veterans, of course, which he
Speaker 4: did like. This was actually something he like, sincerely advocated
Speaker 4: for that this is this wasn't like a political gesture, No, this.
Speaker 2: Was clearly something that was important to him.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it was like he saw Confederate veterans as like
Speaker 4: paragons of the lost world that Jane was like fighting.
Speaker 2: To return to. You know, some of us, some of us,
Speaker 2: I just don't think we should get give out participation trophies.
Speaker 4: You know. It's so true, brother, so true. Now, on
Speaker 4: July fourth, a massive barbecue rally was held in McRae,
Speaker 4: drawing huge numbers, with the Atlantic Constitution providing extremely thorough coverage,
Speaker 4: which they did for no other candidate this this race.
Speaker 4: As Jane traveled the state giving speeches, he was dubbed
Speaker 4: the wild Man from Sugar Creek. Even though he was
Speaker 4: politically ill prepared, his personality was perfect for the Russian period.
Speaker 4: His performance was a distraction from the harsh reality of
Speaker 4: rural life, and if not much else, offered the sweet
Speaker 4: taste of nostalgia. Anderson writes that quote, those who attached
Speaker 4: their dreams to his words could, in a small part
Speaker 4: escape those realities by believing in Eugene Talmadge unquote. Gene
Speaker 4: was seen as the clear front runner, and his platform
Speaker 4: relied on his ability to make a speech so impactful,
Speaker 4: so unforgettable in the lives of the attendees that they
Speaker 4: would immediately become Talmadge loyalists. Gene utilized his supporters planted
Speaker 4: in the crowd, to queum up for certain topics and
Speaker 4: encourage audience interaction. All of his opponents attacked Talmadge's personal
Speaker 4: record instead of his platform, focusing on his near impeachment,
Speaker 4: his Senate in Agen investigation, and the whole Hog incident.
Speaker 4: But Gina was able to flip this around and turn
Speaker 4: the hog incident into a sort of rallying cry. Planted
Speaker 4: members in the crowd would quum up by shouting, tell
Speaker 4: us about them pigs, you stole Gene, and Gen would
Speaker 4: lean in and point to figure out the crowd and say,
Speaker 4: they say, I stole. Yeah, it's true, I stole, but
Speaker 4: I stole for you. You mean in overalls, you dirt
Speaker 4: farmers and the crowd which.
Speaker 2: Farmers amazing stuff.
Speaker 1: Man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, Garrison, I should announce here when I
Speaker 2: run for president, I want to promise the American people
Speaker 2: one thing, which is that there will be a hog
Speaker 2: based scandal within my first year in office. I guarantee you.
Speaker 2: I just settled on the specific hog based scandal, but
Speaker 2: there will be a hog based scandal. I guarantee it.
Speaker 4: No. I do think it is important to note, like
Speaker 4: how all of these attacks on Jean's record, He's able
Speaker 4: to completely flip around and turn into like assets, right,
Speaker 4: Like he's he's he's smart. People attack him as ways
Speaker 4: to make himself stronger.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, it's it's it's the it's the kind of
Speaker 2: thing Trump's able to do too. It's it's political judo. Right,
Speaker 2: It's like using the momentum of your enemy's attacks in
Speaker 2: order to advance. Yeah, it's it's Yet I hate because
Speaker 2: it does seem to be there's a degree with both
Speaker 2: Trump and with Talmage, because there's not like a class
Speaker 2: on this, and you really don't get this. I don't
Speaker 2: even know what they would have been reading that would
Speaker 2: have taught them this. I mean there's bits of history
Speaker 2: where you get pieces of this. I always have the
Speaker 2: feeling with most of the guys who are good at this,
Speaker 2: it's it's instinctive to a significant degree.
