James Michael Curley

Okay, okay, all right, okay, okay, all right, okay, oh, yeah, I'm in charge, okay

I was like, when's Riley gonna start the show?

I'm just like, Riley father is here.

Um, okay,

well, father, for now, father, for now, until you become our daughter.

No, no, well, until you become our daughter.

Oh, true, yeah, okay, like that's how it's gonna we're gonna invert it.

Wait, wait, wait, hold on, hold on, hold on.

are we suggesting that transition like your rank in the trans community is quite a bit like becoming a post captain yes it's like time and grade yes exactly it's like you've been in you've been in the core less time right like i have to i have to pay respects to people much younger than me because they've been out longer you know absolutely so like but i you know I think, but if you, if you transition finally, when, sorry, when, when you transition,

you're wondering off mic when we were going to, when we were going to do the transition bit and you started it, just FYI.

Oh, no.

I hope nobody jokes about me transitioning again.

I'm starting the show.

Are you saying it's just like if you have like, if you have a son, you put him on the naval rolls?

Yeah.

Kim Petrus was put on the naval rolls at like the age of eight and so was able to establish

like a seniority in the community.

In that respect, our puberty block is not a fine British naval tradition.

Answer me that.

Okay, I'm starting the show.

It's no gods, no mares.

It's the free feed.

Thank you for listening.

Today, we're going back into the well of history.

Oh, yeah, I'm Maddie.

I'm here.

I'm the mayor of the episode.

I'm here with my deputy mayors, Nova and Riley.

Hello.

Hello.

Hi.

I just want to emphasize at this time, we have heard you.

We have listened.

The two-part episode shits.

We will do our best not to do this again.

Please, please stop getting mad at us on social media.

Please stop writing in to make me feel bad specifically.

You've hurt my feelings.

Look, November and I can deal with it.

Maddie can't.

I'm sensitive.

I'm sensitive.

I don't like them either.

Okay.

Anyways, we're dipping back into history today with a mayor of history that we'll get into in a moment.

But first, it's time, Giddy Up.

It's municipal roundup.

We have a sound effect for that.

Yeah, that's incredible.

I hope it gets put in because if it doesn't, we're going to sound really stupid.

Um, no, just dead silence and me reacting to nothing.

It's like, wow, that's a really good sound effect.

Incredible production value on this one.

Just like filming us in front of a green screen that we forget to color in.

Yeah, that's that's right here in beautiful Paris and banging off

green screen.

Yeah, wait, who's that?

It's Anne Hidelgo.

I didn't know you liked mayors.

So, uh, the first one is an annoying one, one, which is Eric Adams passed a bunch of his annoying ballot measures in the elections here in New York, which means the Department of Sanitation can now like arrest people trying to sell churros and stuff.

What the fuck?

I know they have cops.

I know that's like one of my little favorite factors that the Department of Sanitation has a police department, but like...

Giving them like power instead of making them the like joke trash cops, that's that troubles me.

It was worded very like, give the Department of Sanitation the power to like clean up the streets streets more easily.

And it's like, no, the DSNY is now allowed to like ticket people for, you know, being homeless or selling food in the wrong place or whatever.

And we'll see if New York's strongest remain cool or not.

I doubt they.

I'm going to have to throw out my New York City sanitation police patch from the collection solemnly as an object, as a vile object, an object of disgust to me.

Isn't this a little bit just like what Gavin Newsom wanted to do, but where he was like, what if we deputized every city employee to hand out litter citations, even like people who work in the comptroller's office?

Yeah.

It seems, yeah, it's certainly just like more war on the homeless shit.

I don't know why everyone who hates Eric Adams was like, let's give him more power on the way out.

That sounds awesome.

Maybe they were trying to like triangulate it so they were like Adams out, his successor, who we imagine to be nice.

Obviously, like in and empowered.

But the thing is, because we live in hell and because

Orange Man in White House again, Eric Adams, Eric Adams, federally pardoned, I am certain.

Like, pencil that in.

Yeah, if they try to remove him from office, he's going to be like behind the lay Miz barricade at Gracie Mansion with a bunch of uniformed trash cops defending him.

It's going to be awesome.

Uniformed trash cops, a bunch of those cop robots.

Walking dogs.

The drones that break windows.

He's got a biraktar drone from Turkey as a favor.

His version of the of the Roman salute is just the half-heart.

Yeah, I've got enough Turkish pita in here to last me six months.

Just holding out on baklava, old DSANY storm the barricade.

Another Eric Adams news, his longtime girlfriend Tracy Collins has sadly retired from her no-show job, as I quote one more time, senior advisor to the deputy chancellor of school leadership, a job that sounds like TK, TK, TK, TK.

She wanted to spend less time with her family.

So she wanted to get a show, a show job.

Yeah, she, I was just trying to figure out like, again, like what the fuck this job actually is.

And an education department spokesperson would not respond to comment, but said he noted that her responsibilities included, quote, strategic planning, making recommendations on agency priorities, and providing advice and support to senior leadership.

Placeholder, fill in, rest later.

Peas and carrots, peas and carrots.

That's the official title of dumbest friend in the group chat, a position I've been proud to hold for many years.

Well, you know, she advises, she consults, she sets like strategic direction.

She's kind of like a consolieri.

She decides whether or not your boyfriend is cool.

You know, just basic stuff.

Yeah.

I got one more municipal air update here.

um which is just an article you found uh november and uh the headline is of course if if you would like to.

I love this fucking thing.

I would like to read this into the record verbatim.

Yeah.

Because

by some margin, it is a British text, right?

And the headline is, it's from BBC News, mayor in Vauxhall Courser would diminish borough.

I mean, they're right.

Correct, yes.

Yeah.

If the mayor, but I think it would be funnier if we had mayors

having to drive like appropriate cars for their their region, like if whoever was mayor of Southwark had to have like a reliant robin that he drove around, like only fools and horses.

Oh, cool.

It's the mayor of Hackney.

Why is she driving around in like some kind of insane electrified bicycle situation?

You said this headline and I was staring at it for like 10 minutes trying to understand it because I thought Vauxhall Corsa was a place.

Because I don't know what sort of car we have here.

Yeah, I'm from I'm from Vauxhall Corsa.

You mentioned being at the Vauxhall Comedy Club for the Trash Future Live shows.

That's true.

That's true.

That's why they make the Vauxhalls.

Okay, but I was like, what the fuck could this pot, like

the mayor in this place would diminish the borough?

And I was like, what's wrong with this mayor?

But no.

Plans to sell a borough's official mayoral car have been criticized as damaging to civic pride.

This is a thing we've talked about on TF, right?

Every local council in Britain is like mega-bankrupt right now.

And so Dudley Council plans to offload the vehicle and cut the post of a mayoral assistant as part of plans to reduce its budget.

Labor councillor Adam Aston said, the idea that the mayor can turn up to functions in a Vauxhall Courser and park next to the mayors of other authorities diminishes the status of the borough.

The other mayors will laugh at us.

Yes.

It's a conduct unbecoming of like a mayor.

They're going to go to mayor prom and you're going to pull up in the fucking Honda Civic and they're all going to make fun of us.

I can't believe I have to go to Mayor Prom in this stupid rented tuxedo.

Manchester's dad bought up an Escalade.

The Mayor used to have a Jaguar XF.

However, now, and this is where they include a picture of the hypothetical shitty car.

So funny.

It's just like in the middle of this article, just...

Here it is.

This is what a Vauxhall Corsa looks like.

It's just like a small, like, four-door car.

This is me trying to imagine like a Peugeot or a Renault or something for the American listeners.

