The news hiding behind Arnold Palmer’s penis

Masculinity politics everywhere yippee hooray

Tried a lot of prompts and eventually got THIS gem when I fed AI “male bodybuilders playing golf.” Simply incredible. (SOURCE: Imagine.art)

You may have heard that Donald Trump recently talked about Arnold Palmer’s penis in a campaign speech.

I certainly did. My brand (which is more or less “penis politics”) is strong, and so once the remark happened, people tweeted/texted/shouted it at me immediately.

To be clear, I am very happy about this — it means I’m still relevant, even while the news industry collapses.¹

I mentioned the genital comments a few times on air, in fact, in the context of “Trump is, uh, not acting the way candidates usually act in the final weeks of the campaign.”

Plenty of outlets covered Arnold Palmer’s genitals quite a bit more, however. And if you only looked at headlines or Twitter, you’d think Trump went on at length about Arnold Palmer’s genitals…when in reality, the Arnold Palmer genitals monologue was about 12 minutes of meandering about Palmer’s life, which only culminated with a sentence or two about Arnold Palmer’s genitals.²

I was going to transcribe it, but a Pennsylvania outlet called The Keystone went and did it, so you should go click there, because local news is good.

Anyway. I’m not saying it’s not weird to talk about a dead golfer’s dong. Especially in the closing days of an election. It’s deeply weird. It’s off-the-map bizarre.

But there’s a lot more that I haven’t gotten to analyze yet. Those 12 minutes have a lot to say about the centrality of masculinity in modern politics. And certainly, those 12 minutes say a lot more than a few lines that amount to “teehee big penis good.”

Come with me on this journey.

MANHOOD TOPIC 1: Sports! Muscles! Sports and muscles!

The Arnold Palmer monologue didn’t come out of nowhere. During this speech, Trump was in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, Arnold Palmer’s hometown. And so, in tribute to the golfer, Trump started by reciting a version of Palmer’s biography. 

He started off very, very poor. He had no money, just had a lot of talent and a lot of muscle. He was a strong guy and his father worked at Latrobe Golf Course and he was a laborer there. He actually, they called him in those days, sod carriers. He’s a very strong man. He carried sod. They didn’t have trucks that they trucked it. They had strong people carrying it. He was the strongest of them all. And he had a son, but they had no money. And he worked at Latrobe and they treated him good because he could do more work than anybody else. 

Trump loves strong guys. Trump loves athletes. I still remember a piece my colleague, Scott Detrow, did in 2016 about the “rogues’ gallery” of athletes Trump surrounds himself with (a great phrase there, telling us that Trump likes athletes who piss off a lot of people). 

From a cursory google, Arnold Palmer was in fact not a rogue but seems to have been a decent fellow.

At any rate, though, Trump surrounding himself with Men Men Men who play Men Sports is no accident. Same goes for highlighting Men Men Men who are strong. Pretty straightforward masculinity politics so far here.

MANHOOD TOPIC 2: Who is your daddy, and what does he do?³

Look. Dads are great. Mine is outstanding. And my spouse is a damn fine specimen of dadhood. 

But for a long time, dads have had an outsized place in American politics.

I am reminded of the first Republican primary debate in 2016, when the candidates were compelled to give not only their own resumes but their fathers’ as well. Rubio’s dad? Bartender. Kasich’s dad? Mailman. His dad’s dad? Miner.

As for moms? Chris Christie mentioned that his was a secretary. 

Now, look. This is to some degree due to the fact that, when these guys grew up, a lot of women just didn’t work outside the home. 

I, personally, still find it striking that the moms weren’t really acknowledged…but okay – whether it’s about economics or sexism or some combination of the two – it strikes me that by virtue of dads having long been the primary breadwinners in American families, fathers have also come to be a huge part of American political mythology.

I mean, why do I know that John Edwards’ dad worked in a textile mill? No, seriously — why do I know this?

I know this because candidates want to show where they came from, that they have a connection to a common man. And…men historically were the workers. And it’s especially the Manly Jobs that have come to define the Common Man. So, how do you show voters you have value? By talking about the work another man did.

Which brings me to the thing I think about all. of. the. time. And for me, it’s the subtopic of masculinity politics that’s hardest to talk about. Which is: 

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MANHOOD TOPIC 3: The link between American manhood and class

The American conceptualization of manhood is inextricably knotted up with class and occupation.

The story Trump tells about Arnold Palmer’s dad guiding his son to greatness isn’t just a classic American up-from-under bootstraps story. It’s also a story about a “laborer,” a sod carrier, a “very strong man,” who eventually brought little Arnie to the golf course where he worked.

Again, no disrespect to Arnold Palmer’s dad, who from the sound of it could have wrestled the living snot out of a tiger.

But I wonder if Trump would have told as admiring of a story about Arnold Palmer’s father if Daddy Palmer had been, say, an insurance claims adjuster. My bet is no.

Or let’s make it a working-class job: hospital janitor. Nursing home orderly. Something that likewise denotes working class, but that doesn’t have the same rough and tough connotations as a “laborer” who carries heavy things and works in the dirt.

