About your Beto O'Rourke fantasies...
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What a spring! Notre Dame was damaged in a fire, “Game of Thrones” ended and the New York Times tried to defame the Aperol spritz -- take some time out today to hug your most basic friend. The 2020 field has been inundated with so many bland, early-middle-aged white dudes that you’d think the Democratic primary were the merch stand at a Green Day show. And Memorial Day came and went, though the holiday honoring the fallen was in something of a rebuilding year as John Bolton tries to recruit a bunch of promising young prospects for its roster.
SOME CONTENT FOR YOU, FRIEND
Scrutinizing the 2020 candidates’ font choices. There is *time yet* for Pete Buttigieg to burnish his millennial bonafides by finding some way to incorporate the Trapper Keeper “S.”
Yes, we’ve all had bad airport experiences; yes, we’ve all killed time by scouting a second Hudson News to see whether it offered a more robust yogurt pretzel selection than the first one; and yes, we’ve all stared intently at our “Nachyo Mama’s Nacho Platter” at a Guy Fieri—branded restaurant to avoid making eye contact with a dude in an “Orgasm Donor” t-shirt. Well, guess what: Airports are going to be even worse this summer.
The U.S. birthrate has dropped to the lowest rate in 32 years, probably because no one should be brought into a world with Nextdoor.
A Morning Consult survey of Twitter users’ political views.
New age guru Marianne Williamson has effectively secured a spot in the first Democratic debate, begging the obvious question: when will Fred Thompson enter the race and inject it with some much-needed gravitas?
Twitter got so bent out of shape over the rules of UNO that you’d think the makers of the iconic card game had tweeted about towel ownership or centrist policies.
President Trump and his ilk would have you believe that undocumented immigrants are bloodthirsty rapists who are responsible for everything from American industrial decline to PBS fundraising drives. Yet another study finds that undocumented immigrants are no more felonious than documented residents.
Washingtonian’s deliciously gossipy dive into VIP treatment at D.C. restaurants.
A great Erik Wemple piece on the journalism that informed (and sometimes misrepresented) the Mueller probe. Journos, cite this the next time your #resistance aunt or uncle -- the same ones who posted on Facebook, “THANK YOU JEFF SESSIONS!!!!!!” when the former attorney general recused himself from the Mueller probe -- trashes the fourth estate for reporting negatively on their preferred candidate.
I AM HERE TO ANSWER QUESTIONS ABOUT YOUR BETO O’ROURKE FANTASIES
The erstwhile three-term Texas congressman’s presidential campaign has electrified our hearts ... and other parts, too. I may not be qualified to speak to your romantic and/or carnal flights of fancy, but this is a country where Elizabeth Holmes can raise tens of billions of dollars for a malfunctioning phlebotomic pain cube, basically anyone who ever saw the trailer for “Hairspray” can anoint themselves a camp expert and Beto O’Rourke is deemed a suitable presidential candidate. So let’s do this:
What are you talking about?
Your Beto O’Rourke fantasizing! I admit it’s very presumptuous to assume you have fantasized about Beto O’Rourke, or are doing so right now -- the latter could lead to some real problems, FYI (“Marty, the Q3 lookahead is great, but I think it would really shine with some more detail about the diminished maintenance outlays and a rangy former member of Congress freshly showered and wearing nothing but his killer smile and a towel haphazardly tucked-in and sagging at his waistline *just so*”).
Anyhoo, whether or not you're into him, Beto O’Rourke is *the* Gen X hunk du jour. He appeared on the cover of Vanity Fair, dreamily declaring how predestined he is to be president because, one guesses, he once read Zinn’s “People’s History” and is on a first-name basis with 23% of the employees at his local REI. He is the subject of a fawning HBO documentary that paints him as something of a martyr for the cause of a better politics -- like George McGovern but with more pronounced calves. And he is likely very good in bed, according to one Twitter user.
How do I know that Beto O’Rourke is the right Gen X hunk to fantasize about?
Good question. There are a lot of options out there. To name a few:
Rock climbing with Eddie Vedder.
Coastal cleanup volunteering with Mark Ruffalo.
A really constructive couples therapy session with Dave Matthews.
Some kind of composite Gen X hunk that you dreamed up -- let’s call him Graham. Graham was on the lacrosse team in college -- yes, yes but he wasn’t into the scene, which you know because you remember spotting a copy of “Middlemarch” in his dorm room. Anyway, these days Graham is a partner at an impact investing firm — again, *eye roll* — but he gets to work with a portfolio company that sends one needlepoint belt with sailboats on it to third world countries for every one needlepoint belt with sailboats on it that customers purchase. It’s rewarding, and it pays the bills for his place in Taos, which is where he’d much rather be right now. Have you snowshoed? It’s really centering.
Anyway, all these fantasies can induce anxiety. Are you sport or trad climbing with Eddie? Are you and Paul Rudd chilling in the VIP Balcony at the Hole reunion show or down on the floor? You work hard and shouldn’t have to put so much effort into Gen X hunk fantasizing. Beto O’Rourke, meanwhile, is such a caricature of the dopey Gen X hunk that any fantasies about him are processed by the brain as having all the complexity and leadenness of flavored seltzer.
I have my perfect Gen X hunk date with Beto O’Rourke planned out: first we meet for paninis at an independent cafe with threadbare couches; then we idly browse a record store where I secretly buy him an original printing of “Slanted and Enchanted;” finally, we end the night with some Natty Bos at a dive bar. The thing is, I work in software development, and I worry I don’t have the public policy chops to talk to a former member of Congress.
Listen, first: Beto just wants to hear about you. Second: Don’t sweat it! Not having discernible policy chops is precisely what Beto fantasizing is all about! Beto just wants to get up on a diner countertop in Boone, Iowa, say a few things about pluralism and American exceptionalism and maybe sweat a bit onto some guy named Darrel’s breakfast. You don’t want to talk policy? Neither does he!
Think of Beto a bit like that ur-Gen X political hunk, Barack Obama. Except instead of cutting his teeth in the 1990s as a community organizer or teaching at Harvard Law, like Obama did, Beto spent those years stoned in a basement playing “Turok Dinosaur Hunter” and explaining at his 6th Riot Grrrl girlfriend in as many months just who shot Mr. Burns.
I think I might be losing my thing for Beto
You and a lot of people! To be honest, the Beto thing might be over already.
Let’s cut to it: Beto sometimes feels like the grown-up version of the lovable, quirky but academically meh high school jock who kind of assumes his bed magically makes itself — not realizing that mom has been diligently doing it for years. Yes, he delivered an endearingly impassioned report on “Animal Farm” — of which he only read the first 5 chapters — but meanwhile his mom was tidying his sheets and clearing all the leather wristbands and back issues of Thrasher off of them. Beto is going to need a lot of taking care of.
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