It's just sort of, yeah, it's just sort of like a, yeah, it's like a, like, what if a corolla got squooshed

yeah it's it's a it's a special kind of car that i often forget really only exists in europe yeah which is just like a like like a little like a stupid little car but the fact that what they've done is they basically done a reverse advertisement for the vauxhall corsa

and be like this this car would embarrass our country it goes on to say the plan could also see the mayor wearing replica chains to smaller events because the attendant would no longer be in post to look after the valuable gold regalia.

Darren Lyons alert.

Yeah.

Yeah, except shit, Darren Lyons, because you just get like a small plastic chain.

You know,

you get, you get to wear a necklace that just says, imagine a chain, or maybe you carry around a printed out picture of the chain.

They've given the mayor a plastic chain full of gum.

It's a replica.

The mayor gets a candy necklace and is allowed to sometimes use his friend's car.

The council leader added, by no longer having a permanent mayor or car in attendant, we can save around £60,000 a year, which in council terms is not a lot of money.

We're providing the serving mayor with the freedom to drive themselves to any number of engagements as they wish.

That's just what Rob Ford did.

That's what Rob Ford did.

We are going to get like a Ford Mustang with the custom license plate Dudley.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then he's going to, and then Rob Ford, the eternal Rob Ford, is going to turn up in like a parking lot in the West Midlands to like, you know,

slumbering out of a very like low sports car.

Yeah.

To like exchange briefcases full of McDonald's or whatever with like the worst criminal defense lawyer in Birmingham.

But Aston, and this is where we get into the very obvious sort of motive for defending these things, who served as mayor's consort when his mother was mayor.

What?

This is my

mayoral consort.

Yeah,

the mayor regnant, the mayor regent.

But wait, Aston was the mayor's consort when his mother was mayor.

Yeah.

Is there some kind of like a mother boy situation?

This is a common thing where like sometimes if the if the mayor or the head of state is not married, they have to they have to like appoint a first person.

So there was some there was some U.S.

president where it was his daughter.

Like it's just sort of like you need someone to like receive dignitaries to drive them around in your vauxhole car.

Yeah.

No, it would be weird if there was one person in a vaunt.

A vauxhall consort.

Ooh.

He said, whoever suggested this doesn't understand the importance of the mayor in the civic life of the borough.

Well, they haven't.

They clearly haven't.

He said people were pleased when the mayor turned up to an event, but expected gold chains and the mayor to arrive in style.

The borough's current mayor said she was unable to comment on the proposal.

Great name on the current mayor.

Hillary Bills.

Good name.

Hillary Bills.

Hill Bills.

Hill Bills.

Hillbills.

Hillbills.

We expect Hillbills to roll up deep in a Jaguar, gold chains dripped out.

When we talk about Ava Bolander, who is

functionally the mayor of Glasgow, we're also going to have to talk about mayoral cars because it is a weird thing in like British mayoralties.

But I really enjoy this thing of be like, yeah, we're going to have to use this shit car.

Here's a picture of the shit car.

I love, I love the British obsession with Car Force One.

I think that's really good.

Yeah.

Mayor Force One?

Mayor Force One.

That's much better.

How did nobody use this for Eric Adams' various Turkish jewels?

Just a Turkish airline 737

full of passengers.

Okay.

Well, that's mayoral roundup for the day.

It's a beautiful roundup of mayoral events.

We're going to now dive into history with our mayor of the episode, James Michael Curley of Boston, who is a real we found a guy kind of guy.

We're in Boston for this.

We're in the town.

Ben Affleck is here.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Casey Affleck.

Also,

Matt Damon.

We're all wearing the masks to rob the bank like they wear in the town, but we're wearing masks of one another.

I've got a November mask.

November has a Maddie mask.

Maddie has a Riley mask.

I'm wearing a Riley mask and I'm wearing also a bikini to show Riley what life could be like

anywhere so james michael curley is a is an interesting guy because he was like i was doing a lot of uh a lot a lot of reading about the machine politics of boston and he was a sort of like very representative figure of that so and he what he was the machine in the machine politics yes so james michael curley was born in boston in 1874 to irish immigrants uh his father was a day laborer uh but also what wikipedia called a foot soldier for a democratic ward boss james pea Jacket Maguire.

Wait, wait, wait.

Hold on, hold on.

I need a couple of seconds to pass a few things out here.

First of all, they don't let you be a foot soldier for things anymore.

That's a real shame.

That is a crying shame.

Second thing, this ward boss name James P

jacket.

Jacket with in air quotes Maguire.

No, no, no.

It's James quotes P jacket with a hyphen, Maguire, like a pea coat, I think.

Oh, okay.

I mean, that's also cool, right?

To wear a distinctive jacket, so distinctive that you get a nickname off of it.

That's kind of cool.

There were two James Maguires in the Boston machine politics at the time, and this was the least important one.

You got the worst Maguire.

You got the duds.

The other guy had a cooler nickname.

This guy's just like, yeah, he's got a jacket on, I guess.

James Two Shoes Maguire, you know, just like really, really casting around for something about this guy.

Old

thumbs Maguire.

James average heights Maguire.

Yeah.

Hey, hey, hey, James.

Stop fucking with us down in Southeast, or I'm going to have my friend James 5'10 McGuire.

That would be quite tall for 1874.

Old brown hair himself.

We'll get into what a ward boss is in a second, but it's basically being like a

three meals a day.

Anyways, so we got a kind of a Giuliani situation here where when James was 10, his father died and James, Michael Curley, started working while he was attending school and his mother started scrubbing floors.

At 15, he left school and went to the factory because it was 1889 and Big Brother did not yet prevent children from working.

We should return to that, obviously.

We all love it.

His mother reportedly endeavored to keep him away from his father's local Democratic Party associates because it kind of seems like they they were maybe the mafia locally.

Yeah, yeah.

I don't want you hanging out with those pea jacket boys anymore.

Like truly, like you, your father was like a foot soldier for the Democratic Party mob, and I want to keep you away from him like Giuliani style.

Your dad was the boxer with glasses.

So this is actually, yeah, this is actually important context for Curly because very similar to Giuliani, he was like a product of this like mafia so

ward boss system.

I'm raising my hand here to say that i'm scared right because i don't know if the world was ready for an irish giuliani you know this is this is before this is well before giuliani irish pre-Giuliani yeah Giuliani Zero.

So Boston's ward boss system at the time was running strong and it functioned in a very similar way to the mafia.

So in the 70s, here's some context.

It just works.

That's the sister.

If you want to organize a city in the late 19th century, you got the mafia or you got like the mafia, but with votes.

Yeah, so like people are saying nowadays, like you and your friend should get organized, right?

You and your friend should start a local crime syndicate.

Uh, the RICO Act isn't real and it can't hurt you.

Step one:

distinctive nicknames based on your traits or appearances.

That's right.

Become tall or short.

Quickly,

we need to get the protection money together.

Riley Trousers is coming down the street.

Unfortunately, like, my kind of like mob is unable to secure any like streets because all of our nicknames are just transgender and it gets very hard to tell us apart.

So are you talking about big sock, a little sock?

Yeah, yeah, fucking

sock, Lucy, and yak jumpsuit last name.

Fuck.

Their last name is also sock.

Oh,

keep running your mouth.

See what happens.

See if you keep talking like that when

Odette oversized scarf gets here yeah

hey it's johnny solavaz

in the 1870s uh boston's population swelled by about 45 and irish immigrants were most of that um so at this point about 40 of the city's irish um but despite the enormous population and political leverage uh the yankees like what you might call a boston brahmin the kind of like fighting retreat of the boston wasps is so funny to me to be looking at the now most stereotypically Irish American city in America and be like, this used to be a nice place till they started letting all the fucking Irish in here.

