CITY ZOO

It’s time to tell the U.S. news media to GFY — with a biting satire.

Welcome to the extraordinary City Zoo, where the animals have driven the people out and created a veritable nation of animals—a republic, if they can keep it. Their great experiment has become a resounding success. But when Gus the gilded elephant challenges Balthazar the revered donkey for the high office of Animal Zookeeper, the monkeys in the media go ape. Now the fairy tale news threatens everything the Visionaries of the Animal Revolution have built. “The fairy tale news is the enemy of the zoo.” —ANIMAL ZOOKEEPER GUS Jeff Pedigo crafts a savage allegory in CITY ZOO, a cautionary tale about truth, fear, and power that might seem unsettlingly familiar to champions of Western civilization in the early 21st Century. All this and the true moral of Aesop’s immortal fable, “The Tortoise and the Hare,” long misinterpreted and misunderstood. Read CITY ZOO an unfairy story for the whole story.

More Fun than a Barrel of Media Personalities.

CITY ZOO is a biting satire of American politics, the formerly mainstream news media, the culture war, ex-twitter, social media, the trans debate, pop psychology, ideologues, identity politics, useful idiots, the wall and immigration, the tone-deaf residents of Martha’s Vineyard, narrative-driven journalism, pandemics, lockdowns & quarantines, masks, attacks on religion, Privilege, the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election, January 6th, systemic racism, the entertainment industry, American academia, ANTIFA, CHOP, the intelligence community, political animals, public education, the tortoise and the hare, media personalities, pets, sustainabilityness, climate alarmism, “protests,” and much more, probably. Readers, please post suggested additions to this list on ex-twitter.

If you loved George Orwell’s ANIMAL FARM, you will weep for the City Zoo.

HOW ABOUT A SHORT RECAP FROM CHAPTER XXVI…

“Once upon a time, there was an extraordinary zoo where the animals took charge and established a unique system to govern themselves. The zoo’s leaders were held to account by a news media made up of monkeys. They reported on current events, and provided the animals with all of the relevant details. The monkeys earned the trust of the other animals by always confirming their reporting with facts. The monkeys created various awards to give each other, to recognize how well they accomplished this.  ¶ The rest of the animals in the zoo came to appreciate and rely on the monkeys to provide them with news and information they knew was trustworthy. It made them feel well and truly informed about the world around them. They felt secure in their understanding of things, the common knowledge they all shared, and the cultural touchstones they valued. They based important, often life-altering decisions on the reporting.  ¶ And then one day the animals began to realize that the media had been monkeying with the news. Nobody could pinpoint exactly when it began. Some feared that it had begun long ago, perhaps even before they were born. But it was clear now the monkeys were no longer fair in their reporting. They took sides, and they justified taking sides, on moral grounds, ironically. Now they dealt in half-truths, rumor and gossip, wild speculation, and worse. They reported things that were later revealed to be false, things that were never true in the first place, and things the monkeys wanted to be true, but were not. Rarely would they set the record straight. The increasing dishonesty of the monkeys had become more obvious to more animals every day, but they were slow to say so. Few like to admit when they have been fooled. It took Gus the gilded circus elephant throwing his considerable weight around to rattle the monkeys so much that they could no longer obscure their dishonesty, or their status as useful idiots, shilling for those in power, whether knowingly or unknowingly (the animals could not decide which was worse). Would Elephant Zookeeper Gus’s valiant efforts be enough to save the City Zoo?”