Chainsaw History - Bonus Episode: Big Jim Folsom, Alabama's Problematic Fave

Episode Date: August 25, 2021

Jamie & Bambi take a look at two-time former Alabama governor "Big Jim" Folsom, a left-leaning populist who kissed the girls and made them cry. Find more bonus episodes and extra content on Patreon!

Yes, there will be times where I break it into fits of coughing that Bambi has to put up with, but you, the listener, won't ever know about because they will be edited out. So welcome to phlegm morning, so yeah, welcome. It's morning. Don't expect us to be glad to see you. We will tolerate your presence. Well, it's more like them tolerating ours. Well, no, we're doesn't feel that way.

Deeply unpleasant people in the morning. Well, you know what? It's for all my five listeners, I want you to know that I'm here for you. Yeah, we're doing this for you. So no one's paying us to do this, at least not yet. Speaking of which, this is an example of a bonus episode of chainsaw history, the podcast you're listening to. And I assume you know that because you clicked on this and saw the name.

But in addition to our main topics where I have the comfy security blanket of a giant script that I wrote, bonus episodes are where we play fast and loose. They're the only rule is that there are no rules. So today we're just going to have a loose discussion. So everybody gets to listen to this one. But in the future, if you want to hear at least one bonus episode per topic, you can visit our Patreon at patreon.com slash chainsaw history, where you'll get more stuff and as the show grows and as our support from the audience grows,

we'll do more stuff. So check that out. And then we'll also have a website with more announcements and cool content coming up soon. So yeah, the on Patreon, you can support us at any level, but the $5 and up get the bonus episodes, just like the one you're about to hear. Yeah, we'll have bonus episodes and also you'll have random Bambi musings. I don't know how that's going to work out more stuff.

We will be evolving this as we grow. But today, you know, we did two episodes in a row. We got one more to do about former Alabama governor, George Wallace. And as a palette cleanser is a way to kind of get the foul taste of George Wallace out of our the the mouths of our brains. That's gross. Yeah, yeah, you want to get the taste of George Wallace. I just threw up a lot in my mouth.

But George Wallace, as as anyone who listened heard about, George Wallace had a mentor who was also two time former governor of Alabama. Big Jim Folsom. I like Big Jim. Big Jim is big and very, very handsome. Yeah, he's got this like really like big, wide, honest face of like like like a farm boy who's like, you know, bailing hay with one of those giant pitchforks. I mean, he was a bit of a womanizer.

Yeah. But, you know, who wasn't then? Well, yeah, I mean, like, you know, compared to the comparisons to Wallace are what you can't help because because it's like it's very clear. Both Jim Folsom and Wallace were inspired by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This idea of a populist who's here to help working class people and lift the basic standards. And so like FDR inspired Jim Folsom.

Jim Folsom inspired Wallace, except where it's like Jim Folsom was genuinely trying to use his powers for actual good. Wallace was just using the populist absolute piece of shit. Yeah. Wallace didn't actually care about any of this stuff. That was just kind of like the platform he adopted. He but he would have easily he jumped the other direction any time. That was the easiest way to go.

Whereas Jim Folsom, this idea that if he had stuck around and held on to power, if we imagine if we'd had Jim Folsom during the 1960s in the civil rights movement instead of George fucking asshole piece of shit was. Well, the world would have been a much different place. Yeah. And again, and you know, when you look even the womanizing looking at it from a perspective like Big Jim, he totally like had sex with all the women, but not while he was married.

There was no allegations of infidelity that we saw. And with Wallace, we know he cheated on his wives. Hell, Franklin Roosevelt cheated on his wife. Everybody cheated on their lives. But apparently Big Jim might have liked the women, but that wasn't. As you will find out in the next episode, Wallace sort of cheated on his wife even after he was paralyzed for the rest of his goddamn life, which seems like an insane thing to do if you've got an actual

like loyal, beautiful wife at your side to fuck her over. But this is George Wallace we're talking about. But I got to stop thinking. I got to stop thinking about Wallace. I can't help it because I've I've been I've been so deep. And George Wallace. So anyway, well, that's gross. That's yeah, that's so you were like, you're in a douche canoe and shit river. Yeah, that's why that's why I need to do this.

So let's we will talk about Wallace because you're about Big Jim. There's no avoiding it. But, you know, we don't have a script, but just to keep us from going insane and making some kind of sense to the audience, we do have some structure. So let's just start here. Big Jim Folsom, which, you know, remember when you maybe when we did the first Wallace episode and first mentioned him, you didn't really know who he was, but you knew the name because the name is all over Alabama

and our families from Alabama. Yeah. Big Jim is that was all I knew. Since then, I have watched a documentary and looked at his Wikipedia page a bit. Yeah. And I didn't go too far deep into the rabbit hole. But yeah, same. I watched the documentary, which even though I ended up I paid for it on Amazon Prime and then found out you can find it for free on YouTube. So to the audience who's interested, if you if you look up,

it's called Big Jim Folsom, the two faces of populism. And you can just literally find it on YouTube. It's free. I'll link it in the show notes. Boo. Well, I'm retarded and I didn't know that went, you know, it's the way Amazon Prime is set up. It was like, oh, I have 30 days to watch this. No big deal. Well, once you start it. Yeah, then you have like two days to start it for like two seconds.