This used to be Dutch, question mark.

It was British is what it was.

Dutch Boston, Bostun.

Bostun.

Herrverd Jerd.

Fuck.

So the Boston Brahmin kind of like essentially shut the Irish population out of political power locally.

This is a really familiar story in a lot of American cities, right?

So the Irish built their own parallel political infrastructure and they formed a sort of shadow government in Boston.

So, the way the ward system operated was each little ward functioned as its own like autonomous little political machine.

They would literally whip the votes for the neighborhood through whatever means, including violence or whatever.

Yeah,

like sending the guy out to vote, shaving him, sending him back out to vote again.

Yeah, like for real.

Uh, the elected candidates would then kick back like patronage, support, favors, whatever to the ward boss.

Uh, they would do like throw votes into the river, or uh, one legendary ward boss, uh, Martin Lomancey, Lomazny.

Sorry, he'll come up later.

Martin Lomancey.

The M is for Lomancey.

Yeah.

He was renowned for his ability to get deceased voters back onto the register.

That was like his famed move.

Yeah,

Marty Lazarus, as they used to call him.

The other Patrick Maguire, Patrick J.

Maguire, was sort of a boss tweed for late 19th century Boston.

He himself.

Boston tweed.

Yeah,

Boston Tweed.

Again, we're there.

He seemed to control the local Democratic Party with an iron fist, and they were basically in charge of Boston.

So the machine worked really well.

By the year 1900, Irish people held a lot more respectable jobs in town, which is to say, like, they worked in the city government a lot.

Like a third of municipal jobs were now Irish held.

And a lot of Boston Irish finally reached the middle class.

Reading through my big copy of how the Irish Became White, and it just has a big 72-point font page that just says fewer nicknames.

It says fewer.

It says the mafia, parentheses Irish,

parentheses voting oh yeah those guys yeah yeah hey it worked yeah i mean it's the sort of thing where it's like it turns out if you promise people uh stuff they will vote for you is what they kind of stumbled across well it's you need to do a combination it's not enough to do voting you also have to build power and it turns out that building power was starting your own mafia yeah just just a kind of taverny hall that responds like the democratic party now and doesn't do anything but still expects the kickbacks and you just have like a like a will stansel in a stovepipe hat being like listen you might not like bribing me but if you look at the graphs you'll see that i'm actually doing considerably better economically from come on how about how about this though it's you do the same thing tammet tammany hall setup but they operate like democrats now and it's like we've got the tom thumb endorsement

tom thumb never endorses they paid tom thumb 100 000 yeah it's it's pride month at taverny hall they put the flag out and everything i'm not sure why i keep referencing will stanzil he's become a bit of a like a tulper for me lately i so

19th century will stanzil is going to really stick with me i could have just as easily said like debbie rassim and shultz or something you know like so at this point curly is um he's getting involved a little bit locally he's a member of the ancient order of hibernians which is like

ever since i was a kid all i ever wanted to be was an ancient hibernian

yeah

Imagining Hibernia, like it's Lemoria.

It's at the bottom of the ocean.

I'm going to be like those guys in Green Knight.

Yeah.

So, you know, it's like, that's like a benefit society that assists Irish immigrants coming to the country.

Still around as like a kind of like drinking club for like Irish American politics.

Yeah, they definitely march in the St.

Patrick's Day parade in New York, I'm pretty sure.

March stumble.

March stumble, push me out of the way.

uh but he he also ran um on uh to be a member of boston's common council uh at the time the city council was a bicameral thing there was this huge common council it was like 75 members and then there was a smaller 12 aldermen that was elected at large oh so it literally run like the city of london then yeah i think it was a yeah and he was not a member of any ward or political machine club and then lost uh his his race for common council you got to be in you got to be in a club.

You got to have a nickname, you know?

Yeah.

So he...

So go ahead.

No, go ahead.

No, no, I'm not.

No, no, no.

I'm giving up on it.

I'm giving up on it.

So what happens next, Maddie?

Well, great question.

So

Curly joins a machine faction being run by this guy, Charles Quirk, because this country used to have real names, like a guy named Chuck Quirk.

Chuck Quirk.

Fantastic.

Yeah.

And, you know.

Yeah, it's a guy wearing two monocles, threatening to extort your fruit, Stan.

Yeah, he's got two monocles.

Quirky Charles.

You don't want to piss him off.

Give him the quirk, Charlie.

He's dressed up like Zoe Deschanel and the new girl.

He's got like a pillbox hat.

He's got two monocles.

Yeah.

They called him that because of the one eyebrow, you know, kind of raised.

He's got the bag of potato chips on his head.

He's

so crazy.

So crazy.

Love him.

So the Gilded Age, the Gilded Age, right, is winding up here.

And helping the poor was not considered a legitimate use of government, which not like now, but obviously we're like, obviously,

we should all help the poor.

We love to do it.

Everyone's rich now, I think.

But it was very much like the idea of any social program, right, was like insane to even consider.

And Curly sort of rises through the ranks of local popularity.

saying like he's going to help the poor finally right so um our boy curly is a hustler and at the age of 26 in 1900, he's the youngest ward boss in Boston.

And in 1901, he finally gets onto the common council.

He wants to chair the ward, but he loses the election by seven votes and claims multiple times that he was cheated by the men of P Jacket.

Just like, hey, I was about to win.

And then seven guys came in all wearing P jackets and really freshly shaved, you know?

One of them being wheeled in on a coffin.

Yeah.

It's like, hey, where'd that corpse get that new P jacket from?

Don't worry about it.

Don't worry about it.

You could just see a kind of Joe Biden story being formed.

Like, I would have taken it except the seven seven P jacket boys.

They came on in.

You know, then it's like the New York Times writing an article.

Like, actually, Joe Biden did encounter several P jacket boys in his youth.

No Pinocchios.

It turns out.

Yeah, there's a, yeah, there's Sully Corn Pop Maguire.

So at the age of 28, 1902, he's in the Massachusetts House of Representatives and he founds his own political organization, the Tammany Club, which, yes, is named after Tammany Hall.

Oh, that's that's beautiful to be like this, this widely hated machine politics thing.

I'm going to do that, but like as a franchise.

Yeah.

Look, look.

Democrats are always like this, I guess.

Yeah, I guess so.

But it's an interesting thing where he's like, I'm not a part of the machine.

I'm going to found my own.

I'm a part of a different, better machine.

I'm raging against the machine by making a bigger and different machine.

You're raging against the machine with my machine?

It's basically like a, well, is it like the battle bot situation?

It's the most efficient way to rage against the machine.

It's with another machine.

That's right.

Otherwise, it's just a John Henry situation, you know?

Yeah, power is never conceded peacefully, you know, ever.

So you have to make your own battle bot.

Yeah.

You can't rage against the machine with the machine.

You got to, you got to make your own machine, you know, a liberatory machine.

You have to use the master's tools to dismantle that house.

You have to, you have to build another house and crash it into the master's house.

You have to build a house on wheels like mortal engines.

You're just describing like

separatism, basically, as a force.

That's what like

fucking like any of the lesbian separatist communes were meant to be.

Well, the lesbian separatist commune is you build a house far away, and the people in the house look at your house and they say, wait, I'll come to your house instead.

And then the house comes back, which never works.

All right, so this guy, this, all right, so this guy was a lesbian separatist.

This guy's a lesbian separatist.

I'm following you so far.

Yeah, he builds, he builds this, or he starts a Tammany club.

He like whips all the neighborhood votes to him instead, and then he takes the ward and becomes chair of it that way.

How many shillaly beatings do you think this involves?

Yeah, this is like conservatively.

