“Cormac McCarthy” is running for California governor.
Well, kind of. The New Mexico–based author of All the Pretty Horsesand No Country for Old Men isn’t actually throwing his hat in the ring to replace Gov. Gavin Newsom in next month’s recall election. But the man behind a popular Twitter parody account of the novelist is, the New York Daily News reports.
Daniel Watts, a Golden State attorney, created the fake account in 2018, but it exploded last month, gaining thousands of followers in less than a week. Then, without Watts requesting it, Twitter verified the account with one of its famous blue checkmarks, only to later revoke the verification and suspend the account.
This did not please Watts.
“It was their own fault for giving it a blue checkmark, and I think they felt embarrassed that they were tricked by something that wasn’t a trick,” Watts told the Daily News. “People were not tricked. People were following it because it was funny.… If you’re fooled by it, that means you’re a fool.”
Watts has appealed the account’s suspension. In the meantime, he’s continuing his run for California governor as a Democrat, though he admits he doesn’t think Newsom will lose the recall vote.
As for McCarthy, the reclusive author has yet to speak up about the fake account. But he seemed to predict the future Twitter in his 2006 novel, The Road: “Nobody wants to be here and nobody wants to leave.”
Michael Schaub is a Texas-based journalist and regular contributor to NPR.