You only have two days to watch it. So I ended up paying for that damn thing twice while I paid for it once. And then I watched I had it on in the background. It was only $1.99. Yeah, it's not a big deal. But yeah, you can find it for free in YouTube. It's broken up into three parts. I'll link it in the show notes.

So if anybody wants to watch, it's a pretty decent documentary. Yeah, I liked it. And I liked the musical photo montages, which you did not. I like the photo. I like the photographs. It's just that, you know, and that's one of the things it did, too. The documentary, the photographs you mentioned, especially the ones of like his early life and pictures of rural Alabama. I don't know if people can truly understand the levels of abject poverty

that the people, what they call the black belt, like Southern Alabama, where all the old plantations were prior to the Civil War and ended up being this kind of like, you know, this just rural farm country that had a lot, a lot of black people, a lot of rural poor white people. Yeah. And this is right after the Great Depression, too. So I mean, enduring it in his life. So you see like pictures life. Yes. But even afterwards, when he was running for governor,

I mean, these are like the poorest of poor people in America. So he was born James Elisha Folsom, when senior, because he has a son who becomes the junior and, you know, Elisha being the biblical prophet, but he got quickly acquired the name Big Jim for, you know, obvious reasons. The guy stood as an adult at six foot eight inches tall. Like I'm six one. I'm certainly not a small guy, but I would literally have to be

staring up at him in these pictures. Just you see him as just this massive guy with hands the size of tennis rackets. Yeah, he's like pro basketball player. Yeah. And he did a lot of really like football player. A lot of physical work when he was a younger man. And so I am he was probably just ridiculously strong. No, one of my favorite things about the documentary is they said that he was too big to go into the army.

So he had to become a merchant. Yeah. Where he just how the fuck can you be too big for the army? And they were like, no, man, you're a walking target. It's like you can't hide in a trench. You'd be standing up. Big Jim was a big guy. He was a he was a merchant Marine and was shoveling coal. And then they said that one of the reasons he was so

pro I guess segregation and everything pro. Big Jim was against segregation and he was for integration. But yeah, so yeah, what you were saying that the quote I forget people. He learned that people were people in the merchant Marines. It didn't matter. Yeah. And like a lot of populists and like a lot of far left leaning folks of which, you know, Big Jim was absolutely one and kind of remarkably

considering that, you know, the time he came from or was kind of in was that his experience as a guy who traveled the world, who who worked, he saw outside of the United States when he was in the merchant Marine and he was shoveling coal with people of different races and persuasions. But the one thing he understood was that the real divide between people was not on racial or cultural lines, but it was between the rich and the poor, the haves and the have nots. He saw through the bullshit.

And so he's like this, you know, white versus black thing. This is just a way to keep poor people fighting with each other so they don't get too interested in what's going on in the big houses up on the hills. Yeah, you know, he he didn't believe in elitism, right? Which which is basically what we've had since the beginning of time. And what we're desperately trying here in the here and now to change and fix. Because guess what? We just feel like this nation as a nation, as a one populace,

we can afford to feed and house and. Provide everyone with medical assistance instead of just randomly shooting shit into space. He knew all this stuff way back then. Now, so Big Jim was born in Coffee County, Alabama, which is once again down there in in Southern Alabama and with the region they call the Black Belt in the town of Elba. In October 9th, 1908.

So like he was born right there with the shadow of the Civil War still cast pretty large on the South. At the same time, he was a little bit too young to actually be directly impacted by the First World War. You know, he didn't have to go and fight in it. Yeah. No, but he did. He was a merchant marine. Yep. During that time period right before first, you know, for war.

And this is one of those things, too. I really believe it's who knows what his life would have been like. I don't know a lot about the details of his life, especially as he traveled around and did that stuff. But we all we know is that that he traveled all over the world by ship and was just and he worked a lot of really basic manual labor jobs. You know, he mentioned the coal shoveling. And I know for me personally, like, you know, as a guy who once,

you know, was extremely conservative and was raised to be, I think traveling outside of the United States was a huge part of changing my perspective on things. And so it's one of the things I've told my kids is like travel if you can, it will it will open your eyes, it'll widen your perspective. And so like that's when I really think he's like, oh, the way there's nothing sacred about the way we do things. And there are, you know, there's other ways of approaching solving problems.

And so, yeah, we know that after the Merchant Marine, he worked as an insurance salesman and being a really charming and, as you say, kind of handsome guy, big, wide, honest face and a big smile. He was successful as an insurance salesman. He was educated. It's a different four points. He retitted four different colleges, but he never got a degree or graduated. He certainly played down the fact that he ever even attended college at all

because he was he really considered himself a man of the people. And that felt like it wasn't just bullshit. Like, no, he actually, I mean, where the difference between Big Jim and George Wallace, like Big Jim, when he came back and he decided to get into public service, what he did was go around and just talk to people. Yeah, he went everywhere and he shook hands and he talked to people where George Wallace, he was, you know, he sent Christmas cards to everyone just because it was, you know, kept him.

Right. There. And oh, it's like, oh, isn't that nice? And just a little something because it was political. Jim actually cared about people. I certainly know a lot more about George Wallace at this point than I do about Jim Folsom. So it's hard for me to do a direct apples to apples. But I do get the impression, at least the impression that Jim Folsom, like he was an ambitious guy, he wanted to be governor, do things.

But once again, I felt like his ambitions were he wanted to get up to the position where he could make these changes that he wanted to make. Like he was really about doing things. Whereas with Wallace, it was just always about the next win. It was always about the next hill to climb. And he didn't really care so much about the accomplishments. No, well, he didn't want to do the work. Yeah, he wanted the fight, but he didn't want to do the work.

