Eugene Robinson + George Santos: Matadors!

What?!? You Didn't Know? Right After Our Stints as Brain Surgeons!

Olé!!!!!!

“It’s not so much that I lie.” I’m looking him in the eyes when I say this. “It’s just that I tend to say stuff that doesn’t come true.”

Then that moment of quiet recognition wherein I have totally fulfilled the Tony Montana dictum of “even when I lie I tell the truth.” He knew I was lying, I knew that he knew, and even more importantly he knew that I knew that he knew.

But even then admitting to cuckolding a man with a gun seemed like something one should not tell the truth about. So, this is how opposed to it I am. That is, even under the imminent threat of death by extreme lead poisoning, I felt compelled to have the cake and eat it too. Mostly by refusing to tell what was almost a totally acceptable lie in light of my other extant moral failings. I couldn’t do it. Call it pride. And like Marcellus Wallace says in Pulp Fiction, “pride hurts.”

So, imagine my chagrin on being called a “liar” by a man who it turns out was a serial fabulist. It rankled and he knew it rankled mostly because of my understanding that liars are motivated by fear. And I’ve spent the greater portion of my life railing against fear as a guiding principle.

That and a belief that liars do so for very specific other reasons as well.

1] To make themselves look better.

2] To avoid punishment (see above).

3] To gain an unearned reward.

Santos is telling lies that practically gain him nothing, but in full Mount Everest fashion seem to occur just…well, just because they’re there.

For the taking.

Being beyond all of those things is harder than it seems though, and even still, I also secretly harbor a deep-seated respect for the inveterate pathological liar. Those who lie for sport. Or as a stand-up comedian whose name eludes me once claimed, “you ever have your brain trick you into telling a lie that gains you nothing?

‘You ever see ET?’ Someone might ask.

‘Yes,’ you might answer.”

Then the hack wind-up: “I have not ever seen, nor do I have plans to ever see ET.”

George Santos (not his real name, maybe), the U.S. representative for New York's 3rd congressional district, a district that includes part of northern Nassau County on Long Island and northeastern Queens, is that inveterate pathological liar. His hitting of all the rungs on the ladder of lies, while putting him on the other end of the spectrum where I feel most comfortable, fills me with a sort of bystanders deep respect and awe.

While there was a certain kind of jurisprudential genius behind Bill Clinton’s “well that depends on what your definition of ‘is’ is,” he was after all, a lawyer. As in really a lawyer. So, it is a professional affectation.

George Santos is a cryptid of another color, however.

His lie about claiming to be Jewish by admitting to have only said that he was “Jew-ish”? Chef’s kiss. And on from there the lies accrete: about both the high school and college that he went to, jobs he’s had, his campaign financing, his Burberry scarf, his being gay (or not), Brazilian (or not), him being a drag performer (or not), his mother dying during 9/11, his grandmother surviving the Holocaust (which, if anyone is asking, also goes for me: my grandmother rode out those terrible years in The Bronx), his employees dying (or not) in the Pulse nightclub shooting and finally, whether or not his name is even George Santos which, as Brazilian names go, is about as kosher as “Ivan the Spaniard.”

Santos digs deep with the kind of brio particular to The Age of Trump. In fact the nihilistic systematic denial of the reality of experience used so often whenever Trump opens his mouth has reached ET-denial levels of achievement. Santos is telling lies that practically gain him nothing, but in full Mount Everest fashion seem to occur just…well, just because they’re there.

For the taking.

…[L]ike Santos, he stands for both everything and nothing, and in his own man for all seasons way, is exactly and most precisely the avatar we deserve in 2023.

“If I had 10 divisions of those men, then our troubles would be over here very quickly,” said Col. Kurtz in Apocalypse Now and so it seems that with even half that number, a relatively enterprising young person could accomplish quite a lot. Then I remember that we have 434 other members of the House of Representatives, the body within which Santos is drawing committee assignments, and I, a modest rocket scientist, believe we can do nothing but hope that these hard-working functionaries generate the kind of magic Santos has convinced us is possible.

Because that’s where he delivers most and best of all. Santos is a true visionary, and sees not what is actually there, but that which he wishes was there. He’s a dreamer. Much like that other stalwart of a certain kind of greatness, Francesco Schettino.

Schettino, the former Captain of the Costa Concordia, on January 13, 2012, crashed his ship in the process of making a turn to impress his young girlfriend, and killing 32 people in the process. In the aftermath of the listing ship and passengers dying in the cold and the dark Schettino commandeered a lifeboat, that he apparently “accidentally” had fallen into and went home. When finally contacted and ordered back to the ship he stated that it was both too cold and dark to do so.

Dubbed “Captain Coward” by the press, the recorded phone calls of him refusing to return to the ship are pure gold and Schettino, for his part, said that daredevil maneuver that crashed the ship was a sail-by salute designed to pay homage to other mariners and to present passengers with a nice view.

He then went on to claim that he didn’t do this to impress the Moldovan dancer (and unpaid passenger) he had brought to the bridge and who he was having an affair with. Maybe. Moreover, Schettino said he had saved the lives of many after the ship hit the rock it hit and would have saved more had his crew not misunderstood and/or botched his orders.

Furthermore, the ship had defective generators. Flooding compartments also made things worse. These plus the sun in his eyes. And both Jews and Communists he suspected were to blame. Plus he saw a Black guy on the ship, and strongly feels he had something to do with it. Because, well, he’s Black, you know.

Schettino, the married father of one, was sentenced to 16 years in prison for a crime he almost, sort of kind of, unquestionably didn’t really commit.

And like Santos, he stands for both everything and nothing, and in his own man for all seasons way, is exactly and most precisely the avatar we deserve in 2023.

And you have my word on that.

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ANNOUNCEMENT: Apropos of assholishness in high places…TOMORROW, Monday, at 12:30 pm, PST, we continue with our twice monthly, 30 minute podcast BAD BOSS BRIEF. Subscribe and spend lunch hour laughing at bosses that challenge you to fistfights (true story).