{"id":130692,"date":"2018-11-06T12:18:15","date_gmt":"2018-11-06T17:18:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=130692"},"modified":"2018-11-06T12:39:20","modified_gmt":"2018-11-06T17:39:20","slug":"ted-cruz-erotica","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2018\/11\/06\/ted-cruz-erotica\/","title":{"rendered":"Ted Cruz Erotica"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Earlier this fall, I bought an erotic political novel meant as propaganda for a Ted Cruz presidency. Or, at least, that\u2019s how the book was packaged. A Cruzmas Carol<\/em><\/a> is Lacey Noonan\u2019s 2015 reimagining of A Christmas Carol<\/em>, in which the \u201cBathroom Attendants of Constitutionality Past, Present, and Future\u201d take Cruz on a madcap night of lewd hallucinations to convince him to run for president and save American democracy. \u201cHe\u2019s got it all,\u201d the novel\u2019s Amazon description reads. \u201cThe stunning good looks, the six-pack abs \u2026 the perfect record as a hard-balling, take-no-guff U.S. Senator. So why won\u2019t he run for president? \u2026 Why\u2019s he being such a Tedbenezer Scruz?\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Obviously Cruz has presidential ambitions, but who would eroticize this man? This was around the time that protesters chased Cruz from a fancy D.C. restaurant as one man jeered, \u201cBeto is way hotter than you, dude.\u201d Nobody seemed to be challenging this: Cruz himself has lately been trivializing Beto by drawing attention to his flawless hair. A brief perusal of Twitter suggests that Americans are aflame over Beto\u2019s hot DUI mugshot while fixated on Cruz\u2019s \u201csentient neck waddle\u201d and his cheeky embrace of the Zodiac killer (\u201cTed Cruz is the only person who pretends to be a serial killer to be more<\/em> likable\u201d). From where I\u2019m standing, Cruz is the anti-sex symbol of the United States Senate\u2014a charmless and diabolical wonk who derives pleasure from being brought \u201cto the brink\u201d only when it involves a shutdown of the federal government.<\/p>\n

Look, I\u2019ve seen The Century of the Self<\/em> and I\u2019ve read some Freud. I know that sex is supposed to be at the molten core of even the most coolheaded decisions. So an erotic novel about Ted Cruz seemed potentially revelatory, a sultry explanation of why Cruz is up five points in the polls. But alas, dear reader, you must visit Politico<\/a> for clarification on this. While smutty, A Cruzmas Carol<\/em> turns out to be neither erotic nor conservative propaganda at all.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

In fact, the novel is a ninety-page depraved humiliation of Ted Cruz, a gem of surrealist political satire. After two terms in the Senate, Cruz has decided to forego public service for a more lucrative life on K Street. At his retirement party, he plans to bone his chief of staff, Roberta \u201cBob\u201d Cratchit, but Roberta accidentally poisons him with an aphrodisiac oyster. In the bathroom, Karl Rove advises Cruz to \u201cGrab power by the short and curlies \u2026 while America is still hard for your hole,\u201d but when Cruz still refuses to run for president, Rove informs him that the ghostly Bathroom Attendants of Constitutionality Past, Present, and Future will soon teach him a lesson. As promised, the attendants whisk Cruz through a magical glory hole into debauched Republican fantasias (Roberta\u2019s asthmatic son Tiny Timmy being \u201cforced to give in to tyranny\u201d by signing up for Obamacare) that convince Cruz that it\u2019s his duty to run for president.<\/p>\n

Not a single moment in this novel could possibly be described as arousing. The aphrodisiac oyster is a \u201csea booger\u201d that is as \u201cunhappy \u2026 in Ted\u2019s belly as the poors were in federal housing.\u201d Cruz greedily imagines \u201cthe invisible hands of power [stuffing] seven figures into the \u2026 pants pockets that bulged now on either side of his immense and thickening manhood.\u201d Noonan writes of Cruz\u2019s \u201cmember of Congress,\u201d his \u201cWashington monument,\u201d his \u201clittle chief of staff,\u201d his \u201cRichard Milhous \u2018Tricky Dick\u2019 Nixon,\u201d and \u201ca lovely dark bush like amber waves of grain.\u201d Our thirty-sixth\u00a0president (a known pervert himself) receives special attention: at one point Cruz\u2019s \u201cjohnson had softened, like President Johnson on the poor,\u201d and at another, \u201chis President Johnson hardened with utmost urgency, as did President Johnson after the Gulf of Tonkin incident.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unappealing as all of this is, I think it\u2019s fitting that Noonan packages her book as erotica. Depicting Ted Cruz as a horny vulgarian implicitly compares his ruthless quest for power to sexual predation. Obviously this is partisan, but in Noonan\u2019s hands, sexual desire is an effective metaphor for the squalid illogic of some political beliefs (she has also penned two novels about an Obamacare-funded sex robot seducing conservative Connecticut housewives in defiance of their racist disgust). While I believe in dismantling bad ideas with good ones, sometimes outright dismissal works, too: through Noonan\u2019s eyes, the platitudes that undergird Cruz\u2019s policy agenda\u2014patriotism, freedom, honor\u2014seem to be merely kinky fetishes. My only caveat about\u00a0A Cruzmas Carol<\/i>\u00a0is that the fictional Cruz\u2019s bumbling indecision and vapidity may risk underestimating the politician, who\u00a0is a true believer with boundless ambition to shred American society and institutions. But Noonan\u2019s coupling of sexual and political vulgarity strikes me as a pitch-perfect encapsulation of the grotesque orgy of money, power, masculinity, and abuse that pervades Washington today.<\/p>\n

Although some argue that the absurdity of this political moment neutralizes the power of satire, I disagree. In A\u00a0Cruzmas Carol<\/i>\u2019s most lyrical passage, a bald eagle (the Bathroom Attendant of Constitutionality Present) flies over our nation\u2019s capital, taking a \u201csparkling\u201d and \u201cethereal\u201d shit on it all. It\u2019s a montage of city life: a CEO decides to move his factory to Bangladesh, \u201censuring life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for his shareholders,\u201d and a \u201csoon-to-be-previously gay man\u201d goes to conversion therapy so his \u201csin would drop away like the crust of a (homosexual) chrysalis,\u201d enabling him to \u201cmarry a beautiful woman and raise two point five beautiful children.\u201d Meanwhile, \u201cPresident Obama unfurled his secret prayer mat, lay it on the floor facing east and knelt down on it,\u201d while \u201cHarry Reid polished off a bill that would stifle innovation\u201d and \u201cHillary drew up plans for the assault on Benghazi\u201d (\u201cthe bird unloaded his butt-mud on them all\u201d).\u00a0Through its crass imagery, this passage reflects what are essentially the actual beliefs of many in power today, charging the novel\u2019s satire with urgent disgust.<\/p>\n

Over the past two years, the barrage of shocking and abhorrent political news has become a form of water torture. It\u2019s a dripping monotony that registers less as individual drips than as amorphous, excruciating pain. And while reporters are taught to be precise and measured in their language\u2014\u201cdemonstrable falsehoods\u201d<\/a> rather than \u201clies,\u201d \u201cracially charged comments\u201d rather than \u201cbigoted vitriol,\u201d and \u201cunconfirmed accusations\u201d rather than \u201cconspiracy theories\u201d\u2014erotica-cum-political satire has no such constraints. The stark depravity of A Cruzmas Carol<\/em> reminds us, bitterly, that our polite fictions and conscientious attempts at precision obscure the outrageous reality in which we all currently live\u2014a reality that is fit for semisurrealist novelty erotica.<\/p>\n

True to form, A Cruzmas Carol <\/em>ends with a warning. In the moment that Cruz embraces his duty to run for president, the toilet in the magical bathroom overflows, creating a Biblical flood that destroys America. Floating on a table towards the Chesapeake Bay, Cruz finally has sex with Roberta, sheltering inside her \u201clike a weary traveler in a good, honest American home, guarded against unlawful entry or the quartering of occupying armies by the Constitution of the United States.\u201d To be sure, Noonan\u2019s prose is about as purple as Beto needs Texas to be, but her point is unmistakable: in the midst of this patriotic copulation, the table is sinking under the waves. Today, I want you to imagine a different ending. That eagle with the ethereal shits is flying over the wreckage, shrieking, \u201cOh my God, please vote!\u201d<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sylvie\u00a0<\/span>McNamara lives in New York.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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