Manhood, a new documentary about “girth enhancement,” explores how wellness professionals are encouraging men to undergo increasingly extreme procedures to be sexually desirable.
The awkward comedian’s performance on ‘The Celebrity Traitors’ has made him into the internet’s latest crush. His time in the spotlight, writes Isobel Lewis, has come after years of clever, disorientating stand-up that often leaves his fans wondering about who the man underneath the jokes truly is
The meme appeared to reference gender-swapping “Malfoid” fan fiction, a term with incel roots. When asked about it, the DOE responded by quoting Dumbledore.
The ad plays out of context clips of three women of color (Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y.; Rep. Ilhan Omar D-Minn.; and “The View” co-host Sunny Hostin) speaking about race, cut together with a horror movie aesthetic. Then comes the ad’s real message: “Today’s liberals are full of hate. They hate America. They’re obsessed with skin color,” says an unnamed female narrator obscured by shadow. “I can’t even show my face, because my skin is white and they’ll spew hate at me,” she laments.
If “liberals are the new racists,” according to America Next, who are the old racists? Maybe it’s the people at the highest positions of power and influence in the Grand Old Party and the MAGA movement?
New York Times reporter Ken Bensinger posted to X that the ad was paid for by America Next, a PAC created by former Republican Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal. According to its website, America Next is “not focused on elections” but rather “winning the war of ideas.” Bensinger also cited Federal Elections Commission data showing America Next paid $250,000 to a firm called Breakthrough LLC for the specific purpose of “opposition” to the Democratic candidate for Senate in Michigan, Abdul El-Sayed. The Guardian reported that Breakthrough was founded by former Jindal aide Timmy Teepell, whose son Tommy went viral after asking El-Sayed if he’d denounce the Muslim Brotherhood at a campaign event earlier in October. (Neither of the Teepells, nor America Next responded to The Guardian’s request for comment.)
It’s particularly ironic for Jindal, the son of immigrants from India, to bankroll an ad accusing the left of being “racist” and “obsessed with skin color.” It has, after all, only been a month since MAGA’s recent heated debate over whether Indian Americans can ever be “real Americans,” which was sparked by a Republican candidate’s outrage at a photo of nonwhite University of Texas football fans.
On Wednesday, the Trump War Room X account (the Trump White House’s more overtly political account) quote-posted an official White House account post warning, “The chaos, looting, and destruction we’re watching [in France] is exactly the future radical Democrats are pushing for America.” To drive home its point, the War Room account posted a photo of Trump with the caption, “Which way Western Man?”
For the uninitiated, “Which Way, Western Man?” is the title of a book published in 1978 that has become a foundational text for the neo-Nazi movement. It praises Adolf Hitler, advocates for violence against Jews and Blacks; quotes liberally from the antisemitic forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion;” and likens birth control to “the knife by which [the] civilized White man is cutting his own throat.” (That line, in particular, is evocative of a post Charlie Kirk wrote the day before his assassination: “Islam is the sword the left is using to slit the throat of America.”)
It must be said that this is hardly the first time the Trump administration has embraced Nazi sloganeering in its political outreach. The Department of Homeland Security has already put many “Which way Western Man” posts on the internet. It even used the white supremacist marching song “By God We’ll Have Our Home Again” on its social media accounts back in January.
But if “liberals are the new racists,” according to America Next, who are the old racists? Maybe it’s the people at the highest positions of power and influence in the Grand Old Party and the MAGA movement?
For the uninitiated, “Which Way, Western Man?” is the title of a book published in 1978 that has become a foundational text for the neo-Nazi movement. It praises Adolf Hitler, advocates for violence against Jews and Blacks and quotes liberally from the antisemitic forgery, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.”
At a GOP get-out-the-vote rally in Michigan on Monday, Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. — noted anti-vax maniac and serial fabulist — went on a fact-bereft and racist rant seemingly directed at El-Sayed, saying, “There are five hundred million Arabs in the world. And yet they don’t produce science … They don’t win the Nobel Prize. They don’t win the Fields Medal. They don’t win the Wolf Prize.”
Two days later the Libs of TikTok X account — which is so influential on the White House that Reuters noted its “symbiosis” with the administration has “has triggered harassment and threats” — posted a photo of four Black high school students with the caption: “St. Cloud Area Schools in MN announces students chosen for an award. What do you notice?” As vile as it is for Libs of TikTok to draw children into its culture war obsessions, the obvious implication is that the Black students are undeserving. There’s a word for that.
