BALLS! BALLS! BALLS! and Links
Boots and balls and boots and balls and boots and balls and LIFTS
This last week, I recorded an episode of Slate’s The Waves podcast on the manhood obsession in American politics (or, as they called it, “Penis Politics”). And then roughly 3 seconds after I emerged from my recording-studio-slash-spouse’s-closet, there was a Penis Politics explosion, as the world started talking about…
~*~*~*~The Boots~*~*~*~
You see, Politico went and did something we in the biz call “reporting the living shit out of a story,” by which I mean they (1) scrutinized DeSantis’ shoes in press photos and then (2) called up three expert shoemakers to ask them, “Does it look like this guy is packing lifts in his boots?” (The consensus: “Kind of, yeah.”) There’s talk of “welts” and “shafts” and “insteps” and more details you ever thought you’d look for or care about on a politician’s shoes.
And then there was the fallout from bootfest, in which Trump’s spokesman Steven Cheung proceeded to make multiple meals out of this whole thing. An excerpt from one statement:
When asked directly about why his boots look like stilts, DeSanctus offered up the implausible explanation that he just wears off-the-rack Lucchese boots, doing major brand damage to a great American footwear company. If there are any enterprising journalists willing to contact the Lucchese press team for their thoughts on DeSanctus, they are reachable here.
…
Soon enough, Ron is going to wish for more pudding and in-flight biohazard stories instead of having to deal with his shoes that are more appropriate for America’s Next Top Model than the campaign trail.
And THEN he released ANOTHER statement. Why? Because he could.
Will Ron keep on wearing his high heels on Wednesday night, or will he switch to something sassier like platform shoes more appropriate for a contestant on RuPaul’s Drag Race?
OK, look. The brazenness of directing reporters to Lucchese’s press team is borderline funny, in an “I guess this is where we are now” sort of way.
But…citing America’s Next Top Model and RuPaul’s Drag Race is some nuclear-grade masculinity weaponization.
Anyway. THEN THEN, perhaps annoyed with this whole thing, the DeSantis campaign said, “BALLS!”
The campaign is selling pairs of golf balls in boxes that read: “RON DESANTIS HAS A PAIR. HE SHOWS UP.” This, of course, is referencing the fact that Trump is not joining the debates, which — scrotum jokes aside — is objectively worth pointing out because a candidate is not only not showing up to participate in a grand U.S. democratic tradition, but is still leading by a long shot, and it is all wild.
In summation, I believe I speak for us all when I say: hotchie motchie.
As I’ve said a million times before, the worship of masculinity is in the water and the air and the soil and has leached into all of our bloodstreams…doubly so when it comes to presidential politics. Being manly is seen and campaigned on as an unequivocal good, so much so that we’ve largely ignored it for decades.
Having a lady in this race, however, throws this into relief. Here’s how Nikki Haley responded to the whole [waves hand] boots and balls thing.
From The Washington Post:
“Are you wearing higher heels than Ron DeSantis next week at the debate, so you can look taller than him, on the stage?” Charlamagne tha God, guest host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” asked Haley on Wednesday night.
“I don’t know. We’ll have to figure that out,” said Haley, the former United Nations ambassador and the only woman in the Republican presidential field.
Then she added, “I’ve always talked about my high heels. … I’ve always said, ‘Don’t wear them if you can’t run in them.’ So we’ll see if he can run in them.”
Someday we’ll look back on our current moment in politics and close our eyes and curl into a ball and ask to be left alone for a few days.
But for now, it’s possible that this particular silly back-and-forth helps Haley most, by allowing her to chuckle, toss off a joke, and appear above the fray.
(I said something like this in the Josh Hawley-Lucas Kunce newsletter: a candidate — of any gender — could do well during one of these pissing contests to simply turn to the camera and say, “…are you all seeing this?”)
Now will this help Haley to the tune of vaulting her past Trump? Ehhhh. I’m not saying that.
And one more point: note that we are not really talking about Haley’s gender here. We often think about “gender” in politics as being about women in politics. In fact, when I tell people I cover gender, they often say, “Oh, so you cover women candidates?”
Sigh. People. No.
“Oh, so women voters?”
You’re embarrassing yourself, my dear hypothetical nitwit.
In many conversations about this primary — much as happened in 2016, when Hillary Clinton ran — we are talking about men’s gender. Women don’t even need to be present for gender to come up — the men get onto the topic of heel lifts or golf balls (BALLS! Get it?) on their own. We just need enterprising people [curtsey] to point it out. This is what I mean when I say all politics are masculinity politics. Am I being hyperbolic? Occasionally!
But the point is: It’s endemic.
2024, man. What a time to be alive. ON TO LINKS!
Links
MY STUFF:
Democrats are freaked about a No Labels presidential run: I went to a press breakfast last week where Nancy Pelosi said, in no uncertain terms, that a No Labels presidential run would not only be bad for Biden but bad for democracy. This is going to be a Thing, so best get up to speed on it.
The Waves — “Penis Politics”: We talked Josh Hawley and Lucas Kunce and their dude-off in Missouri. Plus, if you’re a Slate Plus member, you can hear me talk about how parenting is going. (Answer: Fine! Mixed bag! Great! It’s difficult! My baby is excellent! I’m frazzled and kind of depressed!)
How the GOP became the pro-Israel party: among other things, the Old Testament, Revelation, and neocons.
How the Democratic Party split on Israel and Palestine: among other things, the youth, progressives, Vietnam, and Black Lives Matter.
RECOMMENDATIONS:
TV: Midnight Mass (Netflix) — I watched this a year ago or so, and I’m itching to give it another watch since I thought of it again on Halloween. A genuinely unsettling mishmash of horror and a thoughtful exploration of religion. Plus, Hamish Linklater is *phenomenal* in it.
BOOK: Prophet by Helen MacDonald and Sin Blache — A wildly inventive scifi story about science and the military and corporate greed but also…about feelings. Specifically: What if nostalgia could literally kill you? Plus, there’s a beautiful love story at the center of the whole thing.
PODCAST: Unclear and Present Danger — 90s thrillers? Dissections of the John Grisham/Tom Clancy movies we all grew up on? Jamelle Bouie with an array of smart outside guests (including my NPR colleague Ms. Linda Holmes)? SOLD.
PODCAST: Valley Heat — A basic synopsis is that it’s a fiction podcast about an insurance adjustor who tries to solve the mystery of who in the neighborhood is using his garbage cans as a drug drop. But it’s so much more. It’s jock rock songs (why not?) as jingles for local businesses. It’s a neighbor opening a car-wash-slash-nightclub in his yard. It’s getting into a fight with your wife’s yoga teacher over whether a mermaid emoji is sexual. It’s a four-minute song about frisbee golf. It’s one of the funniest podcasts I’ve ever listened to.
THIS WEEK’S CLASSICAL PICK: Echoes of Life by Alice Sara Ott — Gorgeous renditions of Chopin preludes. Just outrageously gorgeous.
THIS WEEK’S INTERNET THING THAT MAKES ME SMILE: The Bill Belichick Off-Season Simulator. To be clear, I do not like football. I do not understand football. I do not Do football. This is still one of the greatest things the internet has ever produced.