The dumpsters, all bloody shillalies that have been dropped at the crime scene, like a mobster.

Just picking up a fresh shillale out of my shillale storage rack.

Getting Boston whacked with a shillale.

I saw the police drop that shillale by the guy.

They planted that shillali on him.

It's why you want the pico, provides you a lot of like cushioning.

That's right.

So the shillales are flying.

I've filed these

serial number off of my shillalee and I'm ready to go cause trouble.

3D printing a shillale at home with a lathe

i call it a ghost shalali because it's untraceable back to me

yeah they'll never be able to find the tree i made this from

so the the political machine is at its height of its powers this uh then but the bosses in the public imagination are starting to be seen as like corrupt crooks Yeah, because of all the corruption, you know?

Probably because of all the corruption.

Because of the numerous beatings that were involved there.

Yeah, because of the number of shillalis being found in the city.

This guy, you know, he did build the like, you know, subway, but he is also currently having the shit kicked out of me personally.

Yeah, look at his hands.

They're full of splinters.

I support his subway building platform, but I really can't get on board with his kicking the shit out of me currently platform.

I'm only going to vote for him eight times, you know?

Down from the usual 14.

That's harm.

It's like harm reduction, you know?

It's the equivalent of voting on commit in machine politics is you only let them dress you up until you can vote again like half a dozen times.

I'm voting with my feet by running away from this guy with a shillale.

I like the idea.

It's like you're rating them out of 10.

That's how many times you vote.

Yeah, it's like ranked preference voting, except for fraud.

Yeah, I'm only voting for him twice.

So a bunch of good government groups are on the rise locally, mostly backed by the Boston Boston Brahmins.

The New York Times in 1903.

Maddie, I have a question.

Yeah, Riley.

How resistant are they to Shillalely beatings?

The Yankees have developed a sort of anti-shillale armor that are walking around Boston in shock-absorbing tuxedos.

It's why you have that big stovepipe hat.

It's a lot of crush depth to get through before you get to the head.

That's right.

They're designed to be crushed.

Most people don't understand that.

A stovepipe hat, or as they call it, the Boston crumple zone.

Just like approaching you with a shillalee, threatening to instantly close your opera hats.

I'm putting on more hats as I walk through the bad neighborhoods.

It's a sign of your unacknowledged racial prejudice that you always put on five giant hats whenever you walk through Little Ireland.

This looks like a bad neighborhood puts on additional hats.

Stacking going, oh, you look like fucking Bartholomew Cubbins over there.

So in 1903, the New York Times issued a series of reports on municipal corruption and referred to Boston City Hall as, quote, practically all grafters.

This is certainly true.

And the machine begins to function a little worse, a little less.

Smoothly in the 1890s or so, after that machine boss, the non-PJ, okay, Maguire, dies suddenly.

And all the ward bosses begin to bicker.

They have to start calling him, died suddenly Maguire after that, you know, because he had a new trait.

So he dies.

All the ward bosses start bickering amongst each other kind of like when vaccinated what's that vaccinated vaccinated

i legitimately didn't hear you they call him hashtag died suddenly maguire

anyway so you know curly quickly latches on to this and portrays the machine as like entirely corrupt and positions himself outside of it all the while himself being infamous for political favors vote buying and kickbacks

It really helped him when he went on Joe Rogan's great-grandfather's podcast and then was able to position himself as an outsider to the well let me say of course he went on the vaudeville show that joe rogan's great grandfather helped yeah i was gonna say his podcast was his grandfather standing on a mound and yelling

in uh 1904 curly and an unrelated man thomas curly uh helped two applicants in their district cheat on federal service exams for postmen by impersonating them and taking the exam

hold on yeah was it an exam to be a postman yeah because you probably had to be able to read i assume i i guess dog avoidance dog avoidance

dog avoidance shillale avoidance gloom of night avoidance how do you how to use your shalaliana dog probably

just uh there's there's one that's just like will we ever fall will we falter in any of the following rain sleet snow none of the above None of the above.

Please take one.

Yeah, take all that apply.

Yeah.

But so this was a big hit amongst his reputation with the Boston Brahmin, but the local Irish loved it because they saw a guy as grifting for them.

You know, he was briefly jailed and emerged running for city alderman.

I would love to be grifted for, right?

Like that would be incredible.

To be like a guy who's like, I'm going to get you like a good job, like a career with presumably you can buy a house instantly with like five cents they pay you back in the day.

Stovepipe hat, Will Stansel hates this one weird trick.

You become white instantly as well.

Like, just, you know.

Well, also, the other thing is, right, is Americans and the British as well love the idea that someone is going to be like scamming on their behalf because I think there's like there's an innate knowledge that

no, everyone involved with this is inherently dishonest.

We want someone who's at least going to be like dishonest, but sort of fun and will consider me and his like.

Yeah, we want someone who will play the game on our side since that's the game that there is.

He's personally taking exams for constituents, right?

Like, where's that level of service these days?

I mean, again, there's only one politician I could imagine doing something like that, and it's Rob Ford.

Yeah, Rob Ford would sit your SATs.

Yeah, like no question.

You would not benefit from that in any way, but he would sit them.

No, this is meriment.

You could get Rob Ford to sit any exam for you, and then you would just look back and you'd see his head start to steam as he figures out like integrals.

Well, what if Rob Ford was like a savant but for like the needs of his constituents and it turned out that like agent 47 he could pass advanced calculus if someone asked him to to get them a job yeah rob ford uh took my sats for me but he got a zero which you can't even get

so it's just like he just he's like my constituent needs me he locks the in and he knows what yachtsman is to regatta as you know i like the idea okay so there's two versions of rob ford taking the sats there's november's version, which is like he doesn't know what he knows, but he has kind of, he's sort of omnipotent, but like not able to use any of it.

He taps into mayor space.

Yeah.

Yes, yes, yes.

If he tries to do anything, it will descend into racial epithets in a barrage of business cards.

Whereas what Maddie is suggesting is that Rob Ford is going to find new ways, or would, if he was alive, find, maybe is still alive, the occluded mayor.

Maybe we'll find new ways.

I mean, difficult to occlude Rob Ford.

Not an easy task.

I'll find new ways to like score low on the SATs.

Like in the portion where you write your name, he would write Rob Ford, then cross it out, then say constituent, then cross it out, then say like Grace McLady, and then just do it with that.

So

he's jailed for this post-service thing.

He emerges running for city alderman, which is the higher chamber of the legislature locally.

He's just in jail doing the jail montage, but instead of doing pull-ups, he's just like looking at big ward maps instead.

Kind of.

He comes out and he tells the press that he, quote, did it for a friend.

He wins, he wins

spotting the alderman.

That's great.

Be like, no, you don't get it.

I broke the law because it was convenient for me.

Don't you see?

I was helping somebody.

It's like an incredible thing to say as a politician.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I was being loyal to Mike Arthur, you know?

Yeah.

I was, I did it for my friend.

I'll do it for you.

Exactly.

But yeah, for sure.

I'd vote for that guy, probably.

Yeah.

Curly is for you.

They are for they, them.

So

people are sending Devin like angry telegrams in 1903 because they're not voting for James Curley in an American local election.

I'm voting for James Curly, and then the second after he gets elected, I have a new hormone prescription, and my GP has a shillaly bruise.

I'm voting for James Curley, but we're planning on pushing James Curley left once he's in office.

So his tenure as alderman seems pretty uneventful, but in 1905, a group of businessmen had founded the Good Government Association of Boston, or GGA, have begun to hoped they were trying to change the city to their whims.

They build themselves as like anti-corruption crusaders and hope to install more scare quotes, appropriate men in local government posts, read more.

I don't care.