Speaker 4: Yeah. No, it's like it has to be just kind
Speaker 4: of how like how their general like demeanor is, and
Speaker 4: it just it just has a degree of like uncanny overlap.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 4: Now. Gene supporters were also sometimes sometimes troublemakers to quote
Speaker 4: Anderson quote. Although they were never instructed by Gene to
Speaker 4: disrupt the opponent's speeches, the Talwich plants could wreak havoc
Speaker 4: on the other candidates. Their tactics did not include booing,
Speaker 4: but they did go in for causing suspicious accidents, like
Speaker 4: setting a car on fire during an opponent's speech. The
Speaker 4: resulting smoke and sirens would invariably send the crowd a
Speaker 4: racing towards the fire, leaving the hapless speaker without an
Speaker 4: audience quote. So, instead like heckling the speaker, they would
Speaker 4: just start a fire to distract everybody, which is actually
Speaker 4: a pretty effective tactic. Yeah, people, it does. People love
Speaker 4: running towards fires.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Portland kids in twenty twenty, Eugene Dalmach demonstrative fires
Speaker 2: to distract from other actions. Yeah, beautiful.
Speaker 4: Gene was also obsessed with crowd size. He would intentionally
Speaker 4: book venues that were too small for the expected crowd.
Speaker 4: So that reporting would say that there was an overflowing
Speaker 4: crowd at every event, so to newspaper readers, Gene would
Speaker 4: seem like he was just exceedingly popular. He would also
Speaker 4: ask local sheriffs to count how many people were in attendance,
Speaker 4: usually about fifteen thousand, which was bigger than the size
Speaker 4: of like an average county, which would get the sheriff
Speaker 4: to proudly proclaim that each event was a record crowd size. Again,
Speaker 4: it's very very similar like overlap. Right, there's no class
Speaker 4: that teaches you you should really care about crowd size.
Speaker 4: It's just what these guys go for.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 4: In less than two months, Jeane made over fifty speeches
Speaker 4: and talked in front of more than seventy five thousand Georgians.
Speaker 4: I'm gonna quote a little anecdote from Anderson quote. So
Speaker 4: completely has he sold his image as one of the
Speaker 4: boys that in one small town, the big limousine in
Speaker 4: which he was riding was turned back because they thought
Speaker 4: that town, which would resent so much wealth being displayed
Speaker 4: at a speech, Jean was not recognized in the back seat,
Speaker 4: so the driver turned around and drove outside town where
Speaker 4: a farmer driving an ox cart was hailed down, Jeane
Speaker 4: climbed on board, and in a more acceptable transportation, was
Speaker 4: enthusiastically welcomed at the gate from which he had just
Speaker 4: been turned away unquote. So yeah, this was all theater.
Speaker 4: This was all play acting for theator.
Speaker 2: Garrison. You live in the South, now, talk like it.
Speaker 4: Theater? Theater? Is that how you say it, Robert, I'm
Speaker 4: going to a theater night. That's not that's how. That's
Speaker 4: not how people in Georgia talk. I often get made
Speaker 4: fun of for my Southern country lawyer accent. You Georgia Yankees.
Speaker 4: I just don't don't understand the truth South, which exists
Speaker 4: abroughtly around two and a half hours around the small
Speaker 4: town I grew up in in Oklahoma, Texas, every Homa,
Speaker 4: everything else is Yankees. Sure, Sure, Robert fucking out l
Speaker 4: Passo carpetbaggers. We got we got one page to go through, Buddy.
Speaker 4: Let's let's wrap this up.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 4: Now. As the race went on, Jeans started pushing a
Speaker 4: conspiracy theory that all the other candidates were conspiring to
Speaker 4: split up the county unit vote, causing a runoff. Smart
Speaker 4: Smart Anderson Anderson notes, quote the picture of a sinister
Speaker 4: movement a foot had high appeal for the entertainment starved
Speaker 4: farmers who knew enemies had to be on the land
Speaker 4: but could never identify them unquote, which is just a perfect,
Speaker 4: perfect insight into in the mind of the conservative voter. Now,
Speaker 4: although a runoff election was expected, as the results began
Speaker 4: coming in, it was clear that Jean had achieved a
Speaker 4: huge victory. He handily won the popular vote by thirty thousand,
Speaker 4: along with two hundred and forty six county unit votes
Speaker 4: against all his opponents combined total of one hundred and
Speaker 4: forty six. Now, there was only two hundred and forty
Speaker 4: thousand votes in total, so that's the voting population of
Speaker 4: Georgia in nineteen thirty two. Jean's wife, Mitt never moved
Speaker 4: to Atlanta while he served as Commissioner, but after this
Speaker 4: election she reluctantly moved to Atlanta with their kids, and
Speaker 4: the Talwich family turned to the governor's mansion in the
Speaker 4: upscale Endslee Park into a sort of makeshift farm, but
Speaker 4: mostly as like a political gesture, built a chicken coop
Speaker 4: in the backyard, and they put an old cow on
Speaker 4: the front lawn. During cocktail parties, the cow would often
Speaker 4: escape to run off and chow down and tear up
Speaker 4: the nearby golf course. Which is great because this area
Speaker 4: I think this is now kind of like around like
Speaker 4: Piedmont Park. If there should be way more cows walking
Speaker 4: around this area of Atlanta, just ruining the golf courses,
Speaker 4: that would be fantastic. Almost immediately, the Senate was not
Speaker 4: too fond of Gene and largely ignored his proposed programs.
