By Diane Roberts
Ron DeSantis wants you to know he’s a manly man, a manlier man than any manly man ever born, with mighty currents of 100-proof androgen surging through his sinews.
If you took a bouquet of other masculinity-mongering Republicans — your Josh Hawleys, your Jim Jordans, your J.D. Vances — put them in a blender with some follicle-stimulating hormones, a heaping helping of Y chromosomes, and a dash of A1 Steak Sauce, then whizzed them up good, the resulting cocktail would still not approach the mega-maleness of Florida’s governor.
Get within half a mile of Ronbo and the bosky aroma of all that testosterone will knock you flat on your weakling backside.
Or so a video shared by his campaign would have you believe. The video, released on the last day of June — Pride month — has now been removed from Twitter. It took a solid week of relentless mockery and derision for somebody in DeSantis World to get a clue.
But it’s too late. The video is now famous.
Images of oiled-up, shirtless muscle gods, jutting-jawed body builders, and extravangantly eyelashed drag queens jostle for space with clips of Donald Trump holding a Pride flag, declaring he’ll “protect LGBTQ people” and stating in public that he doesn’t care what bathroom Caitlyn Jenner uses.
Along with intimations that Trump is a crypto-lib and a friend of the Friends of Dorothy, the video treats us to glimpses of Tommy Shelby, the gangster boss in “Peaky Blinders,” Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in “American Psycho,” Brad Pitt as Achilles, and DeSantis in a flight suit and mirrored shades pretending to be Tom Cruise in “Top Gun,” all set to a thrusting techno-beat.
Clearly these are the paragons of conservative virility America should celebrate.
‘Very gay’
But I have questions. First one: Who made this steaming pile of bovine excrement? A bottom-quartile 7th grader with a Moviola? One of DeSantis’ fraternity brothers? The video’s a ham-fisted hunk of homoerotica pretending to be an indictment of the alleged LGBTQ menace which Ron DeSantis will shoot dead with his own personal lightning.
Seriously, y’all: In one bit of the video, horizontal lightning bolts shoot out of DeSantis’ eyes.
Pete Buttigieg, U.S Secretary of Transportation, wondered aloud what kind of person gets up in the morning thinking about how to “prove your manhood.” His husband Chasten Buttigieg was less circumspect, tweeting that the video “is very gay.”
Somebody’s not merely confused; somebody’s also a weapons-grade chucklehead.
Do they not know that Patrick Bateman is a serial killer? Or that Tommy Shelby is a murderous criminal? Or that Ron DeSantis’ experience with flying is pretty much limited to riding in Mori Hosseini’s corporate jet?
The Ron DeSantis campaign team post a Trump attack ad feat. phonk. (2023) pic.twitter.com/cwaWnZInG7
— crazy ass moments in american politics (@ampol_moment) July 1, 2023
As for Achilles, he’s indeed a great warrior and a hyper-stud, but his deepest erotic and emotional relationship was with his bestie Patroclus.
(If I can have a quick word, governor? This is what happens when you attack Humanities education. Read “The Iliad:” you’ll like it. Tons of manliness.)
As if all this weren’t enough, what’s with the part where DeSantis’ giant head, complete with an alligator underbite, appears submerged in a pond?
‘GAG’ me
Now, you won’t be surprised to hear that everybody, his gay brother and his gay brother’s gay dog has attacked this epically silly, yet hateful, video.
The Log Cabin Republicans are horrified; Richard Grenell, a former Trump cabinet member and prominent gay rightwinger who has expressed approval of DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” law, calls it “undeniably homophobic.”
The splendidly named Gays Against Grooming (they go by GAG — insert your own joke here), a group of folks who don’t like being called part of the LGBTQ community, don’t believe in gender dysphoria, and claim to be “protecting children,” have been plunged into turmoil with board member David Leatherwood resigning over the group founder’s ties to Florida’s governor.
So, no gay votes for DeSantis then. Call me old fashioned, but I thought the point of a campaign was to get more votes, not fewer votes. You’re supposed to bring people in, not run them off.
The DeSantis election brain trust could have nipped this in the bud with a well-judged statement that: 1. The campaign didn’t create this god-awful video; 2. While they have made their disapproval of minors at drag shows, medical interventions in gender and, er, bathroom usage clear, we are, at the end of the day, all Americans; and 3. They do not support serial killers, sociopathic gangsters, or death by eye-lightning.
