John Donne To George Santos: "Never Send To Know For Whom The Bell Tolls; It Tolls For Thee"

Margaux Hemingway's Grandpa: “There’s no one thing that’s true. It’s all true.”

Did Kitara wear a girdle? Sorry, but people want to know.

I’m going to miss George Santos-- the exact same way I miss Madison Cawthorn. Between November 15, 2022 and today, Santos was tagged in 90 DWT posts. He stars in most of them. Dozens have his name in the title. A couple of days ago, in one of my favorite Santos posts, we looked at how his quest for cheap celebrity has borne fruit… just as his world is about to topple, if indeed it is about to topple.

On Friday he did a Twitter interview, likely one of his last interviews as a congressman, since he’ll almost certainly be expelled this week. He admitted that himself, in the process, calling Michael Guest (R-MS), the chair of the Ethics Committee, "a pussy." Santos said he knows he’s “going to get expelled when this expulsion resolution goes to the floor. I’ve done the math over and over, and it doesn't look really good.” I thought he would resign before being expelled. He says he won’t. I’m sure he’s gaming it out how it’ll look in the book/TV series/movie. He said, “You wanna expel me? I’ll wear it as a badge of honor,” adding “I’m through with the insanity of this place.” He doesn't have much choice but he also noted that--at least in his warped mind-- he went from being an ‘It Girl’ when he was elected to now being ‘the Mary Magdalene’ of Congress.

During the Twitter thing he said Congress is “felons galore” and filled with “people with all sorts of shiesty backgrounds,” calling unnamed colleagues “a bunch of hypocrites,” and accusing some of them of extramarital affairs, getting drunk with lobbyists who they have sex with and then missing votes due to hangovers, and handing out voting cards like “fucking candy” to allow others to vote on their behalf. Let’s hope that’s all in his book— or, better, that he turns state’s evidence. Remember, he may have something to add about how the Sam Bankman Fried bribery scheme worked, having been a recipient of some of that stolen loot himself.

He also claimed he might run for office again, although not soon— realistic since he’ll be in prison for quite some time— and not in New York. Where? Brazil? Or is there still have an arrest warrant out for him there? Who can keep track?

On Friday, Elizabeth Spiers penned a column for the NY Times, The Very Good Reason People Like George Santos Lie About Nonsense. She never really answered the implicit question but she did go beyond the regular truism about how all politicians are liars. “There’s a class of lying so extreme, however, that it exceeds [any] analytical framework. These aren’t lies about what a politician will do for voters; they’re lies about what the politician had for breakfast, what book he’s reading, whether he played on his college volleyball team. And I’m not talking just about George Santos.” She was also talking about NYC Mayor Eric Adams and, of course, Señor Trumpanzee, an acquaintance of whose “once said he’d lie about what time of day it was, just for the practice... Some of the lies are so petty that they’re funny. (I don’t know who started the rumor that Trump graduated at the top of his class at Wharton, but surely no one believes it.) But the sheer number of them make us numb to the offense— and, potentially, to more serious ethical infractions. No one reacts when Trump tells a lie because explaining ethics to Donald Trump feels like explaining existentialism to a chicken. And if you didn’t know he was a liar already, that’s your fault.”

Joan Of Snark

An opposition researcher once told me that politicians who hold office at the federal level are invariably a bit delusional. In campaign mode, they’re forced to tell a story about themselves that is idealized and laundered of flaws; eventually they tell that story so many times they begin to believe it. Some slip down the slope into bigger lies.

That’s an unfortunate and all too common arc, but the difference between those people and men like George Santos is that Santos never even started out with the truth. It’s reasonable to be skeptical of what all politicians say, in the same way that it’s reasonable to be skeptical of promises in advertising or impressions on a first date where both parties are on their best behavior. But the kind of lying we’re talking about here is toxic to the body politic. It fosters not healthy skepticism, but cynicism, and normalizes the idea that dishonesty is just the cost of doing business in politics.

There’s nothing wrong with having a laugh at the expense of these liars, especially when the lies are so absurd. Any parent who’s snickered when their child told an epic whopper understands this impulse, but we don’t let our children off the hook when they do it. It’s worth mustering up a little more outrage for the adult liars who’ve been elected to office and are custodians of their constituents’ welfare— and, when applicable, grounding them from public life.