Speaker 4: The legislature refused to pass his reduced tax and utility rates,
Speaker 4: his Highway Department reorganization bill, but most devastating to Jane
Speaker 4: his promise for a three dollars car tag, which was
Speaker 4: a staple of his election campaign, though he did get
Speaker 4: back pay for Confederate veterans past. So there you go.
Speaker 4: The Georgia legislature is always always coming through for what
Speaker 4: really matters.
Speaker 2: That's good. That's good. I'm sure there's still somebody in
Speaker 2: George's legislature working on that bill. Oh. Absolutely, we're just
Speaker 2: leaving checks on the graves.
Speaker 4: Gene also vetoed his fair share of bills, I think
Speaker 4: around forty and Anderson notes that a complete breakdown had
Speaker 4: occurred between the executive and legislative branches of government. Essentially
Speaker 4: nothing was really getting done. But with this weekend legislature,
Speaker 4: Jane's dictatorial methods began to Manageestjene thought that there was
Speaker 4: like a conspiracy against him by the former governor and
Speaker 4: his allies for Gene to fail, So as soon as
Speaker 4: the legislature adjourned, he began to utilize archaic executive power
Speaker 4: tal much suspended all regular state taxes for two years,
Speaker 4: citing authority granted in a eighteen twenty one law. This
Speaker 4: was how he was able to force his three his
Speaker 4: promised three dollars license plate by ordering that all automotive
Speaker 4: tax be dropped to three dollars. Now, Gina had a
Speaker 4: lot of guys throughout his career who would just troll
Speaker 4: through like really really old outdated laws to find like
Speaker 4: what loopholes of executive power like existed. This is like
Speaker 4: one of his core tactics was finding like any way
Speaker 4: to exercise the full extent of executive power by often
Speaker 4: going through laws that were like over one hundred years old.
Speaker 4: To quote Anderson quote. It was a coup that made
Speaker 4: the lawmakers look even worse and in the public side,
Speaker 4: propelled Gene out of the whole mess. The Motor Vehicle
Speaker 4: commission didn't like the idea and refused to sell tags
Speaker 4: for three dollars. Gen immediately told the man that he
Speaker 4: was off the state payroll, and almost as quickly, the
Speaker 4: commissioner notified the governor that the tags would be sold
Speaker 4: for three dollars after all. Unquote. Now, even without him
Speaker 4: getting his bills passed, Gene would attempt to exert control
Speaker 4: by directly puppeteering state agencies. The first he needed to
Speaker 4: cue was the unwieldy Highway Department, which was taking fifty
Speaker 4: three percent of the state budget. It was essentially the
Speaker 4: biggest political lever in the state because roads controlled where
Speaker 4: everyone went, and you could use road funds as like
Speaker 4: a bargain for like county county courthouse gangs and to
Speaker 4: get like election favors. Gene bargained with the board to
Speaker 4: fire road engineers to cut down on costs, with Gene
Speaker 4: just refusing to approve budgets and issue payments until his
Speaker 4: demands were fulfilled. At this time, Gene was also being
Speaker 4: pressured to call for a special session to legalize beer,
Speaker 4: an issue that Gene largely found inconsequential, saying beer why
Speaker 4: this is hard liquor. Country beer is a fad unquote.