But no: For a week they double- and triple-downed on the video as a legitimate attack on that noted metrosexual Donald Trump. DeSantis told Tomi Lahren, “Identifying Donald Trump as really being a pioneer in injecting gender ideology into the mainstream, where he was having men compete against women in his beauty pageants — I think that’s totally fair game.”
Because when America’s beauty pageants go down, the whole country goes down.
Political genius
DeSantis’ attack ferret Christina Pushaw tweeted: “Opposing the federal recognition of ‘Pride Month’ isn’t ‘homophobic.’ We wouldn’t support a month to celebrate straight people for sexual orientation, either.”
Is the Pushaw, by any chance, the political genius who thinks running to the right of Donald Trump is a winning strategy?
You cannot get to the right of Donald Trump. To the right of him is the airless vacuum of deep space. Trump voters aren’t looking for someone even more hateful, nasty, and demented. DeSantis claiming he’ll shoot immigrants, ban abortion nationwide, and appoint Supreme Court justices more extreme than Trump’s (maybe the KKK’s Imperial Wizard?) sounds desperate.
Trump people have no reason to abandon him: He’s the complete package of swaggering, if incoherent, snark plus exaggerated toxic masculinity. DeSantis is an amateur in comparison.
Meanwhile in the Republican primary contest, Ron DeSantis flounders somewhere between 16 and 22 percent in the national polls. The governor was last seen marching in a New Hampshire July 4th parade as the rain bucketed down. He looked like the guy who’d won third place in a Wet Dork-shirt contest.
Apparently, no one in his campaign had sense enough to bring an umbrella.
Diane Roberts is an 8th-generation Floridian, born and bred in Tallahassee. Educated at Florida State University and Oxford University in England, she has been writing for newspapers since 1983, when she began producing columns on the legislature for the Florida Flambeau. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Times of London, the Guardian, the Washington Post, the Oxford American, and Flamingo. She has been a member of the Editorial Board of the St. Petersburg Times–back when that was the Tampa Bay Times’s name–and a long-time columnist for the paper in both its iterations. She was a commentator on NPR for 22 years and continues to contribute radio essays and opinion pieces to the BBC. Roberts is also the author of four books.
Steve Robinson says
As always, Roberts is dead-on. Only thing missing from Rondo’s pathetic parody of manly virtue are the cowboy boots, which he obviously wears as a nod to his days roping steers at Yale.
Justbob says
What’s next? Maybe some of those trading cards with Ron in Marvel costumes?
John Stove says
We would we be surprised?…Dumbsantis is a tool with no substance of any value. He has no clue on how to run a state let alone a country…..
C’mon man says
Worst article I’ve read in a long time. Keep the typewriter away from this lady on the future
Ben Hogarth says
It’s not an “article” – it’s a satirical piece… a work of “satire.”
The idea is to point out the absurdity of the DeSantis campaign ad(s) and to simultaneously remark on the strange obsession with “manly” things. It’s kind of like all the ultra-religious pastors and ultra-right political officials who have been caught in the act of child predation, assault, or some other form of exploiting women / children for sexual purposes. I literally can’t keep up because my news feed is littered daily with news that another one of these “family values” individuals has been arrested.
It’s sick. And when you look at all the people DeSantis has surrounded himself with – makes you wonder.
Larry says
Typewriter?
Not the technology we use in today’s world. That went out of vogue with buggy whips and homophobia. Catch up!
Stephen says
No one cares that Desantis is gay. He is just a bad govenor.Trying to wreck Florida’s tourism industry. Can’t even beat a mouse.
JEK says
Worst governor EVER and just a plain awful human being!
Awake note woke says
This is exactly what they want….Republicans and democrats….keep us arguing….if you spent half the time on drug and homeless problems as u do on DeSantis we may start moving forward. Race and see is only a diversionary tactic to keep America arguing so the rich can get richer and the poor poorer….and the sheep play right along like they know you will.
Ray W. says
Please stop wandering through life fooling yourself. Diane Roberts is doing exactly what our founding fathers hoped people like her would do in the future. So long as she writes what she writes, the experiment in government by and for the people survives.