He was an evil. Now, whereas whereas Jim wanted to do the work, but he also was plagued by certain personal problems. So, yeah, we know that the big Jim ran some unsuccessful races before he finally won for the first time in 1946. And the way he ran his campaign was just so different than the way anybody else did. For one thing, because he would he would go into these rural places. He's just middle of nowhere, small towns in Alabama.

And he would bring like a country band with him. Like he didn't just I'm going to host a political rally and give a speech. He wanted to give him a good time. It was kind of like a church revival, except more casual. He wanted to make sure there was music. He wanted to make sure that there was a really like positive. You know, atmosphere. He wanted to make sure everybody had a good time.

Yeah, they had they had big Jim Jingles and it was hilarious. Yeah, the documentary, some of the best quotes from the guy who is his band leader, who was just talking about all the like different things. Like I remember one time he was talking about that they got stuck in the mud. So this was, you know, an explanation. I forget it's at which point this was. I don't know if this was his first or second governor's race, but it's during one of the campaigns and their car got stuck literally in the mud

because all the roads in Alabama at this point, they were two paved state highways and everything else was just fucking dirt and gravel roads. And so the big Jim's ride got stuck in the mud. They were really late. And so when they showed up, big Jim just spoke for literally one minute, had the band play and then just went out and started meeting people and shaking hands because it was way more important to him to a, provide the good time and be to have that direct contact with people.

Well, no. And from that came a great quote because he came in there and was like, I came in with he was like, I was late and came in with muddy shoes. And next time I won't be late and my feet will be clean because his big thing was paving the road and he did. The next time he came in, the roads were paved and his feet were clean. So he was able to maintain that promise. And again, it's like, that's all he needed was that one minute.

Big Jim, he's like, this is what I want to do. And then the next time he came back, it was accomplished. And that's the other thing, too. That's kind of the interesting is that all of George Wallace's most like popular like policies and stuff that he did are just him copy pasting from Big Jim's playbook. He had the giant statewide road paving programs. He raised teacher salaries.

He he raised the old folks pensions for retirees. And those are all things Big Jim did. These are all good things. And Wallace was all for them in the beginning and kept going. And it's so it's like all of the shit that Wallace did that people remember fondly and defend are just stuff he he copied from his mentor, whereas all the things he did in his own were shitty and awful. For the most part, you know, I'm not going to be one of my not blanket statements,

but in general, that's my way I'll go. Yeah. Well, this is my favorite Big Jim quote. And it's like, I wish I would have said it earlier, but it's like, as long as the Negroes are held down by deprivation and lack of opportunity, the other poor people will be held down alongside them. Yeah. So that's how he felt about people. It's like, it doesn't matter how you feel about anything. If we don't, if one set of people are held down,

all set of people will be held down. Right. And that's one of the interesting things, too. Economic privilege is that, yeah, Big Jim, you know, one of the things I said was that, you know, he was bringing back, even though he was a Democrat, he echoed the populist movement of the late 19th century and even had sold somebody that, you know, his, one of his grandad's was the leader of the populist and the other grandad was the leader of the Democrats. And so Big Jim ran as a Democrat,

but he governed as a populist. And the, you know, one of the basic ideas was that the real fundamental problems are economic problems and that you can solve a lot of the racial inequity just by fixing, like if you just cure the problem for all ridiculously poor people, because those are disproportionately going to be minorities, they'll, everybody gets lifted up at the same time. Like once you solve the economic problems, it'll be a lot easier. There'll be a lot less of the stuff we can,

we attribute like solely to racism now because because of the problems it's, it's impossible to untangle, like, you know, especially, you know, what the system of white supremacy has done to black people since slavery, you, like poverty and, you know, all of the policies to keep them down. It's all intertangled in the populist idea is that if you cure these economic problems, it will solve a lot of that shit all by itself. And then you can figure out the rest because people won't be just desperate. You know, we already know crime is directly related to areas of poverty

because people are desperate and can't feed their kids. They will do what it takes to feed their kids. Well, and again, people who weren't even so much racist, they got, they had people come in like George Wallace and scare them and say, oh, the Negroes, they're going to come and, you know, take your women and your stuff and your jobs. Well, it's the easiest thing when you fear mongering. It's when you've got othering, when you've got a population of people

who have it pretty rough and you're talking especially, you're talking early 20th century rural Alabama people who live, like I said, desperate poverty. These people did not, a lot of times didn't have electricity. You know, they, they were so far behind what the, you know, urban and suburban life was like in other parts of the country. And so by telling these people who already, you know, they're probably, they're very well aware that their lives are shit.

But by, by having another class of people who they are, you know, the society tells you that you're better than them, despite the fact that the only appreciable difference is the color of your skin. Even though the both of you live in, you know, shitty poor conditions and everything, but at least you can feel better about yourself because everybody's telling you that you're, you know, that these people are inferior to you. So at least you're not on the bottom of the rung. And it's a way, and once again, if you're a shifting your attention over there,

because when you see everything as this hierarchical ladder, if you see the other person on the lower rung coming up from where you're sitting, it looks like you're going down, but that's just, that's not actually the case. That's my, you know, long ass lecture. But Big Jim, that was sort of like his idea, borrowing from the populace was that idea of just let's focus on the economic issues. So it's not like Big Jim was kind to black people. And like I said, he was sort of revolutionary in the way he did it in his rallies

and his political events is that he shook hands with black people. He invited him. He made sure the entire audience knew where he stood. That said, he was still just kind of a moderate in terms of policy. He wasn't, he wasn't like pushing integration really hard. He kind of like did a couple, like he did a couple of pokes at it. And then he met such incredible resistance in the state legislature that he realized that he wasn't a lot he could do.