There's too much of this Irish shit around.

For real.

You should be getting beaten with good, honest English sticks.

A stick with no big knob on the end.

It's gauche.

My father.

My father, when he was, of course, adventuring in Rhodesia, found this knob, Carrie.

Try this on for size, old chap.

Boston Brahmin attempting, like pre-Irish attempting to pronounce the word Shillali is going to sit with me as a tolper for a minute.

Shillalag.

Let me see here.

These shillalags.

Yeah.

The machine politicians take issue with this.

They accuse the GGA of playing anti-Irish politics, which they fucking were.

They said the businessman wanted the Brahmin back in power.

Long story short, the GGA manages to succeed in an effort to merge the bicameral legislature into a single, smaller city council.

Curly sets his eyes onwards and upwards.

Anyways,

what if this army of postmen elect me to this thing that you've tried to make unattainable to me?

Basically.

It's kind of inspiring.

So

he is hoping to run for mayor in 1910.

Curly is, but was convinced out of it by a powerful machine politician, John F.

Honey Fitz Fitzgerald, the father of Rose and grandfather of JFK.

Beautiful, beautiful nickname already.

Yeah, Honey Fitz.

Why Honey Fitz?

Probably because he was a speaker.

Just like listening to a guy who can talk really good being like, damn, this is a lot like how honey tastes to me in that it's sweet.

Sorry, November,

I have something that's come into my head, which is Shillale.

Blasted difficult to pronounce, but I say an uncommon companion to the boarding axe and pistol.

Are you guys doing post-captain right now?

Yeah, he's doing Aubrey.

He's doing Jack Aubrey.

Okay, that's yours for the episode.

Sometimes the spirit moves him.

That's sure.

I saw him typing that in the document, and I was very confused by it.

And now I get it.

Great.

Honey, huh?

All right, so fucking honey booper or whatever.

Tell me more about this guy.

Matt, I just looked him up.

That's a wide face.

That is a wide, wide face.

It's a wide-looking looking man he looks like they put him in the hydraulic press

yeah like like so much honey

so he promises curly that he would be a one-term mayor and stay off the ballot in 1914 and clear the way for him if curly doesn't run so curly instead goes to the u.s congress in 1911 you know uh so this is a great little stunt he ran at this point his uh curly's opponent for congress william j mcnary was elaborating on the theme of his own integrity to evidently tedious lengths, according to the Harvard Crimson.

Forthwith, Curly summoned one of his indigent acquaintances, suited him up in Grecian-like robes, put a lantern in his hand, and set this Diogenus out of the streets of South Boston.

His inability to find the honest man, McNary was attended by sufficient cameramen and reporters to ensure the curly victory at the polls.

So he like sent this guy out in a robe being like, where's the honest man?

And that worked on people, apparently.

People, you could just do anything back in the day.

Yeah.

I'm skimming ahead in

Honey Fitz's Wikipedia article, and I find I don't know how this fits into your narrative, so please take it out if it spoils it.

But it's a succession, like a three-hit combo of like Boston 20s names.

Oh, I have this.

Don't worry.

Okay, okay.

You go ahead, please.

We're going to get to this because this is what we're talking about next.

So

this is important.

Yeah, this is great.

So after an unremicable, unremicable, after an unremarkable,

I think it was pretty remicable.

They were sending them in and back and vote.

After a shill of lag stint in the house, Curly was once again set to sight on the mayor's chair.

Honey Fitz breaks his promise and announces a run for re-election.

Oh, honey Fitz, you dog.

Never trust a Kennedy.

Never trust a pre-Kennedy.

A Kennedy precursor.

The pre-Kennedy is kind of thinner, you know, a bit watery.

The dead pre-Kennedys.

Pretty good.

The best I can figure, there's no party primaries at this point.

So Curly has run

the machine just spits someone out, basically.

Yeah, but the machine spits several people out, and you can run as a Democrat or Republican or unaffiliated or whatever party you're with, but it's all one election.

So Curly has run afoul of the machine with his comments about corruption and was basically running unsupported by the ward bosses, but determined to re-elect Honey Fitz.

The bosses held a meeting and voted 19 to 1 to coerce

Quirley to withdraw.

Quirly.

Quirley to withdraw.

And he didn't.

The ward bosses go after him publicly.

And Curly curly refers to them at the time as a collection of empty eggshells incapable of delivering for anybody get their asses curly the gga also going after him at this point the good government association whom curly calls the googoos

i like this guy already he's he's fighting everybody uh he helped me get a job for the postman yeah it's it's all good so the gga could not escape or the sorry he called the gga the goo goose uh they are as a wasp freakazoids they could not handle being called that and were very, very, very mad about it because it's 1911.

It's 1911 or it's 1914 or whatever.

And they're like, you can't call me a goo-goo.

It's the worst thing you can call a person.

Yeah, this is the, this is just the toxic behavior of the curly bros.

They're, they're not understanding that the, uh, the, the, the good government alliance is electable if you vote for it 19 times.

Do we okay, but but so do we want to talk about um how he got honey Fitz out of the race?

Yes.

I think Riley had a question.

I have one question, though, right?

Which is a lot of what we know about Curly is what he did to get and maintain power, which was a huge amount of corruption and shillale beatings.

Yes.

Yes.

And also like some very public, high-profile crime that he basically used as an election tool that seemed to work.

Yes.

When he was in power, was he mostly concerned with simply maintaining power?

Or did he have, I think I know the answer, which is that he didn't have a political vision beyond I should be in charge.

That's right.

Okay, thank you to be sure.

At this point of his career, he is certainly unremarkable when he meet when he reaches like the state house, when he is on the city council.

He's not really doing much besides helping out his friends.

Now, some of his friends are the poor people in the neighborhood.

So he's certainly still like my constituency is the poor.

And he's still doing some stuff to maintain that power, but it is mostly in the form of kickbacks and not like policy.

He's your guy if you grew up with him.

Very much so.

He's a bit like

Frank Lucas, an American gangster.

He's in charge and he throws turkeys to the poor every once in a while.

Yeah, he's John Gotti.

Like he is, he is a mafioso or a gangster in a lot of ways.

But the thing that I find about how he gets Honey Fitz out of the race is he makes he makes common cause with

he like makes this agreement with a lawyer called Daniel H.

Coakley, a guy with an incredible moustache.

And they blackmail

Honey Fitz.

That's right.

Because he's having an affair with a woman the same age as his daughter.

Yeah, a 24-year-old cigarette girl, question mark,

named Elizabeth Toodles Ryan.

Yeah,

I know exactly.

That's what you saw.

And you wanted to get there so bad.

And now we're here.

I've had it highlighted for like five minutes in my browser.

It's so good.

Elizabeth Toodles Ryan.

So a cigarette girl was someone who sold cigarettes at like the club.

At the club.

Okay.

At the club.

At the club.

You like sold cigarette, you're like a little box with cigarettes in it.

And presumably as she as she like sells the cigarette, she's like toodles or whatever.

That's right.

And this guy, and JFK's grandpa is like, I must fuck her.

That's right.

And sort of like a 19th century shot girl.

In the same kind of, okay, that's number one.

That's a great idea.

But it's in, it's, it's so stupid.

It's so awful.

It's like you go in and then the cigarette girls, they're, they're wearing skirts that like show their lower ankles and it's all just to sell you smokes in the club.

No, it's also another example of quite obvious nicknames.

Like, oh, yes, she says goodbye.

Let's call her Toodles.

Toodles.

The same people that named Pea Jacket named Toodles, Ryan.

Yeah.

So this guy Coakley also is like renowned for extorting people.

This comes back.

Yeah, they used to call him extortion Coakley.

