I’ve delayed this post because I thought the issue would go away. And yet this guy’s like the dinner guest who won’t take the hint and just leave.
Haven’t we all said it? “Bye, George.”
Still, he stays.
It seems apropos to
mention toilet paper.
Why can’t George Santos fade away, unceremoniously flushed from memory like Milli Vanilli, that “Cats” movie and pumpkin spice toilet paper. Let anyone’s retelling about any of them follow with the uninformed saying, “You’re kidding, right?” If only.
As a Canadian, I remained blissfully ignorant of George for a while. Every country’s political arena has a few kooks; I didn’t need to gawk at what was going on regarding a newly elected member of the House of Representatives from New York. But then the bits and pieces of the representative’s misrepresentations leaked out in tweets I read and news stories I skimmed. George Anthony Devoider Santos claimed to have a degree in economics and finance from Baruch College in NYC. Never happened. He said earned an MBA from NYU. He didn’t. Worked for Goldman Sachs and Citigroup. Nope and nope. While writing this, I came across an article that said Santos lied about attending a high school in the Bronx and being a star volleyball player while at Baruch. That’s just some of it. I don’t want to know more. I’m not a constituent, thankfully.
This is the kind of person who would lie about watching “The White Lotus” and digging Beyoncé if he thought it would improve his standing. Heck, I don’t think I could even trust his answer to “What’s your favorite color?”
To be sure, the guy is delusional. A pathological liar. Someone who delights in deception. I know there are cynics who shrug and say, What do you expect? He’s a politician. They’re all liars. But even the most cynical would concede that something truthful might slip out once in a while. Not so, it seems, from Santos.
I also realize plenty of people embellish their resumés. There are limits, of course. Lying about degrees and previous employment should get anyone fired. It appears that George Santos’s entire resumé is a fabrication. (Who lies about their high school? Did he make it through ninth grade?) Who is he really? How can the 746,000 people living in New York’s 3rd congressional district have any trust in him?
George Santos isn’t as much of an anomaly as I’d like him to be. A person like him can feel emboldened by his idol, Donald Trump, a man who regularly makes things up about elections, his intelligence, his medical records and his businesses. Trump knows that his base will swallow anything he dishes out. Too many of the supposedly reputable Republicans have not dared to call bullshit. “That’s just Trump” some seem to say with a shrug. Much of Trump’s hot air about wealth and corporate success may have been dismissed as puffery, but the lack of fact checking and holding the former world leader accountable only gave him carte blanche to tell more dangerous lies. Then there’s Kellyanne Conway who introduced the public to “alternative facts” back in 2017. An impressionable wannabe politician like Santos only had to point to the most powerful members of his party to inspire him to run for office on wholly false qualifications. As galling as it is, it’s no surprise at all.
I’m disappointed with the Republican Party for either not vetting him or, as The New York Times, intoned yesterday, discovering the falsehoods and not disqualifying him as a candidate. Naturally, I’m disappointed—astonished even—with Democrats at the local level in opponent Robert Zimmerman’s campaign office and at the state and national level who didn’t do their own fact checking. Furthermore, the media needs to be called out for its own negligence in covering a key race. According to The Times, only “The North Shore Leader on Long Island, run by a Republican lawyer and former House candidate, Grant Lally,” found cause to label Santos as a “fabulist—a fake.” (According to Wikipedia, it has a circulation of 20,000.) A telling statement in yesterday’s article: “None of the bigger outlets, including The Times, followed up with extensive stories examining his real address or his campaign’s questionable spending, focusing their coverage instead on Mr. Santos’s extreme policy views and the historic nature of a race between two openly gay candidates.”
It's only because Santos claims to be gay that I’m blogging about this audacious hanger-on. I can cast this vial individual aside, knowing I’m not an American or a New Yorker. But I feel the slightest association in that he’s gay. My knee-jerk reaction when I heard this was to dismiss him as one of those Log Cabin Republicans whom I cannot relate to. I don’t know how a gay man can put economics ahead of social issues, particularly regarding the LGBTQ community. Republicans have neither been our allies nor our advocates. Most recently, they have railed against trans rights to rile up the base, translating fear and ignorance into increased campaign coffers and votes. The fact they’ve stoked hatred, resulting in threats and violence, lowering the sense of safety and self-esteem among trans and nonbinary individuals matters not to them. Honestly, it’s unfathomable to me that anyone queer identifies as Republican. I don’t think such a person has any true sense of the history of LGBTQ hate and discrimination.
Reps. Barney Frank and Gerry Studs
(undated photo)
Thirty years ago, I would have been embarrassed and appalled to learn someone so undeserving as George Santos got elected to Congress and refused to do the right thing and step down. Nowadays, it’s ridiculous for someone like Santos to make me feel any personal sense of shame. Clearly, doing the right thing is not in Santos’s playbook. Moreover, my gay identity is neither dented nor dinged because of someone like Santos. Thirty years ago, there were far fewer out-gay men, particularly in politics. Every move by gay Representatives Gerry Studs and Barney Frank mattered. (Indeed, both fell under scrutiny for sex scandals though each weathered the investigations and continued to be reelected to Congress.) We’re now in an era where, with the exceptions of country music and sports, coming out as a gay public figure warrants little, if any, attention in North America. Maybe a day of trending on Twitter alongside other topics like today’s popular fodder, #Conspiracy (yawn) and #TheLastOfUs (shrug…I don’t pay for its streaming channel). There are currently eleven other queer members of the House. More importantly, we can be proud of how brightly Pete Buttigieg shines in American politics.
I could question Santos’s gayness as some have. Apparently, it’s come out—no pun intended—that he was previously married to a woman. Further, his purported husband seems to have disappeared from public view, along with the wedding ring Santos wore. It’s clear that we don’t know who George Santos is. I’m not sure if even he knows.
If Santos is gay, so be it. That has nothing to do with why he needs to fade away. My frustration with political parties and the press don’t compare to my astonishment over George Santos himself and the lies he hath spun. He is ultimately responsible for the breadth of deceit. He must be held accountable.
May we forget him as quickly as we’ve erased another disgraced Republican congressman, Aaron Schock, who came out in 2020, five years after his resignation. Don’t Google him. Let him live in his newfound obscurity. Let that be Santos’s ultimate fate as well.
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