So where were we? So we were talking about Big Jim's campaign style about how he liked the country band. They had, they had a little like a symbol of a mop and bucket. The idea they were going to clean out the capital and they called the donation bucket, the suds bucket, the suds bucket. And they even had really like harsh cartoons. Mocking him with the suds bucket. Oh, yeah, because apparently he skimmed a little off the top of the suds bucket.

But at the same time, he was no worse than anybody. Oh, no. At the time. I mean, what he did for the time, yeah, when you look at it isolated, it seems really bad and shitty. And yeah, you laundered and, you know, fraudulently used some of that money. However, it was no worse than any other politician did at the time. Yeah, later in 1962, when he was running against Wallace, one of the little like slogans, the Wallace campaign put out

was was called something for everyone and a little bit for Big Jim, which was true. But that's the funny thing is like they were they were talking about the the the horrors, the graft in the governor's office, whereas the George Wallace, like they turned that graft into an incredibly well oiled machine. Oh, my God. No, he he's truly evil. But but yeah, so Big Jim, yeah, probably skimmed a little off the top. But he also did things like there was one story about the suds bucket

where a woman came up to him to shake his hand and introduce herself. And she's like, I wish I had some money to give you. And he just reached in with one of his giant hands, took a huge fistful of cash and said, well, you got money now because money now, honey. Because once again, it was like, this is the whole point is sharing the wealth. If you're broke, I'll help you out. And so Big Jim, he had what he considered three pillars of governance from his point of view.

One was a very clear bill of rights, which define, you know, what each citizen's, you know, unquestioned rights were going to be. He believed that it believed in a activist and compassionate government. And he also believed in an absolute and unqualified democracy. And that's where he ran up against the problems with the voting laws, you know, of the time when we're right in the middle of Jim Crow. Yeah, well, the funny thing is because his first camp during his first campaign, he was single because his first wife, Sarah, had died.

So he was a single father of two little girls and was living up celebrity. He was elected. And then he went and like kissed a bunch of women who had voted for him. Now when he bragged about it, he loved bragging about it, not only that, but even the press really latched on him, especially when he traveled out of state. Like there's that one little, there's one video clip I saw where he's like at a radio station and a bunch of little like pretty college girls were just coming in.

He kissed a hundred girls. Yeah, he just literally give him a little kiss on the cheek. But on the forehead or on the forehead, which is easier for him to reach because he's like a foot and a half taller than everybody. But he also would talk about kissing technique is one of his like things like he totally bragged about being a ladies man. And once again, he was, he was single and he was kind of famous. And he was big and handsome and women ate him up.

And he had a buzz from breakfast to midnight, because another fun guy had a quote where he said he enjoyed whiskey first thing in the morning. And the only thing he loved more than whiskey was beer. Yeah. And there was like a picture of him like just for Jim. He was, he was an alcoholic. There was a picture of him in a magazine where he's just like splayed out in a bathtub with a beer in his hand.

It's like, just like you want your governor to be this big, just just big hairy giant just sprawling out of a bathtub, just drinking a beer at nine in the morning, kissing a bunch of girls. Oh, Jim. And you know what? And it's like, even though, again, it's like, if you looked at that in the lens of now, that's really terrible. But if you look at it through the lens of the way back, it really wasn't that bad.

And again, all those women signed up for it. Yeah. No, there's no, that was like kissing Elvis. They were thrilled. Yeah. He enjoyed his sort of like, you know, letharious status, but he didn't seem to be a creep. Yeah.

And you know, he had one of his big scandals when he was running. I was going to say, big, big exception of being what he did with the illegitimate kid is and was, you know, not cool. That was bad. And he admitted later. It totally was his kid. Yeah, it was totally his kid. And then like two months later, he marries a 20 year old girl.

But he just met and it seems like part of the reason he rushed into marriage was to help reestablish himself as a family man and shake off the scandal of, oh, I knocked up some chick and then abandoned my child. Yeah. But you know what? I mean, that was his second wife, Jamel. They were together until he died and they had seven children together, including Jim, Jr.

Since you brought up the scandal, I'm going to bring out one of the little things I'm going to see if this is going to work. She was poor, but she was honest. Victim of a rich man's whim when she met that Christian gentleman. Big Jim Folsom and she had a child by him. Now he sits in the legislature, making laws for all mankind. While she walks the streets of common Alabama, selling grapes from her grapevine. Ethnomusicologists will recognize that last line is one of the finest in 20th

century North American folk literature. It was written by the Young Republicans Club of Dothan, Alabama in 1942. Both of them. She was poor, but she was honest. Victim of a rich man's whim when she met that Christian gentleman. Big Jim Folsom and she had a child by him. It's the rich that gets the glory. It's the poor that bear the blame.

