How to Make a MAGA Payday
So close. He was so close to deserving sympathy.
Jared Schmeck could have been the pitiful victim of media vindictiveness. He could have been the poster boy for a journalist class way too high on its own supply of moral rectitude. Had he played his cards right, Schmeck could have parlayed his harassment into a bajillion-click story for the Bongino Report, or any other such right-wing content farms, and be done with it.
But he had to pick the lowest of low hanging fruit: yakking it up with a usurer turned populist. And he had to indulge in the passé fiction that Donald Trump was unjustly denied a second term. AND he had to use an innocent Christmas tradition to crudely mock the President.
OK, the last one was kind of funny. Reciting the minced oath “Let’s go, Brandon!” to Joe Biden directly took some nerve. Doing so at an event reserved for children to relate their gift wishes was the stuff of irreverent mid-00s Judd Apatow movies — in short, a brief burst of hilarity that, upon further consideration, loses its monkeyshine sheen.
That said, free speech is a cruel mistress. Mouthing off doesn’t come with built-in immunity. Talk sh*t, get hit, as urban urchins say. Jared effectively told a sitting president to fork off, a president whom nearly a third of the country voted for, and should have expected some consequences.
But tipping the left into histrionics is easier than catching Covid at an Ivermectin trade show. Schmeck’s little stunt sent the blue-checks into a gnawing tizzy. After the usual Twitter tone police denounced the jape with all the usual condemnations — trashy, unpatriotic, disrespectful, disgusting, “not who we are,” a poor role model for fathers of four everywhere — the usual attendant measure followed. Schmeck was doxxed, on Christmas Day no less. The King Herods got their man: death threats rained in right on cue.
It’s at this point the column should pivot to lamenting the too-easy accessibility, mass informational searchability, and virtual abolishment of privacy the internet has wrought. Singling out rogues for momentary lapses in civilized decorum, then ritual denunciation that inevitably leads to real-life threats, is one of the digital age’s recurrent features that makes any sensible person want to Paul Bunyan a few 5G towers. Scott Alexander, Justine Sacco, Amy Cooper, Lawrence Garbuz, Emmanuel Cafferty — the list of individuals who’ve had their life upsot by internet Pharisees may as well be on infinite scroll. The COVID-19 pandemic, with its ever-changing rules about shots and masks and physical distancing, has been a psychic boon to the sociopaths who get a kick out of torturing rule-breakers behind a screen.
But I’ll spare the reader my Luddism. For now.
Had Schmeck apologized for briefly hijacking the annual NORAD charade, he’d be viewed as a victim of shaming overstretch. More so had he kept his head down and his mouth mute. Even his uploading footage of the tele-prank to YouTube, like a tween girl livestreaming a Sephora unboxing, could be overlooked as cheap fame-mongering. But the MAGA was too strong with Jared. After pleading that he was by no means a Trumper, Schmeck did the rounds on Trump-friendly media, embracing the leftist caricature of a rabid red crank. “Donald Trump is my president and he should still be president right now,” he told Steve Bannon on the War Room podcast, head adorned with a MAGA hat. His declaration came after crying to the The Oregonian that he has “nothing against Mr. Biden” and meant “no disrespect.”
Seriously, who among us means no offense when bidding someone vaffanculo?
Schmeck also told the beaver broadsheet that he was by no means a “Trumper” but a “free-thinking American and follower of Jesus Christ,” which, to be fair, should have been a bright-red MAGA flag as to his real political allegiance. I don’t recall in which synoptic Gospel the Prince of Peace advised his disciples to troll Pontius Pilate on His Advent’s eve. Maybe it was in John.
Denying being a Trump fan, then coming out as a full-throated MAGAlyte days later doesn’t suggest a change of heart on Schmeck’s part. What started as an impish laugh line is now turning into the all-too-familiar outrage bait that keeps the Trumpyland social-media ecosystem buzzing. Schmeck seems intent on flipping his flavor-of-the-day gag into a career as a conservative “influencer,” as if the market isn’t saturated by cut-rate Insta-meme warriors already. He’s even mulling a run for public office — his platform presumably being that of a Trump sock puppet. We can already assume Charlie Kirk has mailed out an invitation for Schmeck to speak at the next Turning Point youth con. The only question is: will he be introduced as his baptismal name, or simply as the “Let’s Go Brandon Dad”?
Either way, he’ll dutifully recite his line to raucous cheers, remaining “a one-dimensional character with a silly catchphrase” who still cashes his stipend check all the same.
Judith Shklar warned that liberalism’s righteousness over victimhood could be its own sort of oppression. She didn’t mention that it could be transposed into a payday.
Between countless adversity-besting memoirs and blue-chip brands making multi-million-dollar donations to racial-equity efforts, oppression is fast becoming America’s biggest industry. Why shouldn’t MAGA get in on the take?
