The Greatest Portrait of America Ever Taken
It happened during the GOP debate last night on MSNBC. Were you paying attention?
I would like to submit to you that this screengrab, which I saw on Gawker last night, is nothing less than the Greatest Portrait of America Ever Taken. And I will now make the case. To wit:
Front and center, Chris Matthews. Aka, Old White Male. Part politico, part celebrity, all punchable. To underscore the obvious, AN OLD WHITE MALE IS FRONT AND CENTER. Above him are two bits of signage: the word “hardball”, because BASEBALL (imagined American pasttime) but also, sort of, SEX (actual American pasttime). Over the other shoulder, “msnbc” — which represents the awkward (and ultimately unsuccessful) copulation of two huge American corporations: one in tech, the other in tv. Can any of this get more American? YES. Stay with me:
The OLD WHITE MALE is looking to his left, directing your attention to a True American Hero in bandana, mirrored aviators and bad facial hair, who took the night off from ranting on NASCAR fan forums only so he could unapologetically pose the one question worth asking on the eve of a political debate: “Is Joe Flacco a elite quaterback?” Because FOOTBALL. Also his posterized question contains a grammatical error in the use of the article “a” instead of “an”, because Americans is stupid and fuck you.
More subtly, his sign is missing the letter “r” from “quarterback”— this “r” stands for Race, which is notably missing from the white-washed crowd. (It’s in there, but the non-whites are no doubt being blocked and upstaged by the OLD WHITE MALE, just as in real life.)
Moving clockwise, at the bottom of the frame, we now observe a kid — possibly a woman (transgender is IN now thanks to Caitlyn so the ambiguity here is sublime) — wearing a baseball hat (national pasttime again) AND the same mirrored aviators and eat-my-ass expression as the Flacco Truther above. Are we done? Not by a mile.
Moving clockwise yet further, we see inscribed over the punchable OLD WHITE MALE the phrase “Debate Night in Cleveland”, which is being shat by one red elephant into the ass of another red elephant across the chest (yes, the HEARTLAND) of the OLD WHITE MALE. This is because, in America, EVERY night is “debate night in Cleveland”, which means meaningless verbiage is passed back and forth excrementally from one asshole to another in more or less an unending stream. Shall we go on? Of course, we must.
Moving into the lower left side of the masterpiece, we find two men kissing. One sort of reminds you of Seth Rogen (who recently helped assassinate the evil supreme leader of North Korea on screen) and seems to be wearing a Cleveland Cavaliers jersey, probably LeBron’s, because BASKETBALL (the third node of the American holy sports trinity) and also because LEBRON MOTHERFUCKING JAMES, aka “King James” — a nod to the overreaching oppressive imperial masters we threw off in the Revolution AND to the fact America is the current overreaching oppressive imperial master of the world and fuck you if you don’t like it.
But back to the two dudes kissing — GAY MARRIAGE IS LEGAL NOW MOTHERFUCKERS! sayeth they. By kissing. Because goddammit, America is a big tent with room for all, from dudes kissing to punchable OLD WHITE MALES to the non-whites they’re keeping out of the picture to redneck NFL fans who can’t write grammatically correct English.
Finally, there’s a cute kid on his dad’s shoulders wearing a dayglow yellow shirt who seems to be saying, “Follow me, for I am the light of the world.”
Like me, you may have spent the better part of your evening sitting through the GOP debate, hoping to extract from its clowny spectacle some kernel of truth about our weird, special country. When all along, you could have instead gazed at this miraculous image and in mere seconds gleaned the truth you were seeking: within the league of nations on this planet, America is a elite quaterback.