It's the same this whole world over, over, over. It's a low down and a rotten chain. Oh, it's a low down and a rotten chain. Yeah, it makes me really want to get like a crowd of drunks and just sing it as a crowd, like an actual big drinking number. So yeah, and what's, we can do that at my birthday party on, on, on Friday. There we go. We can pull up the mic and just record a crowd of people seeing the big Jim

Folsom drinking song. But what's interesting there is like, if you notice like in that version, that drinking song, because at this point, Jim Folsom, you know, the rich, powerful governor of Alabama, he was suddenly one of the elites. So he's like the bad guy of that story. Not just in that he's, you know, seduced this woman and abandoned her with her kid, his kid, but like he, yeah, now he's one of the rich, he's one of the rich that gets the glory, glory, glory.

Man, that was a pretty biting song. Just like, yeah, leaving her to roam the streets of Dothan, Alabama, selling grapes from her grapevine. Damn. Yeah, that was, that was, yeah. That is not paid big Jim in such a great light in that particular song. No, yeah. And then he was just like, oh, you can be a virgin bride.

But we have a couple other musical interludes that we will do to, to spice this up, because there's some big Jim songs out there that I found. That was just a couple of them were in the documentary. Yeah. We're rich for him. That were much, much nice. Yeah. There these are the other ones are like ones he had made as part of his campaign.

So yeah, that was March 3rd, 1948, when he got plagued by the illegitimate child scandal. And it was Christine Johnson. She was a 30 year old widow who he knocked up and quickly abandoned. And then as the scandal blew on, he got married on May 8th. So literally just over two months later to 20 year old Jamel Moore. And she was like, he was nearly 20 years older than her. So yeah, he was about 40 and she was 20.

But to his credit, the stories of him being this, you know, womanizer disappeared and he stayed married to her for their marriage lasted until his death. Yeah. And they had seven children together. So, you know. So that part of him seems like it worked out with the, I mean, for all we knew, he was a loyal husband both times. It's just in that in between time, which, you know, as a guy who got divorced

and then remarried, I can say that I had my own in between times where I didn't behave myself so well. And if I ran for political office, yeah. Oh my God. Yeah, no, not a good idea. Yeah. No, by the time I was like 16 years old, I wouldn't have been able to run for office, all the fun side note.

Um, I was talking to one of my friends the other day and it was like, aren't you glad we didn't go. No, actually, you know what? I take it back. It was not a friend because I don't like him. It's my ex. He was talking about something and I was like, don't you, aren't you glad we went through our wild stages before cell phones?

It's like, it would have been so bad. No, no, I feel so sorry for. I would have, I would have, you know what? It's like, because Aaron and I were talking to, it's like, well, why did the kids, you know, the millennials are so much tamer than we were. And it was like, yeah, because we didn't have fucking pictures and cameras. Yeah. And social media where you have a permanent record of all your bullshit.

Yeah. No, we, we, yeah, where your parents literally have a GPS tracker on your car. Yeah. No, we didn't have that. Like now, like, you know, your stories of high school kids can find their pictures of their teachers on girls gone wild videos for just a few years before. Whoops. Oh, well. So anyway, Big Jim married, she married, married Jamel Moore.

So, yeah, so Big Jim was, was governor of Alabama twice, not consecutively, because at the time the Alabama Constitution would not allow a governor to hold consecutive terms like you had to tag out and then run again. If you wanted to be a governor more than once back then. Which, you know what, doesn't seem like that's a horrible plan. It's not a horrible plan, but there is obviously a downside where it's like, what if you get somebody in who's doing a good job? I'm more, I think I'm more in favor of term limits than that.

Yeah, definitely. We need some freaking term limits because, you know, we can't have, I mean, Mitch McConnell is going to rule things like fucking Methuselah. Yeah. He's never going to die. Death will be his term limit. That's the nice part. He's already the fucking creep keeper.

You know, he's going to live forever just because he's evil, like mumra. But yeah, so we went over it a little bit in 1962. He was defeated by Wallace and then again, defeated in 1966 by Lerlene Wallace. And that was sort of the end of him as a political powerhouse. He tried to stage a couple of comebacks by that point. He was already over and that was after his giant televised Yeah, again, I mean, when Jim ran against Wallace, that was the dirtiest campaign anybody had ever seen until Wallace ran

a dirtier one later, Wallace ran right later for president. Well, no, well, it was that one we went over when he went up against the former lieutenant governor under Lerlene. And then he literally ran the dirty like the the professor at Kennesaw rated it as the dirtiest campaign of all time. But yeah, but for what he did, he was a monster. I will say this, like when we were doing the first George Wallace episode, we were sort of like, well, you know, who knows if the Wallace campaign

really drugged Big Jim to humiliate him on statewide television. Oh, no, I am a hundred and fifty percent convinced that they did that shit. Yeah, after watching the documentary and reading a little bit, it's like the circumstantial case is actually pretty strong. Like, I don't think you could convict anybody, but damn, like, there's there'd be enough to win a lawsuit these days. Because like I said, then the amount of circumstantial evidence, his aides were like paid off or it seems very clear that

that he got fucked over like because here's what we talked about it a little bit. But Big Jim was, you know, an alcoholic and and stories of drunk driving, stories of drunken behavior. And then one of this arrest for drunk driving, although he was acquitted. Yeah, he was acquitted because he had a ton of prominent people. Suddenly said, I was with Big Jim and he was fine. Had nothing to do with he was totally drunk. It's just that he he was very well connected.

