By Maurice the Goat

I never planned to run for any damn office. Hell, I planned to sit in my lawn chair, work through a six-pack, and scream at the squirrels like any sensible goat. But then I cracked open those school board minutes—Christ, what a mistake—and discovered these jackasses banned Charlotte’s Web because it promoted talking animals and empathy.

Talking animals and empathy. Jesus.

That’s when it hit me like a hangover: if they come for the pigs and spiders today, tomorrow they drag the goats to the slaughter.

So, I threw my hooves into the ring.

My slogan? “Recess, Not Repression.”

My platform was simple, like good whiskey:

• Drag art class back from the dead
• Stock the vending machines with beer (staff only… mostly)
• Replace standardized tests with “vibe check panels”
• Plant a goat on every playground

I staged my first campaign event at the local feed store. Eight souls showed up – two already three sheets to the wind. I called it a mandate. The next morning, the paper screamed: “Disgruntled Goat Enters School Race – Vows to Headbutt Censorship.”

Beautiful.

The incumbent—some uptight broad with a stick up her ass—dismissed me. “He eats garbage,” she announced.

“Yeah,” I shot back, “and I still taste better than this board’s decisions.”

The kids caught fire first. They chanted my name at lunch like I was some four-legged messiah. Teachers slipped me support notes when the principal wasn’t watching. A civics class crowned me their mock election winner. The PTA tried to boot me from the candidates’ forum, but I crashed the party anyway chomping a stack of outdated curriculum guidelines like they were corn chips.

“Why ban books?” I asked the room, curriculum still hanging from my mouth. “What scares you? Spiders? Feelings? Knowledge? Grow the hell up.”

Silence. Then thunder – applause that shook the windows.

Then some joker hurled an apple. I snatched it mid-air with my teeth like a champion.

After that, the circus really began. Liberty Lenny, some podcaster with delusions of grandeur, interviewed me. A conservative PAC dropped cash on an attack ad: ominous music, a photo of me nose-deep in a dumpster. I made it my campaign poster.

Did I win?

Hell no. They disqualified me on some bureaucratic bullshit about “species eligibility” – something about hooves and missing Social Security numbers.

But the next week those cowards reversed the book bans. Art class crawled back from the grave. And some sixth-grade kid painted a mural of me wearing a cape, headbutting ignorance straight into the sun.

I lost the election. But I captured the hearts of the pissed-off, the rebellious, and the differently furred.

And you know what? That’s enough for this old goat.