The public is in an uproar over the departure of a leading candidate in the competition. I speak of course of Joey Chestnut, national hot dog-eating champion. Sadly, the whispers are that the aging champ, who once ate 62 hot dogs in ten minutes, no longer has the chops to compete. After his disastrous, vomit-featured performance in the semi-finals, his aides defended him by saying he had been up past his bedtime and he had inadvertently consumed some edibles his son had left lying around.
Feverish speculation centers on who might replace him to do battle with his great rival, “Moose” Mazurki. Moose’s mind is a howling wilderness, and he babbles incessantly like a fool, but he gives a great speech and entertains the hoople-heads. His opponents have their work cut out for them.
Chestnut’s most obvious replacement is Satchadananda Charles, his loyal second in command. Interestingly, Charles’s daddy was a Rasta theoretician, ordinarily a negative, but Charles disclaims linkage on the grounds that she always had Daddy issues. Charles has never performed particularly well in competitions, except in her native California, but offending her rabid fan base by rejecting her as replacement would be fatal to the campaign.
If Charles leads the team, she will need a new Number Two. This has an important bearing on how to manage the reorganization.
One object of discussion is Chestnut aide in charge of “the cars” Peter Bottlejuice. Pete is an adept talker but has a few personal negatives. For one, he personally crashed a huge freight train carrying tons of toxic waste off the rails into the bedroom community of Restful Ponds, Ohio, displacing thousands and killing not a few more. Of less consequence, he is married to a goldfish.
Then we have Senator Bobby Bland, from the very pale state of Connecticut. Bland is intelligent and intellectual, but, well, very bland.
There is great affection for Michigan Governor Brunhilde Rosenzweig, who is so good at her job that a gang of Mazurki’s yahoo followers conspired to assassinate her. A strike against her is that as a running mate, she would provide support for the Mazurki slur that he was competing against “four boobs.”
An obvious choice for substitute eater is Anthony “Big Pussy” Przbylewski of Illinois. “Przbo” is a formidable eater himself and rich to boot. He also appeals to an important demographic, those apprehensive about Mazurki’s Russian friends gorging themselves on Eastern Europe’s supply of pierogi.
In one sense, all the palaver about reorganization is beside the point, since the decision is completely up to party elder Jello Zapata, and he hasn’t been seen in months. Word has it that he is busy playing beach volleyball on one of Richard Branson’s private islands.
Regardless of who is selected, worries abound that Mazurki’s insane followers will disrupt the contest, perhaps poisoning the pickle relish under cover of “keeping an eye on the condiments,” ostensibly to prevent the infiltration of performance-enhancing drugs. Chestnut’s team promises to hold them accountable, but for their history of depraved antics, they never do. A fatal constraint is that the competition’s judges struggle to maintain objectivity while they rent vacation condominiums at zero cost from Mazurki’s real estate company.
Happy Fourth of July! Let the munching begin.
Ha!
On his substack, Ryan Grim makes a compelling case for an open convention in a similar contest. Basically, it's "acknowledge that an open convention is reality TV, and use that to get the public on your side." If the public is involved in a process that even APPEARS to be open and democratic, then some level of faith in a democratic election, and loyalty to the outcome, might be restored
The Republican adjacent media will proclaim that an open conversation is as bad as open borders.
Do you remember 1970s era Hot Diggity Dog in Georgetown? It was at the intersection of M and Pennsylvania! Oh, the hot dogs of my youth.