And when you're a rich, well connected white person, you don't have to go to jail for your crimes. Yeah. And that's just the truth. I mean, Big Jim was not perfect in any by any stretch. However, it really felt like it was pretty all right for the time. And it felt like, you know, it seems like he had sobered himself up for this big campaign, like he didn't want to do this. Yeah. And especially for this one big

televised event that everything was riding on. And at least the way the the the account went is that an aide gave him one drink. Like I asked Whiskey, is he usually drink like cheap ass bourbon. But once again, Jim, Big Jim was a fucking giant of a man who had a pretty high tolerance for booze, so like one drink would not have done to him what everybody described as this guy who couldn't remember his own kids, who was just rambling, and they even had a well put together like video clip that they were going to show.

And all they had to do is flip the switch and turn that clip on to kind of save Jim from floundering and they never did. So it's like, no, if they didn't, the aides didn't pull him back. They didn't stop it. They let it go on. I mean, it was very, very no, like, like you said, in the first episode, his daughter was was very adamant that they send back to be a lot of his aides were set up.

Although I have to say, during that nasty Wallace campaign, I got a good quote from Gould Beach, who was Big Jim's one of his aides and one of the ones that were apparently not paid off because he was like, no, this was fucked up. And they set him up and it was terrible. So he says, if you didn't like something, you called it communism. That was the common way of ending an argument. And I was like, I am so glad deep in my heart that we don't do that.

I know, I'm so glad that all these problems have been fixed. And we never have to just, I don't like something. It's communism. So glad that went away. One of the things that we'll never know is how much the combination of of World War One and then what happened with the fall of the Russian Empire and the rise of the Soviet Union, like people these days don't realize the late like late 19th century, early 20th century.

It was such a progressive labor movement. There was a true like like like socialism was a legitimate political philosophy knows it was violently fought against by the state and by the people in power. However, there was such a strong movement by the elitists. But the the rise of the Soviet Union gave rise to a new like the newest and largest red scare ever and stomp that down. The threat and the and the idea of just literally calling everything socialism and communism and lumping it all together under these things.

It's an old tactic that we're even seeing now. Like like the whole critical race theory thing, which is this which is nonsense. But no, one of the things is there, you know, I can't remember. I don't have the names. I'm not going to get us too far off into the weeds about it. But one particular guy came up with a strategy to tie this obscure academic legal theory that's only a college thing, which is just a framework at looking at history and the legal system a certain way and literally making it

a catchall for all these other things that the right doesn't like and also tying it to socialism and Marxism and these other words that are just spooky grab bags. Oh, yeah. I mean, half the time when they're screaming about communism, they don't even really truly know what they're talking about. They never know what they're talking about. It's like, yeah, it's like the funny thing. It's like when they call you a communist and a Marxist in the same sentence. That's always my favorite.

Yes. Well, it's like when they're talking about critical race theories tied to Marxism. And it's like, yes, I'm sure you read Das Kapital or the Communist Manifesto. Shut the fuck up. But yeah, let's see. One of the things that, yeah, speaking of socialism, one of my favorite Jim Folsom quotes was that idea that he just he didn't fall for the red scare bullshit. He's like, you know, you're calling his programs of, you know,

giving pensions to old teacher raising teacher salaries and, you know, we're improving the conditions for working class people. You know, I had socialism and he's like, well, if that's false socialism, then I'm false socialism. He's like, fuck you. This is a good thing. You don't get using a magic word. Does it just suddenly make it a bad idea to help to help people? Yeah. And that's the thing.

It's like one of Jim's big quotes, too, was, you know, they were accusing him of womanizing and all this other shit. He was just like, I'm guilty of all of it. Let's get back to work. Let's get back to the issues. Mm hmm. He wanted to move on. Main thing to note, yeah, later in life, I mean,

big Jim didn't die until didn't die until 1987, but he was in poor health for a really long time. Yeah. And he was destitute. Yeah. He was poor. He was legally blind. They said he like 5% vision left. He was almost completely deaf. So he's just this giant old guy stumbling around, not able to see or hear anything

and probably just drinking a fifth of whiskey before breakfast. Yeah. Poor Jim. But yeah, it's like the Wallace campaign just destroyed him. They destroyed him and he didn't. But he also couldn't get his own shit together, which is sad, because it's like, honestly, if he could have just put down the bottle earlier in life, he there's no telling what he could have done.

No way. Yeah. And again, if he would have just been like, you know, turned down that one drink that had been making. Imagine if we'd had, and I say we, if Alabama had had Jim Folsom during the civil rights crises as the guy handling it, the guy who actually he would not have been stoking violence. He wouldn't have been sending the cops after anybody. It would have been a it's it's so hard to tell how it would have been peaceful or at

least, however, at least it would have been peaceful in the way that. Well, I don't even know. I guess the National Guard would have been called in. There's, you know, it's so there's just no way of knowing it's a butter. It's a butterfly effect of who knows what would have happened. However, the other argument to be made is that because George Wallace was so awful, it woke the whole nation up about it and made it a cause. So in some ways, George Wallace helped the movement by being horrible in certain

ways. Well, and I mean, that's usually how it happens, though. Nobody wants to shake up things when things seem to be going OK. Shake up the system when it's fall. So it's so it's possible that, George, the times of crisis, that's how we become strong. Yeah, it's possible that maybe Jim, Big Jim, if he'd have been governor, he'd have made some small incremental changes, but we wouldn't have had the big push and it wouldn't become such a nationwide thing. It's hard to tell because it certainly wasn't just Alabama.

