The Chris Moeller Archives

A vested interest

Republicans have got to rally together and chase Rick Santorum out of the presidential race. He's single-handedly ruining the sweater vest look.

I picked up a pre-owned v-neck, argyle sweater vest for a '20s theme party a year and a half ago-- and I look terrific in it. It works on me in a sort of a retro-ironic way, befitting my unique-- some say daring-- personality. (It also helps that I have great hair and cheekbones.) My sweater vest is functional too, less restrictive than a full, itchy pullover sweater, which I cannot abide, and it can be paired with a white dress shirt that makes my skin tone look darker, and that I don't have to iron if it's worn underneath a sweater vest.

Rick Santorum might just be America's un-coolest man. His level of uncool is so off-the-charts high that it's drowning the irony. He's the subject or target of most good recently-written jokes and google-bomb efforts. (A growing percentage of the jibes are even sweater vest-related.) He's the Anita Bryant of his generation. In matters of sex, one of the coolest pastimes that a person can engage in, he's compared homosexuality to bestiality and pedophilia, and he's opposed to legal contraception because it provides "a license to do things in a sexual realm that is counter to how things are supposed to be." He even advocates criminal statutes against adultery.

He doesn't even look good wearing the vest. He's aiming for some bullshit, '50s TV dad, "father always knows best," patriarchal image that's designed to engender the support of that far-right 10% of frightened, uneducated voters that pine for the ordered, sexist, anti-sexual pleasure version of mid-century America that never even existed. If you've caught a glimpse of Candidate Santorum on television recently, or were an Iowan stuck behind him at any point at a restaurant cash register in 2011, you know that he's much more pear-shaped now than he was when Dan Savage made him famous. My budding fashion identity for this decade is being stifled by an angrier, more hate-filled Ned Flanders, an ass-backward clod with birthing hips!

Republicans, I'm giving you until Super Tuesday to bury this guy. I want all news cameras moved away from Rick Santorum-- and as quickly as possible. If I see that he garners even 10% of the vote today in South Carolina, I'm going to be pissed. If I see that he has added a necktie to his ensemble, I'm driving down there.

posted by CM @ 2:28 PM