He was, he was a real, he was an expert at orchestrating badger games, which is like an old con

the fuck?

Where you basically like, it is, it is named, is derived from the practice of badger baiting.

But the idea is basically you like, you have, you send someone to like have an affair with somebody and then

like a honey trap.

Like a honey trap.

A honey badger trap, I guess.

So you send someone to have an affair and then the guy's and then the boy, the quote-unquote boyfriend of the person you sent to have an affair goes over and is like, I'm going to kick the shit out of you, dude, unless you pay me money.

Uh-huh.

Okay, sure.

That's illegal now because of, because of HR, by the way.

Because of you.

That used to be a job that great Americans could have.

Yeah.

So Toodles had hired Coakley to represent her in a lawsuit against her employer.

And during this, she disclosed to Cokely that she had kissed Fitzgerald.

Honey, Coakley and Curly sent a letter to Fitz's wife and announced that they'd be giving away.

Is that Toodles and Honey kissing?

Toodles and Honey are kissing in the corner of the club.

That's the whole school last sentence.

But Coakley and Curly sent a letter to Fitz's wife saying that they're going to give a lecture tour entitled, quote, Great Great Lovers in History, Colon from Cleopatra to Toodles.

This causes, of course, Honey Fitz to drop out of the 1913 mayoral race.

And Curly never delivered the lecture, but perhaps as revenge for breaking his no campaign promise,

he does this.

But everyone, because Coakley got the kissing incident in the court record during the trial of Toodles.

for the lawsuit, kind of killing Honey Fitz's career for a while.

During all this, Fitz withdraws from the mayor's race.

The GGA and the bosses put up another guy.

Curly beats him too, mainly by running on the obvious racial tensions in town.

You know, here was an Irish guy, fought for the poor.

He's being assailed by the goo-goos, trying to remove all the Irish from public office and the corrupt party bosses.

His victory kind of kills the old ward boss system and creates a new ward boss system that he is in charge of.

Meet the new ward boss, same as the old ward boss.

It's just like that they did the RICO Act and then the RICO Act II, which installed a new mafia run by the federal government.

So he basically did actually destroy the master's house by building an equivalent house and crashing it into the master's house.

Speaking of building a house, he had one built for him on Jamaica Plain

for free, basically, because like out of a series of kickbacks,

it was the house that favors built, which is so conceptually cool to me.

It's the number one, okay, you don't like mutual aid.

Number two,

you can just say that and go, you know?

It's not my job to educate you.

If you're going to be against mutual aid for someone who was basically instrumental in setting up breadnut shillelis, then like

you're not a real early 20th century leftist.

Also, it's just mayors,

this is just like the mayor's promise, which is like, I am for sale.

Like, if he was, like, anytime, um, anytime Curly ever went on like a steamboat trip to santiago his wife was always like why are we taking a steamboat trip to his tunnel first it adds four months to the journey time

so yes this is like the the boston mayor at this point yeah does not have a residence so he has that he has the free one belt uh the boston finance commission which is mostly provided over by a lot of protestant republicans you know brahmins investigates him a bunch of times but daniel coakley the fixer takes care of that most likely via extortion uh bribes Yeah, please speak to my lawyer, Extortion Coakley.

He has some pictures here.

I think you'd be interested to see.

This is also just like Sandro Lisi, basically.

The mayor

stopped at

a coaching station outside a train station outside of Boston and exchanged briefcases full of autochromes of like

Boston Brahmins gawping at the legs of cigarette girls.

So to answer your earlier question, Riley, so when he finally reaches the mayoralty, he does spend a lot of money on improvements to poor districts.

He adds some public transit.

He builds a lot of hospitals, but he does this by securing loans from city banks, coercing them to issue them under the threat of city action against them.

And he also starts blackmailing Boston social elite for funds for public works projects, which to me is again.

You're talking about you want to build power like you also need a mafia as well as a party.

Yeah.

He starts getting a bunch of negative press for all the

crime.

And he starts threatening reporters constantly with libel suits and once assaults the publisher of the Boston Telegraph in person.

So, all right, let me set a scene for you.

I want to get the tides of history music going.

They're like the bring, you know.

Uh-huh.

Uh-huh.

Patrick, can you please send us the bring, the pling from the tides of history?

So it's a beautiful morning in the north end of Boston, a clear sky, impossibly blue.

But what's that?

The signature gurgling of an enormous tidal wave of molasses.

However,

however,

our guy was not the mayor anymore.

Because in 1917, two years earlier, Curly ran for office again.

This time, Lamanzi, the West End boss I mentioned before, would have his revenge.

He orchestrated the entrance of Peter Francis Taig into the race, a second Irishman who he hoped would siphon off enough votes to elect someone else, and it worked.

The victory went to Republican Andrew James Peters, who evidently was a suspect in the salacious tabloid death of socialite Star Faithful, which is just some cool stuff.

Just a cool sentence.

I feel like I've just been hit in the head and like watched three seasons of Boardwalk Empire on three different TVs at once at different speeds.

Yeah.

So he misses the molasses disaster as mayor, but it's just funny to think about it.

Just perfectly like dodges Boston 9-11.

That's right.

In 1918, right after he loses the mayor of the world.

The one Boston 9-11 that there is, the Boston Molasses Florida.

Yeah, no other bad thing ever ever happened

in 1918 right after this happens uh the massachusetts state legislature sensing that like the curly century is upon them passes a law banning consecutive terms for mayors anyway

so i'm entering now uh a segment i call 3 a.m going back for more mayor because

in 1921 curly runs again and wins again I couldn't find a ton about this race, but he defeats three other candidates, mainly

narrowly coming out ahead of John R.

Murphy, the head of the Boston Fire Department.

Apparently, Curley dressed up, this is another from a Harvard Crimson article in 1958.

Curly dressed up a few of his camp followers as priests and sent them across Charlestown and elsewhere, saying that John R.

Murphy had renounced his Catholic

faith, joined a Masonic order, had been observed attending Back Bay's Trinity Church, and intended to divorce his good wife in order to marry a 16-year-old girl.

As the campaign was drawing to its successful close, Curley asked a Roxbury audience, where was James Michael Curley last Friday night?

He was conducting a political meeting in Duxbury.

Where was Mr.

Murphy eating steak out at the Copley Plaza?

Fucking get his ass.

John R.

Murphy, he parties with the boys at Copley Plaza at night, but in the morning, he's at a political meeting in Duxbury with the men.

So, this was the first race that women could vote in.

So, I'm deciding that Curly is a feminist icon.

Slay.

I mean, this is the thing.

You get an extra vote out of all the dudes because after you shave them, you dress them up as a woman, send them through again it's like that one guy on twitter you know yeah hey oh boy i don't want to talk about that guy

hey how come billy estrogen is uh unwilling to get out of his lady costume to vote the eighth time

so he uh this is uh his second term starting in 1922 A little less eventful than his first, but he steeps his reputation for spending Boston's money easily, and he gets his patronage scheme up and running again very quickly.

He runs for governor during this time as well, but lost, but not before orchestrating a bunch of fake KKK scares around his events to drive home the point about anti-Irish racism.

He is uh, which is uh a crazy thing.

He was doing false flag attacks on the fucking back bay.

What the fuck?

Yeah, he's he's doing like, oh, look how racist they are against the Irish, which, like, I don't think you need it to prove, but they're like faking KKK attacks.

He invented being Jussie Smollett for the Irish.

That's right.

He is term limited out in 1926 and a Boston Brahmin and the last Republican to hold the position.

To this day, took the reins as mayor.

I'm going to do a little check-in on our friend Coakley, Coakley Corner, the lawyer and sort of fixer for Curly.