We had a there was a lot going on. So I'm certainly not qualified to guess what would have happened. But it's just an interesting question. Yeah. And again, it's like the governor. Yes, he did. Wallace spurred on absolutely. But I mean, when you're really talking about it, that you're talking about people, police officers, sheriff's departments.

I mean, it's very well that Jim could have been in office and all of that would have happened around him anyway, going, what the fuck? He certainly would have been a moderating force, as opposed to making things worse. Things worse. Yeah. I mean, he wouldn't have doused gasoline on a fire. He could have just sat there and watched it burn. But again, again, you know, maybe as a society, we needed that horrible conflict. You know, as we get closer to the end of this one, let's do that.

Yeah, it's like that now we're going to get into philosophy and that's just it's still too early in the morning for that. Let's do another big Jim song. This one's come from his one of his failed 1960s campaigns. All right, so this is the the actual the big Jim, the B side. Jim, big, big Jim. This is very. But it was way back yonder and party sick.

A big, big man came forth from the sticks. Nothing on his back but the clothes. Very Johnny Cash's twice he's been governor. Gonna be once more big Jim. Big Jim. But also as a kind of a 1950s thing going on. Yeah, it's like this is the kind of music that is not big Jim. As he's well known, got his dark blind field and glad to call

from there, he rolls to the public eye. This big, big man who was quiet and shy. Big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim. He's been six foot eight and he is barely as good and pure a man as you want to be. And folks always say he's been a mighty good governor. This big, big man that they call big brother. Big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim. Jim's had lots of schooling.

He don't use much grammar. Yet he's paid by their own mailbox road in Alabama. No, Jim came from hopeful. Maybe like you and I, the legend of big Jim Folsom will never die. Big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim. Old Capitol Hill stands a big white man and in the month of January in 63, there'll be a man in that governor's chair, a man put by you and me. George Wallace, oh, shit, sadly, that's how that one turned out.

Big Jim, big big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim, big Jim. Not even a really cool jingle can save him from making. Unfortunately, George Wallace happened from 1962, and that's when we got that lovely speech about segregation forever. Segregation now. Yeah. Segregation tomorrow and segregation forever. But I do love even big Jim had that self mythologizing that that man who was quiet and shy, which we know may have been true when he was like really young.

Pure, but he certainly by the time he had started his political life, he was gregarious and outgoing and charged into giant crowds, shaking hands and kissing ladies. Well, no, they said that's how he was even as a child. Yeah, so that was just that was just myth making. It was just bullshit because, you know, that's all part of it. No, that's not how that works. I mean, that's like saying I was quiet.

I'm quiet and shy. So here's a little trivia from the pop culture side. In 1997, there was a TV movie. I think it was on I think it was on TNT. It was about George Wallace, where Gary Sinise played George Wallace and Big Jim Folsom was played by Joe Don Baker. I have no idea who this person is. You you've watched Gary Sinise.

You've watched a little Mystery Science Theater 3000. Yes. Do you remember the movie Mitchell, which was about a fat, beer-swilling cop. It was like an action movie. Yeah, I mean, I didn't watch all of it, especially like I was more into some of the sci-fi movies on sci-fi channels. Well, then fuck that.

Then instead of that, do you remember some of the older? Fuck that metaphor. Do you remember some of the like like like 80s and 90s James Bond movies with Timothy Dalton and Pierce Brosnan? No. Well, shit. Then you don't know who Joe Don Baker is. You're useless to this conversation.

I don't know who this fucker is. I really don't. Joe Don Baker is kind of like a B-list actor, but he actually apparently got a nominated for some kind of award for his portrayal of Big Jim. So if you ever want to see the fictionalized version of George Wallace with a little bit of Big Jim added and another interesting little piece is that his son, who was not a little guy, but was always called Little Jim, was also a figure in Alabama politics, becoming both Lieutenant Governor and having to step in temporarily as governor when his boss got brought down by ethics violations.

Yeah, oh, those those pesky ethics. But Little Jim, you know, never actually got voted in as Governor Alabama, his actual campaigns were unsuccessful. Do you remember when people used to like have ethical shit and they would step down? Yeah, imagine when you, for example, you could be a credibly accused sex trafficker of teenage girls and you don't even lose your committee assignments. Hypothetically, yeah, allegedly, hypothetically, of course, allegedly, you know, flying teenagers to do MDMA and have

a bunch of, you know, statutory rape, awful shit. But back then you could do something wrong and actually have to leave office. And the other only other piece of trivia that I got here is related to Little Jim because Jamel Moore or Jamel Folsom, rather, she became the only woman in the history of Alabama to both be married to and the mother of a governor of Alabama, which, you know, is meaningless, but it's just a little in bits of tribute to bits. Although my favorite was like when they had the little pictures and home and little

videos of Jim with his wife, Jamel, because she was a very, very tiny woman, dainty little lady. And he is, of course, his massive guy pictures of him just picking her up with one arm because, you know, again, he was he was a fucking giant. He was a giant of a man. And she was like this pretty petite little thing. And she looked like a child. Just yeah, for scale.

Like remember when we went to Tennessee and saw, you know, last podcast on the left on stage and Ben, Ben Kissel, the big guy of that trio of podcasters. He's six foot seven. Big Jim had an inch on that guy. And I've stood next to Ben Kissel and he is a monster. So that is just like he is. He's just huge. Casting a long shadow.

