I vote by mail in every election these days, as is my right as a mostly lazy natural-born American citizen. Fill in a few bubbles with black ink, chuck the thing into the nearest dropbox, and consider myself a functioning member of society for a brief moment. Now that my son is old enough to ask me coherent questions about my daily life, he was highly interested in what the hell I was doing as I marked the form. “I’m voting,” I said tersely, lest I divert my attention fully from the bubble-filling. “Don’t vote for Spencer Pratt, daddy,” he responded. “I hear he’s a jerk.” The word seems to be spreading.

Every local TV station and streaming app is turgid and bloated with political ads these days. My son might be old enough to ask me who I’m voting for, but he’s not old enough to understand why. That doesn’t stop campaigns from serving him countless commercials pleading with him to consider (or reconsider) a certain candidate. He’s now nominally aware of allegations of sexual misconduct against LA city controller Kenneth Mejia (which Mejia has denied) and the Orange County congressman Ken Calvert’s run-in with a sex worker. What a joy it is to be a parent in 2026.

But what really stuck with him is Spencer Pratt, the former star of Laguna Beach: The Real Orange County, and candidate for mayor of Los Angeles. Something about Pratt sparks a boogeyman-like response in my son. Perhaps it’s Pratt’s scrunched-up face, ever in a vapid grin, looking like he’s trying to sell you a car with a missing engine block. It could be the increasingly scary rhetoric in the commercials that link Pratt to Donald Trump’s disastrous policies. Maybe it’s his........

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