In 21,

I want to say he was, quote, what I'm going to call mega disbarred for deceit, malpractice, and gross misconduct.

All that extortion catches up with the guy.

It was weird how the state bar like slammed him through a folding table.

I don't know they needed to do that.

I just can't believe that they disbarred extortion coakley.

Yeah.

He gets sued like five times in the 1920s.

He runs himself for Boston Mayor in 1917 with the intention of clearing the name of a DA that was a close friend of him that was part of all of his schemes that got removed from office.

These guys, they love scheming together so much.

He loves his boy so much.

He runs for mayor to clear his boy's name, but he loses.

I think, you know, what I've discovered is that we've also identified the Jacob Wall and Jack Berkman of the early 20th century.

At some point, he has a falling out with the other players.

So Jacob Wall and Jack Berkman aren't actually aberrant.

They're just anachronistic.

Yeah.

So Coakley loves this guy, Pelletier, the DA, so much that when he has a fight with Curly publicly, Curly and Coakley have a falling out.

And Coakley runs against Curly for mayor in 1929.

Curly wins again his third term.

He's now 55.

So he gets back as mayor for the third non-consecutive time.

Three non-consecutive mayoral terms.

That must be the highest number of non-consecutive mayoral terms a person can have, certainly, you think to yourself now at this point in the story.

Must be.

Surely.

Surely.

Curly immediately goes back to his old habits, runs the city the way he liked to do it, you know, on his own behalf.

There's a bit on the Wikipedia page that I'm highlighting.

Can you guess what it is?

Is it about him pretending to be a delegate from Puerto Rico at the DNC?

Yes, it is.

Yes, it is.

uh as elcade jaime curlejo

i was gonna say you'll know elcade is spanish for mayor from our sister show sin dioses sin alcades

so yeah this this episode here so this was like back when the dnc was like sort of like a mysterious smoky room and someone would just emerge the nominee

it was like conclave yeah kind of he got denied a spot at the dnc by the by the mayor or by the governor of Massachusetts at the time and he he then engineers his selection of the DNC as a delegate from Puerto Rico under that under that alias uh mayor jaime curlejo

he took a lot of he he takes a lot of credit for FDR's nomination at the 32 convention but had a public break with FDR after he did not appoint Curly as ambassador to Ireland

FDR just fully buying this guy's being like why would I appoint this Puerto Rican

he doesn't know anything about Ireland at all

primarily what I believe to be Spanish.

Just FDR just so wasp he can't tell like Boston Irish accent and like Puerto Rican apart.

And he's just like,

yeah, no, I mean,

Buenos Dias or whatever.

Curly is, of course, term limited out again.

He takes another run at the governorship and he beats an anti-New Deal Republican, Gaspar Bacon.

This is 34.

He's like huge Democratic wave.

Gaspar Bacon, incredible.

He immediately gets into a shoving match with that departing governor who denied him the spot at the DNC.

When?

Like at the inauguration?

Yeah, I think so.

The historian Gerard O'Neill calls his one-term governorship, quote, ludicrous part of the time, shocking most of the time, and tawdry all of the time.

Beautiful.

He goes crazy spending, again, not really knowing where the money is coming from.

He spends all of his political capital immediately going after the Boston Finance Commission, the ones that kept investigating him for his magic mansion.

Everyone in Massachusetts hates the people asking questions about my crown molding.

It's time to get some answers.

It's time to get some answers, not to the questions about my crown molding, but why there are so many questions about my crown molding.

He impeaches and fires all the investigators.

Yeah, let's see how you like it when I ask you a bunch of invasive questions about your finances, huh?

Why did I come into your house and ask who put up your fireplace?

He does that exact fucking thing.

He purges the committee and replaces it with his allies who then start going after his political enemies.

That's, oh my God, this guy's, this guy's like fucking Boston Putin.

Yeah.

Meanwhile, the Great Depression is like raging and everyone is sick of his shit amazingly quickly because he's not doing anything for anybody poor.

He's feeling the walls closing in, maybe, I assume.

And so instead of running for re-election, he runs for Senate.

He's feeling the walls closing And so he's like, quickly, construction companies, please build larger walls.

Well, he's like, the walls are closing in as governor.

I'll run for Senate instead of governor.

And it's annoying.

This is 1936 where Democrats win like Reagan style landslides everywhere for the Senate, but he gets beat by a Republican anyways.

That's so sad that there was a ceiling for this guy.

He could have been president just out of a series of like attempting to outrank each of his haters.

Outrank your haters at the standard of success.

Yeah, having the like authority to investigate your haters is what it's like that was like the sole thing driving him at this point, it feels like.

Yeah.

So his career is not looking incredible at this point.

Public opinion is turning.

A local journalist and commentator, Lewis Lyon, said of him, Curly controls the Commonwealth by means of the smallest and cheapest political healers that ever

shined their trousers and the seats of public office in Massachusetts.

People don't like him.

But Curly goes back home in 1937.

He runs for Boston mayor one more time, but he is beat by his former protege, Maurice Tobin.

In 1939, the Boston mayor term limit law was repealed because they were like, well, this guy's finally done.

We don't have to have this stupid law.

There's no way he's coming back.

Like literally, this law was just so he would not be the mayor the whole time.

The No Curlies Association, basically.

In 1938, Curly is like, I guess I'll be the governor again.

And he primaries the Democratic governor, Charles F.

Hurley, and he wins, but he loses the general to a man named, and this is true, Leverett Athelville Sultanstall.

That's too much Protestantism around me.

You know what I mean?

Ethelville Sultanstall.

He's an heir to the Peter Chardon-Brooks fortune.

Yeah, this guy sounds like a Mayflower survivor.

He literally is.

Yeah.

You open up Salton Stall family on Wikipedia.

They've got a coat of arms.

I do feel like that guy's name sounds like if you're trying to very quickly think up a fake name

after you've been hit by a shillalee.

That's right.

So 1941, Curly is like, I'll run for mayor again.

And this time the guy Tobin beats him again in a squeaker.

I've been beaten twice by your own protege.

Curly at this time has also lost a substantial amount of money in an unsuccessful Nevada gold mine operation.

So it's 42.

What do you want to do?

You're James Michael Curley.

You run for the U.S.

House of Representatives because it's just the one thing you haven't done yet.

He just loves running for stuff.

He leans on his old standby like yelling at the Yankees.

I just looked at something.

We should note this.

Please.

Sultan Stahl's great, great, great, great-grandfather was the mayor of London.

Jesus Christ.

No gods, no mayor's origins episode.

Yeah.

So he beats a new dealer, this guy, Tom Elliott, because he was the grandson of Harvard's president.

So Curly is effectively able to run against this guy, saying he's like a Yankee Brahmin guy.

He also calls him a communist, saying there's more Americanism in one half of Jim Curly's ass than the pink body of Tom Elliott.

First of all, the formation one half of my own, referring to myself in the third person ass is funny.

But second of all,

what a story, what a trajectory the American 20th century had that this guy who was like, you know, born in the 1880s

in the like fucking like gangs of New York brackets, Boston, is now having to, is having to talk about communism and be like, this, this guy's a fucking pinko or whatever.

What a life.

How do you fit all of that into like

50 years?

It's crazy because it keeps going here.

In 1945, in the middle of his second term in the House, he vacates a seat to run for mayor of Boston again.

It's like, I want that house back.

Yo, they eliminate, look, they got rid of the law.

Yeah, that's right.

It's like, look, look, look, look.

I read the first 80% of the tortoise and the hare.

We've basically almost run the race.

Let's just relax for a little while.

So a big allegedly alert here, but something.