And, of course, Trump in recent weeks has filled his campaign rallies with rank racism. Whether it’s repeatedly calling Somalis “low IQ” or referring to El-Sayed as “Abduladadalalalala” or using an antisemitic slur to defend Kansas Sen. Roger Marshall — Trump is very comfortable in his own skin as an old-school bigot.
While trying to frame anyone but themselves as racist, Trump and his MAGA allies dig ever deeper into the swamps of prejudice, then laugh about it. On Thursday, the White House posted an image of a pumpkin with a sombrero carved into it, and a caption reading, “Spooky szn is here.”
It’s an obvious troll meant to signal that Mexicans are scary, with the added goofy internet meme lingo deployed to soften the delivery. But fear and hatred of the other is the message — and normalizing racism is the point.
When former President Barack Obama said on the campaign trail last week that President Trump had redesigned the White House to look “like Sadaam Hussein opened a Cheesecake Factory,” he obviously hit a nerve. Trump and his aggrieved supporters have spent the time since deliberately distorting what Obama said to suggest that he was attacking the restaurant and the people who eat there and not Trump himself.
Politicians have always used food to project a relatable image — like you can trust me because I eat just like you; we belong to the same culinary tribe.
To be clear, this fight is about more than the recently gilded cherubs in the Oval Office or the Oreo Dream Extreme Cheesecake at the restaurant conservatives are defending. Fights over taste — who has it, who lacks it and whose tastes make them out of touch — are never about aesthetic preference alone. Politicians have always used food to project a relatable image – like you can trust me because I eat just like you; we belong to the same culinary tribe. It’s why we see so many candidates staging photo ops at the state fair showing them eating food popular in that area.
French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu in “Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste,” stressed that differences in taste, including what we like to eat and how we style ourselves and our homes, don’t come out of nowhere, but are products of our class position and the cultural environments we were raised in, and can be expressions of power. So, to mock another person’s style is to mock their whole way of being and that of their community. Because Trump prompts his supporters to see attacks on him as attacks on them, Obama’s joke about a president worth an estimated $7 billion is being twisted into an attack on the everyman.
But Obama’s joke was about a person, not a group of people. Well, maybe it is about a group: narcissistic heads of state who use opulence to project power, wealth and might. As Obama later pointed out, Trump didn’t chafe at being likened to a brutal dictator responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths. Nor did he seem to take offense at Obama accusing his administration of an unprecedented amount of corruption. He and his supporters want the public to believe Obama was belittling The Cheesecake Factory, one of the most popular restaurants in America.
Obama knows better than to do that. Like a good comedian, he succeeded at making a joke that mentioned a beloved eatery without making the people who eat there the butt of the joke. He was right to trust that anybody who has been to The Cheesecake Factory knows the décor is over the top, intentionally so, as it blends ancient Egyptian references with Victorian and French Rococo. On top of that, the menu contains more than 250 items. The Cheesecake Factory is a celebration of abundance — with portion sizes to match. That may make sense for a restaurant — but not so much for the White House.
The Iraqi dictator built more than 100 palaces during his reign, and a 2003 NBC News story described them as “gold-plated living memorials.”
Obama’s joke was a sophisticated way of calling Trump authoritarian, wasteful and tacky. I think Trump’s supporters know that, but they also know it’s easier to fall back on a tired trope that Barack Obama, and the Democratic Party, are out of touch than it is to defend Trump’s wasteful and authoritarian ways. And they certainly can’t defend him against the perception that he is tacky. Remember the NFT trading cards he marketed that depict him as a superhero, cowboy and astronaut?
During this first year in the White House, Obama’s critics dubbed him “President Poupon” for ordering a hamburger with Dijon mustard. He may never beat the “elite” charges. But it’s not elitist to say the White House shouldn’t be gilded in gold. None of us would care if Trump draws inspiration from Versailles for his private residences, but the White House belongs to all of us, and its design and decoration ought not overwhelm, intimidate or make others feel small. Nothing the president designs should make us think of The Cheesecake Factory — or Saddam Hussein.
With just seven players left in the hit BBC show – including the two Traitors in the turret – Ellie Harrison looks at who wields the most power in Ardross Castle
The awkward comedian’s performance on ‘The Celebrity Traitors’ has made him into the internet’s latest crush. His time in the spotlight, writes Isobel Lewis, has come after years of clever, disorientating stand-up that often leaves his fans wondering about who the man underneath the jokes truly is
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