Again, I can’t prove a counterfactual, but my instinct is that a Papa Palmer who worked in a nursing home wouldn’t have played nearly as big a role in Trump’s telling.

I think a lot about something that sociologist Michael Kimmel told me when I was writing about masculinity politics in 2016: "We've always coded the upper class as foppish and not really masculine. The American ideal of masculinity is you make it yourself. You build it. Your hands."

Rarely do you hear high-level politicians bragging about their parents being a sales clerk at the Gap. A flight attendant. A grocery store checkout person. A hotel maid.

Or we can even take fathers out of it. Presidents and presidential candidates put on hardhats all the time. They go to factories. They put on barn jackets and talk to farmers. But I have yet to see one throw on some scrubs or fold some sweaters on a sale display.

Call it the masculine mystique. In American political life, jobs where workers (mostly men) get covered in a fine layer of grit have a glamor to them. And it’s a glamor that many of the nation’s far more common and thus relatable jobs – retail, waiting tables – do not have.

Now. This is all somewhat more complicated than “politicians only care about dude jobs,” I’ll grant you. Part of this is about a changing economy. Goods-producing jobs (factory work, mining, farming) – which were historically overwhelmingly men’s jobs – have shrunk due to factors like automation and trade. Service-providing jobs have grown. 

Furthermore, many of those service-providing jobs give, as economists would put it, shit pay and shittier benefits.

And so, for decades, politicians of both parties have been hell-bent on boosting manufacturing back to its former glory, even while that is unlikely to happen.

But then, that’s kind of the point here: That is unlikely to happen. Therefore, you can make the argument, as Richard Reeves has, that it would be smart to start getting men into the more women-heavy HEAL jobs (Health, Education, Administration, and Literacy). But even if that happens, I imagine it will take an additional decade or three for the (male or female) nurse to become the archetype of the American Worker.

As it happens, this election we’ve finally had some service-job cosplay, when Trump posed as a McDonald’s worker for one day himself…though this seems to have been as much of a troll as a way to show he understands The Common Person™.

One other example of this gendered way of talking about economics is to think about conversations about infrastructure. I wrote about this a few years ago — traditional “infrastructure” jobs tend to be more men-heavy (think road and bridge construction). When politicians talk about infrastructure, they’re — whether they mean to or not — to some degree talking about employing dudes.

Politicians like Elizabeth Warren have tried to change this by rebranding jobs in childcare and healthcare as “care infrastructure” or “human infrastructure,” but that has had limited success.

At any rate: this has been an unspoken nuance behind a lot of American political-economic discourse for decades: while workers try to adapt to a changing economy, politicians likewise will eventually have to adapt their rhetoric.

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LINKS! RECOMMENDATIONS! HOUSEKEEPING!

Ask a Journalist. I solicited questions for Ask a Journalist recently, and I swear I aim to answer them in the medium-term. But it turns out that, especially in the days leading up to an election, and especially especially as I watch news organizations self-immolate, I have a lot of Big Journalism Feelings and can’t bring myself to articulate them without scream-cry-vomming. So anyway. I promise I’ll answer them post-election. Really.

But Danielle, are you allowed to share those Big Journalism Feelings? I have no idea. Let’s move on.

Things I’ve covered: I was at Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally and talked about it on Up First and Consider This the next day. I was also at his return to Butler earlier this month and documented the evangelical fervor with which his followers support him. Have I done other coverage? Yes. But these are the highlights. I’m tired.

Book recommendations: In my extensive travels ahead of Election Day, I’ve gotten a lot of audiobook time. Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult by Maria Bamford is every bit as delightful as you’d expect coming from one of the greatest living comedians. The Appeal by Janice Hallett manages the perfect murder mystery tone for a brain that’s addled by sleep deprivation and dark times. Yes, there’s a murder. No, it’s not lurid, nor are there deeply sad, ripped-from-the-headlines subplots. But also, it’s not “cozy” and cute either. A good puzzle to keep you distracted.⁴ And finally, I’ve restarted Geek Love, maybe one of my favorites of all time. A family drama set at a traveling circus, among a family of (sorry) circus freaks. Perfection.

YOUR OLD-INTERNET JOY OF THE DAY: Remember Broad City? Broad City was the best. So here’s my favorite clip. “Ain’t you a hot diggity dawg and a scallywag to boot?” [sloshes martini on floor]

1. SUPPORT YOUR LOCAL PUBLIC RADIO STATION.

2. I’ll have you know that I considered making various tasteless jokes, including a too-complicated one that involved me crafting a sentence that turns out to contain a dangling participle [snicker], but this is a serious election and I am better than that.

3. If you mentally read this subhead in an Arnold Schwarzenegger voice, congratulations. We are alike.

4. I also read a newish novel by a critically acclaimed fancypants author. Said novel is infuriatingly, brain-meltingly boring. I will not name it here because we are a good vibes only newsletter. But … if you think you’ve read this book, please comment and rage with me.