Speaker 2: If you find it weird that beer was ever illegal
Speaker 2: in Georgia. There's a documentary Pretty Go Doctormochi and Smokey
Speaker 2: and the Bandit that you can watch that will explain
Speaker 2: this to you.
Speaker 4: Now, Gene mostly didn't want to call this extra session,
Speaker 4: mostly out of fear that they would strike down his
Speaker 4: three dollars car tag and remove his ability to leverage
Speaker 4: power over the Highway Department. Now, during this dispat Gene
Speaker 4: was also picking a fight with the Public Service Commission
Speaker 4: over high utility rates, saying that there was a conspiracy
Speaker 4: between the five commissioners to charge high rates, and by
Speaker 4: alleging this, he was able to take action under Georgia
Speaker 4: Code to remove state officials who were derelict in their
Speaker 4: duties and appoint their successors. You should can maybe notice
Speaker 4: a trend here that he often was convinced or at
Speaker 4: least claimed that there was all kinds of conspiracies against him. Always,
Speaker 4: no matter what, there was always a conspiracy against him.
Speaker 4: So as things were heating up in Atlanta, Eugene Talmage
Speaker 4: traveled to New York City in mid June, accompanied by
Speaker 4: four National Guard bodyguards. Rumors circulated that Talmadge was undergoing
Speaker 4: a military occupation of the capital and the treasury. To
Speaker 4: quote Anderson quote, National guardsmen were seen quietly moving about
Speaker 4: the capital grounds armed with machine guns. Simultaneously, it was
Speaker 4: leaked that two million dollars had been taken from banks
Speaker 4: and placed in the treasury vault because the Highway Department
Speaker 4: was going to sue in federal court. If the court
Speaker 4: granted in their favor, the money could not be touched
Speaker 4: if it was on state property. Unquote. Now, Gene was
Speaker 4: questioned about these odd occurrences of like moving money and
Speaker 4: armed men, to which he only smiled and replied, military
Speaker 4: matters must necessarily be kept secret uncovered.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that scance.
Speaker 4: This whole sequence of events is extremely profetic for what
Speaker 4: Jene's reign over Georgia would look like in the next
Speaker 4: like ten years. Now.
Speaker 2: Look, if I'm in power, am I going to have
Speaker 2: the National Guard follow me around so that there's always
Speaker 2: a body of soldiers meeting me wherever I show up,
Speaker 2: like the Emperor in Star Wars. Wars, Absolutely, but they're
Speaker 2: going to be dressed like those red guys, you know,
Speaker 2: you know, the Red guys from Star Wars Garrison.
Speaker 4: That's very familiar. Yeah, with the Imperial Guard excuse Robert,
Speaker 4: excuse me.
Speaker 2: Excuse me, and retooling. We're selling all of the National
Speaker 2: Guard's tanks and weapons in order to buy uh screen
Speaker 2: accurate Imperial Guard uniforms from Star Wars.
Speaker 4: You can get a pretty good one for about a
Speaker 4: thousand bucks. I already see.
Speaker 2: This is all we got to sell, is like three
Speaker 2: or four m wraps, you know.
Speaker 4: So that is where we're going to end our story
Speaker 4: today with Jean's kind of military coup, and we will
Speaker 4: we will learn what he did with his military coup
Speaker 4: in the next episode. What a what a man? What
Speaker 4: a man?
Speaker 2: What a man?
Speaker 3: What a man?
Speaker 2: What a mighty not very good man? No, does that
Speaker 2: song ring a w Garrison?
Speaker 4: No, No, anyway, I'm on Twitter at Rooi still posted
Speaker 4: for Void.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm on Twitter too, but I don't really post
Speaker 2: that much anymore.
Speaker 4: No, you've been good.
Speaker 2: I've gotten it. I took it off my phone. I've
Speaker 2: been I've been breaking the habit, just like that Lincoln
Speaker 2: Park song, even though Lincoln Park's been canceled.
Speaker 4: All right, I'm done.
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