The issue is virtue. Thomas Jefferson expressed to his nephew a belief that reason was God’s gift to mankind. A virtuous person, to Jefferson, was to exalt that gift by following the dictates of reasoned discourse while addressing disputes. To our founding fathers, virtuous people were to engage in vigorous debate and accept what reason revealed as the best course among the many available possible good choices, regardless of party politics. It wasn’t that political parties couldn’t engage in debate using God’s gift of reason; it was that our founding fathers knew that partisan members of faction would abandon God’s gift and pursue partisan goals.
Please fully read what James Madison wrote in the last paragraph of his Federalist Paper #37 (it is important enough to post on FlaglerLive over and over again):
“We had occasion, in a former paper, to take notice of the repeated trials which have been unsuccessfully made in the United Netherlands for reforming the baneful and notorious vices of their constitutions. The history of almost all the great councils and consultations held among mankind for resolving their mutual jealousies, and adjusting their respective interests, is a history of factions, contentions, and disappointments, and may be classed among the dark and degraded pictures which display the infirmities and depravities of human nature. If, in a few scattered instances, a brighter aspect is presented, they serve only as exceptions to admonish us of the general truth; and by their lustre to darken the gloom of the adverse prospect to which they are contrasted. In resolving the causes from which these exceptions result, and applying them to the particular instance before us, we are necessarily led to two important conclusions. The first is that the convention must have enjoyed, in a very singular degree, an exemption from the pestilential influence of party animosities — the disease most incident to deliberative bodies, and most apt to contaminate their proceedings. The second conclusion is that all the deputations composing the convention were satisfactorily accommodated by the final act, or were induced to accede to it by a deep conviction of the necessity of sacrificing private opinions and partial interests to the public good, and by a despair of seeing this necessity diminished by delays or by new experiments.”
After reading and rereading Madison’s thoughts, can there be any doubt that he considered partisan members of faction to be a disease, and a pestilential disease at that? Remember, pestilence in the 18th century meant smallpox, polio, scarlet fever, plague, and on and on. Party animosities were a contaminant. Sacrificing private opinions and partial interests to the public good was a virtue.
Our founding fathers hoped that their experiment with a liberal democratic Constitutional republic would foster the development of men (and women) of virtue, but they greatly feared mob rule, so they created checks and balances to be applied to each limited power delegated to any government official.
Separation of powers, central to the concept of checks and balances, was meant to ensure that no one governmental official would ever gain unlimited power for an indeterminate period of time. Since the House now has 435 members, the Senate 100 members, and the Supreme Court 9 members, the most reasonable fear of despotism inhering in any one governmental official applies primarily to the executive branch.
Just as the other two branches of government were designed to place limits on efforts to expand the powers of the executive branch, citizens were also expected to oppose any potential bid for despotism in the executive branch.
The press, as the fourth branch of government, has its role in opposing despotism in government, too.
If what I propose is reasonable within our founding fathers’ definition of reason, then any attempt by our governor to expand the powers of the executive branch are to be instantly and zealously opposed by the legislative branch, the judicial branch, the press, and the people. The urgency of combatting pestilence demands no less of us.
You equate the act of opposing partisan members of faction with acting as sheep. I equate exercising God’s gift of reason with opposing all pestilential partisan members of faction. What would James Madison think of your comment? The answer to that is easy. I repeat: Diane Roberts is doing exactly what she is supposed to do.
You argue for that which would destroy us all. Virtuous debate based on God’s gift of reason mandates the conclusion that the pestilential member of faction is our governor, not the press. The issue has always centered on those who are willing to swear to uphold the Constitution in an effort to gain and wield political power. A virtuous person is to be admired, as we admire Washington, Madison, Jefferson, Adams, etc. A partisan member of faction is to be feared and opposed.
I had said this before. I really never considered the necessity of commenting on FlaglerLive until I learned that a local political figure had taken to the radio to express just when would it be time to begin beheading Democrats. Who could be more pestilential to our Constitutional experiment than he?
Laurel says
Ray W.: Trump.
Both DeSantis and Trump are working very hard at suppressing half (or more) of all Americans. Both are professing to rid us of those who oppose DeSantis’ and Trump’s personal agendas. DeSantis is signing laws in the night, while trying to defeat the Sunshine Law, while Trump just stated again that he is protecting his supporters from the rest of us. He claims that half of all Americans are after the other half of all Americans, and he is standing in between the opposing sides. Something that only he alone can do, as he claims.