It's just genuinely like, oh, yeah, he became president for like uh two four-year terms and then went back to being mayor because he wanted to do that job and just was kind of in between things otherwise yeah so some say that joseph p kennedy paid him off so his son a guy named uh john f kennedy jr could run for the seat easily yeah non-honey fits not honey fits but

vinegar fits vinegar fits

gunshot wound fits yeah so he might have paved the way for jfk's ascension through the house by vacating his seat maybe

So Tobin, his once protege and now enemy, had the governorship and Curly somehow wins a fourth term over the acting mayor, Johnny Kerrigan, in a landslide, despite being under investigation for bribery and fraud and facing a felony indictment during the campaign for participating in a fraudulent organization that misrepresented its resources in order to win war contracts for clients.

Curly let the org use his name on their letterhead.

He won a wartime election while getting investigated for war profits hearing.

That's right.

He let the organization use his head on letterhead, use his name on letterhead, collected 60 grand in government funds fraudulently.

In 1946, a month into his fourth term as mayor, Curley was convicted on 10 counts of mail fraud, sentenced to six to 18 months at the federal prison in Danbury.

But Harry Truman, who was also just weirdly the investigator that uncovered the fraud, commuted the sentence after five months, citing Curly's health.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, hold on, hold on.

They did the hypothetical Trump timeline where he was mayor from prison.

So he was mayor and then went to prison.

And John Hines was the acting mayor while he was in prison.

Oh, that's no fun.

They should have let him

still do it from jail.

Damn style, yeah.

That only works, though, if you're still like, the guards have to be really trying to stop it.

Yeah.

Hey, you being the mayor in there.

He's smuggling little notes out through his lawyer and shit.

The Boston correctional, the people, the correctional guards with their small police guard shillalis, the small ones that fit on their belt, are banging the bars like, hey, you better not be doing any mayor stuff in there.

Are you signing bills?

It's contraband.

Yeah, hey, maybe I'm signing a bill that increases your pay.

I don't know.

Yeah.

So at this time, the

the normally under the city charter charter.

I have one more question.

Would you say

it's a different Harry Truman, right?

No.

Really?

Yes.

So you're basically, I want to take, take forward something November said a little earlier.

This guy who was born into gangs of New York ends up interacting with the nuclear president.

That's right.

And was in the same prison that Steve Bannon just got out of.

Yeah, this is, yeah, this is 1946.

Like, so the city charter says that the city council president

gets to be the acting mayor, but that guy was also under investigation for bribery.

So the city council passed emergency legislation to grant full mayoral powers to john hines a city clerk just some guy you become like mayor by default yeah and now that's like and now the convention center is named after him imagine you just go into work one day as a city clerk like ah another day of paper shuffling you go in they just drop a mayoral sash on you like run things well you know he was he was the city clerk which is a position i believe i know i know no you don't i'm telling you it'd be better if it wasn't I'm correcting you.

It's more fun to imagine one of the clipboard guys just seeing everybody get arrested like the end of fucking

What am I even thinking on?

I don't know.

It's a lot of movies Wolf of Wall Street.

Yeah, that's one of them.

People get arrested in that movie for sure.

That was that was that was one of the movies I was thinking of thinking.

So Curly gets out of prison and on his first day back, he's greeted by a cheering crowd and a band playing Hail to the Chief.

He tells reporters, I have accomplished more in one day than has been done in the five months of my absence, which

pisses off heinz so bad

because they've been monitoring my phone calls yeah

so heinz is like so pissed off so he runs against curly buckling up bills up my lawyer's ass to get it

so heinz runs against curly because he's so mad oh it's his own clerk he wins as a reform candidate somehow I don't know what he's reforming because everything seems like it's fine.

Reforming not going to jail.

You're running on, I'm the guy they could find who wasn't in prison.

Yeah.

I prefer mayors who didn't get captured.

Yeah.

Curly, on his way out, issues a bunch of city contracts to more of his cronies.

Like as a lame duck.

The next election is 1951.

He's still going.

And he's like, I'm going to run again.

You can't get rid of this guy.

No, he loses, though, pretty decisively.

1956, he's been drummed out of public office at this point,

pretty decisively.

In 1957, he publishes an autobiography entitled, I Do It Again.

The man who was addicted to being mayor.

Yeah.

So he dies in 1958, just shy of his 84th birthday.

His funeral, according to the Jamaica Plain Historical Society, was and remains the largest funeral in the history of the city of Boston.

His house is still there.

It looks really nice.

It's got shamrock window shutters.

It's incredible.

There are two statues of him at Faniel Hall.

The final score, James Michael Curley, four

victorious mayoral races against six failed.

Because the Curley family still holds the Massachusetts auto registration number five.

Yes, that's correct.

You could just have a license plate that just says five on it because you're this guy's like grandkids.

I believe so.

America's so cool.

This guy ran for mayor 10 times and then ran for the U.S.

House of Reps twice.

He ran for the governorship, I think, would I say three times?

I normally have a scoreboard.

Also, if you look at his Wikipedia article, the like info box under his picture with the like list of posts is like, it's like border gore.

There's so much of it because he was in so many of them for so many non-consecutive terms.

Yeah.

So that's, that's, that's our friend, James Michael Curley.

This has felt incredible.

Yeah, I, I did all the research for this in like a day because I went in so insane reading about like the Boston political machine and how it worked.

I was reading about like Irish racism for six hours.

It was great.

Oh my God.

That's our boy.

So also, I think just to let you know, I mean, I always follow on Twitter the closest Twitter, using the no gods, no mayors Twitter, the closest Twitter account to any mayor we've talked about.

And for James Michael Curley, I found one called Gov Curley because Governor Curley was the 55th governor of Massachusetts, and I'm running this page in his memory.

I'm a cousin through his first wife, Mary Harley.

Story's welcome.

And it links to a Facebook page.

There are six followers.

One of them is us.

Beautiful.

I hope we've honored him and his insane legacy.

The only tweet the account has ever actually posted is just, politics is an intriguing business.

Persistence is the key to success.

I call it politics.

And you know what?

That's what James Michael Curley taught us.

Persistence is the key to success in politics.

Never, never stop running for mayor.

Always run for mayor.

I note here a sentence at the head of his Wikipedia page.

He ran for mayor in every election in which he was legally qualified to do so.

Awesome.

He was never not running for mayor.

And when they made laws to try and stop him becoming mayor, he waited them out and became mayor again.

Yeah.

Never let them stop you being mayor.

Your haters become your voters when you run for the executive decision of success.

And just

he was able to power this entire career out of like graft and spite towards Boston Brahmins.

Yeah, it is crazy.

Just like he was, he was able to just like, he was like the entirety of Boston politics like flowed through this guy for like 70 years.

It's just an insane thing to consider.

One incredible man.

He's a real, a real mayor case in my mind.

This guy's, This guy is a capital M mayor.

Thank you for thank you for bringing this guy to our attention.

FDR should have made him ambassador to like to a Spanish-speaking country just to see what would have happened.

Don't just call his bluff.

Call his bluff.

Be like, yeah,

this is our first Puerto Rican ambassador.

His name is Jaime Coleo, apparently.

This is definitely like, if you're wondering why we did this show, this is basically why.

It's because mayors are always doing stuff like this.

Yeah, history's dustbin is littered with guys like this.

Yeah, yeah, winners.

Winners.

Thank you so much for listening on the free feed.

There is a Patreon.

You can pay $5 a month and get a second podcast every other week.

Next week, I think we're doing some more San Franciscans, I believe.

And you can get on that.

That's all I got.

That's right.

We hope to see you there.

Listen to all of the other podcasts, and we will see you next time.

Okay.

Bye.

Alrighty.

Bye.

Bye.