I wanted to weigh in on the important debate over James Talarico’s manliness. To me, Talarico looks like a preacher — compare and contrast with a younger Kenneth Copeland, born in Lubbock, whose church is in Tarrant County (Ft. Worth).
This is a generic “good guy” masculine image that’s perhaps a bit dated, but Talarico fits it, easily. I think the MAGAts are freaked out for a couple of possible reasons:
He looks and talks a bit like one of theirs — it’s “cultural appropriation,” though the concept is too woke for them to name directly.
They’re all scarred because preachers that look like that have molested their children and stolen their money.
Digging into (2) for a minute, the reputation of old-school pastors is so awful that the new hotness in preachers is feats of strength and beards. The guy on the left, below, is whackadoodle minister Victor Marx, Republican candidate for Colorado Governor, who claims to be the Rambo of saving women and children. The guy on the right is a pastor from Amarillo who was recently arrested for allegedly soliciting prostitutes.
Moving on, as Talarico points out in the clip below, his opponent and a lot of the other MAGAts who are calling him “a girl” or, basically, gay by any other name, don’t look like either the old or the new conception of MAGA manliness:
Paxton is so obviously overweight and out of shape that the feat of strength that he wants to use is how much BBQ he can shove into his piehole. I wouldn’t bet against him in that meaningless contest:
Paxton is a serial adulterer and fraudster, and he’s been impeached, all big manly male indicators in MAGA world.
Talarico’s girlfriend is attractive, smart and vegan. MAGA was hoping that she didn’t exist, but now that she exists, her having a mind of her own is the next avenue of attack. Consider the attitudes of the influencers speaking at the widow Kirk’s trad wife conference:
Several women said they’d be willing to give up their right to vote if it meant creating a more conservative country at the Turning Point USA Women’s Leadership Summit recently held in San Antonio, Texas.
“My perspective as a Christian woman is that my husband and I are one flesh,” Alexus DeGraaf told the Canadian CBC news outlet at the Christian Right mega-convention. “I vote the same way he does, so honestly, I would be okay with giving up my right to vote, because I know that he would represent me well.”
She was one of a few women who expressed this to the CBC, including rising conservative star influencer Savannah Stone, who peddled the idea that there should be just one vote per household, instead of per person, with deference to the husband’s choice of candidate.
I’m guessing that Talarico’s girlfriend thinks she should have her own vote, which is a clear indicator that he’s not a real man. (Also, 🤮 🤮 🤮 on the “one flesh” comment.)
In closing, this MAGA manly garbage is so fucking weird. Democrats should be out mocking this on the daily. There’s nothing here to be afraid of, politically. Women want to vote. Clean-cut guys who look like Eagle Scouts are, by any non-weirdo standard, men. MMA “fighters” who couldn’t make it in the NFL and puke on their shoes at weigh-in are weirdo losers when they call Michelle Obama a “man”. Being absolutely transfixed by genitalia and the appearance of manhood is gross, the end:
