Like Taylor Swift, the college acquaintances you haven’t spoken to in years, and your mom’s best friend, filmmaker Richard Linklater is getting in on the get out the vote action. Civic engagement, so hot right now! Linklater’s contribution is a new anti-Ted Cruz ad ahead of his race against Beto O’ Rourke, noted hot progressive skateboarder. He also has like, good policies and sh*t.
This moment of pettiness, meanness, partisanship, and division will be met by the kindness, courage, strength, leadership, and big heart of Texas. pic.twitter.com/6kAXZSRosS
— Beto O’Rourke (@BetoORourke) October 11, 2018
RealClearPolitics’ running poll has Cruz ahead by 6 points, which is disappointing since he is not only a misogynistic anti-abortion crusader but also probably the Zodiac killer. (But the polls also said Hillary would win so like, whatever.) Cruz continued to support Trump despite the fact that he insulted his wife and said his dad killed JFK (maybe?), which, according to this as, is not what a true Texan man would do. The ad aggressively relies on tropes of toxic masculinity to convince toxically masculine Texas men that Ted Cruz isn’t toxically masculine enough to truly represent them, which is an argument that feels a little more 1990 than 2018. Linklater is most famous for Dazed and Confused, so ok.
The ad mocks Cruz’s “Tough as Texas” slogan by calling out Cruz’s deeply weak response to Trump’s straight up savage takedowns of Cruz during the 2016 election. Which, again, were calling Cruz’s wife ugly and inexplicably insinuating that Cruz’s father was involved in the Kennedy assassination. (But again…maybe?)
Actor Sonny Carl Davis reprises his role from the film Bernie as an archetypal Texan man laying out the rules of Texas, but this time he’s talking about how Ted Cruz is not man enough to represent Texas, because he hasn’t tried to physically fight Trump. He says:
“If somebody called my wife a dog and said my daddy was in on the Kennedy assassination, I wouldn’t be kissing their ass,” Davis’s character says. “You stick a finger in their chest and give ’em a few choice words. Or you drag their ass out by the woodshed and kick their ass, Ted.”
To be honest, the sight of an elderly white man with a southern accent telling me to do anything is pretty triggering after the Kavanaugh hearings. In a state where the Latinx population increased by over 200,000 last year and the state population is expected to not be majority white by 2022, it’s unclear whether this is the best strategy. However, I’m always here for incitements to violence against Trump, so I’ll let it slide.
Watch the ad for yourself below:
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