These two, to me, are treasonous and I hope and pray they fail.
The only good to come out of it, as I see it, is that we learn from this once and for all. These two are doing things that we never thought could happen here in our free country. Now, we should know better.
Nephew Of Uncle Sam says
Loved it! One of the best pieces she has written, we laughed our butts off the first time we saw his video.
Laurel says
I think some folks get mad at Diane, because she nails it! That DeSantis ad is absolutely the most bizarre ad, that is meant to be serious, that I’ve ever seen. That guy ain’t all there.
Bill C says
Want to see the crazy homophobic/homoerotic DeSantis campaign ad?
https://twitter.com/ampol_moment/status/1674937319218987013?s=20
Ben Dover says
I think Ronda has been asked many times if he is gay , he sounds gay , certainly looked gay in his rainbow bright boots during the hurricane , and I think people seeing through his lavender marriage to his beard of a wife really upsets him , now I was not fortunate enough to see that video , but me thinks he protests too much , and it`s not just him , countless Republican politicians have been caught in public restrooms with other men or hotel rooms with little boys and a lot of them have ties to Trump , who by the way has a secret tunnel under Mar A Lago and it makes me wonder how 2 days after the FBI raided Trumps Lair they were able to rescue more than 200 women and children being trafficked, we all know when Epstein got the sweet heart deal of going to jail on weekends and allowed to have his co-conspirators names sealed from the public it was obviously Trump who then installed that crooked DA in his cabinet over seeing Human Trafficking , of course when that was brought to the attention of the people Acosta had to go . So you see the Rethuglican party is rife with sexual deviants , and homosexuals that never had the guts to come out and they don`t hate the gay community because they are gay , they hate them because they are living the life they were too scared to enter themselves , they are jealous!
Laurel says
Ben: (yeah we get the little play on your name) What the heck? I’m one of the last to come to Trump’s rescue, but, are you for real? I’m not so sure. You sound like Q, with a twist in parties. Who, specifically, rescued 200 people from “Trump’s lair?” What evidence do you have of a “secret tunnel?” Mar-a-Lago has a tunnel that runs under A1A to access the beach so that guests do not have to cross traffic. That’s actually very common in Palm Beach.
Sounds to me that you are trying to discredit the Democratic Party using far right tactics, and I’m not a Democrat! Let’s stick to facts and not play games.
DAve says
I’ve come to the conclusion that DeathSantis is killing his own campaign, which only makes Trumpo the clear winner for the GOP nominee in Nov. This man can’t be so stupid ( well he can) to wipe out voters be it the LGBTQ community or home owners suffering possible cancelation by home insurance companies, to homeowners being forced to get loans to put $18K – 65k roof on their homes, to attacking Disney to his Covid lies.. Heck he even screwed up his own Presidential announcement on Twitter. Like I noted, I think he’s always been in Trumpos back pocket from the start and words between them is just a game.
Alice says
DeSantis is NOT a mans man or a manly man, all he stands for is hate, discrimination and a lousy Governor who has chased businesses away a long with people. He cannot governor anything.
Ban the GOP says
I thought that was republican way of self hate, they make laws eliminating rights for lgtbq humans before the leaked video of them doing homosexual acts is released then they call it fake news. I better stop before ol racist ron send his new militia after me for speaking out against him.
For Real says
No wonder his ratings keep going down, as well as his campaign money, as soon as he opens his mouth that tells it all. He has no clue what he is doing, look at Florida, everything he does is negative and shows what a poor Governor he is. He is not a christian but someone that hates gays, and everyone that isn’t white and rich.
He doesn’t Governor that State so how could he think he can be President, only his wife thinks that and a few donors.
Another loser to add to the Republican party, and if Trump once supported him that a lone should tell you something.
Ban the GOP says
Id you ever want to see a steaming dumster fire of human excrament just go to ol racist rons house. Lets deport his family back to Italy the birthplace of fascism. Lets discriminate against republicans they way they discriminate against everyone else. sometimes you have to fight fire with fire . Lets turn up the hate like the heat right gop supporters?
techylist says
I’m not sure what Ron DeSantis is trying to accomplish with this ad. It’s not very effective.