So that's that is it for our bonus episode on Big Jim Folsom. We will be picking up again next time with the third and last episode about George Wallace, thank God, got to purge that guy out of my brain. Please put this fucker in the ground. We will put him in the ground and we will move on to other equally upsetting topics, some that will even the next two, we're jumping out of Alabama and getting even closer to home. We're going to be here in Georgia for a couple of episodes.

Oh, no. So we're going to be right in our backyard, a little uncomfortably close to our own shit. Everything's been right in our backyard. Yeah, well, with the exception, you know what? I want to go back to George Washington. I never found any of that actually upset. I was right there par for the course and it's fine. Well, it was old timey times.

It was old timey times and he was, you know, no, no, complicated. But it isn't everyone complicated. Big Jim is complicated. No, George Wallace is not complicated. George Wallace was a monstrous piece of shit. Now we're sticking with Americans. An upsettingly monstrous piece of you're going to like and I want to upset you more. Yep.

And now you'll be because this one, the George Washington's, you know, obviously, foundationally important to America. George Wallace, you know, and Jim Folsom, we saw with their effects were in the state of Alabama and the ripple effects they had on national politics. Well, next week, we're going to get into something that's way more close to home for us, but still hugely nationally important as a figure who also has now since fallen to be a disgraced joke. I can't wait to talk about him.

Well, see, I mean, that's what really pisses me off about pretty much all of this. It's like, you know, the more you study history, it's like you can see the changes, but how things and also how things don't yeah, and how things don't change at all, which is really frustrating and they don't change it, how things change so dramatically. I mean, the last hundred years have been so we've made so much progress as a people. I mean, a hundred years ago, we barely had telephones and now look where we are. Yeah.

You know, a hundred years ago, we didn't have electricity in all of our homes. When I got up this morning, I was looking at pictures taken by a robot on the surface of Mars from a portable electronic device that I'm holding in the palm of my hand. So it's like, yeah, we are living in the sci-fi future. It just seems so dull. We don't really appreciate it. So, yeah, I want to thank everyone who has listened to us, both the past episodes and this bonus one, if you want to help us out.

There are a couple of easy and obvious ways to do so. First, if you're listening on Apple Podcasts, open up your app and give us a rating. We really, really love five star ratings. And if you want to even do us more of a solid, leave us a written review, even if it's just a few words, once again, anything that kind of helps push us up there will help us get more eyes and ears, eyes on the list and ears on our podcast. That's what I meant to say. Also, share the show on social media.

And if you want to support us the most directly, it is on Patreon, where you'll be able to hear bonus episodes like this one on every topic. You will find that on patreon.com slash chainsaw history. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at Jamie1KM and Facebook at JamieChambers. Just all one word. As of right now, pretty much the only place you guys can find me is if you want to be my Patreon friend. She's elusive and shy.

I'm getting to that point where I'll have stuff where I can interact more with people. But for now, that's not really a thing. So if you want to, you know, basically, if you want to hear from me at all, in the life you have to be, you have to be my Patreon friend. And I might even give you stupid videos and nonsense and bullshit that you can. No, but if you find me on social media, I share and tag Bambi's in a bunch of stuff. So you will see some of her around. And then we short my very short and snarky things.

And in the meantime, I will be soon building a website for us. chainsawhistory.com is on the way. Bambi is doing her own ventures into into new media. I am. I've got things going on, but there it's it's brewing slower, slower than I would like, but everything's going slower than we like. His life is life. But so just keep an eye on what we're doing.

If you're interested, if you like hearing us yammer on about things. So yeah, we'll be back. The format will be normal episodes on dropping on Wednesdays. Bonus episodes living on the Patreon is the the plan going forward. Every once in a while, we'll throw a bonus episode on the main feed just to give you an idea about what you're missing. But but they're or just because like like today, it's really because we could not get a good descriptive thing done because I was horribly sick with not COVID.

So yeah, but that's it. So that's it for poor big dead big Jim. We're going to go back to let's go back to George. I will be older the next time. Yes, you guys see happy birthday to Bambi. And and as her as as Bambi's birthday present, we're going to start with George Wallace riddled with gunshot wounds and end with him dead. So there you go.

Happy birthday, Bambi. Yay, I've been wanting that fucker to get shot for a while. But unfortunately, unfortunately, he does live. That's where we start. Otherwise, this would be otherwise we'd be done. Yep. Unfortunately, that's not how his story ends. But it's of course, I actually thought about just cutting it off there. But it's just like I said, there's just too much.

George Wallace is an awful but kind of fascinating and important figure that I don't think enough people like who are modern, you know, politically educated in the modern sense, but not historically. So don't realize George Wallace really contributed to some of the bullshit that we're dealing with right now. So it's like I couldn't not talk about the rest of his life. Yeah, no. I mean, if you look at like the structure of his campaigns and everything,

I mean, you can he took format. Trump took formats directly from him, granted also Hitler. Well, both right. Well, Hitler being a right wing populist, kind of, you know, there's there's there's a playbook when it comes to that. And, you know, it's it's really awful. And it's it's it's head shaking and terrible. So it's yeah, that's the other the amusing thing about Wallace,

who started out as a fucking, you know, being accused of socialism and going like leaning hard, you know, right towards fascism in a lot of ways. But anyway, enough fucking George Wallace. We'll talk about him later. We will let her listeners go and we will catch them next week. All right. Thanks, everybody.