In this just published article Emine Yücel calls our attention to this web video the DeSantis campaign posted over the weekend which, on its face, is meant to focus GOP primary voters’ attention on the fact that ex-President Trump in the past at least professed to be supportive of the LGBTQ and trans communities. That is now an unforgivable act among many Republicans. But as she notes, it mixes garden variety gay-bashing with a flurry of hard-to-miss homoerotic imagery pushing Ron himself. As I put it in my less guarded Twitter voice: the “weird thing is the first half of this ad is pure gay/trans bashing but then shifts into a kind DeSantis Full Official Beefcake/He Man weirdness. are Ron and RFK jr gonna do some gonzo scenes together? … The ad also captures how the transition I note isn’t even that strange. Ron is going to both bring the hammer down on the sissies and also be the rough king of the leather bar.”
Besides having some fun at DeSantis’s expense, there’s a very real underlying issue here that’s worth unpacking. It’s become something of a cliché to say that DeSantis’ campaign is way too online, by which people mean that his campaign spends a lot of time pushing memes and ideas that resonate with the online right but can appear obscure or disturbing even to most Republicans, let alone the normal, loosely-affiliated people who count most in general elections.
Continue reading “Meatball Ron and ‘Extremely Online’” →
