What’s the worst thing that can happen to a serious person?
If you said “become a figure of ridicule,” you nailed it.
The terms we have to describe it — jerkoff, jagoff, etc. — don’t really get it done. Anything with “jerk” in it that’s not Jamaican food or a weightlifting term implies a certain amount of meanness. “Jagoff” implies idiocy.
Our English friends have a much better term for it.
Wanker.
If someone is generally regarded as a wanker, there’s no way back from that.
Chris Christie took a one-way trip to Wankerville in the summer of 2017 when he used his power as governor of New Jersey to shut down an ocean beach over the Fourth of July weekend and then used his prerogatives to spend time on that beach with his family.
The resulting meme of Christie in his beach chair showed up in all sorts of humorous photos, and Christie was basically finished.
One humorous figure who managed to escape ridicule for the most part was Bernie Sanders. The Vermont senator showed up for President Biden’s inauguration in full winter gear. When people joked about, Sanders laughed with them and said he was just trying to keep warm.
Sanders is not a wanker.
But just as you’re “it” in a game of tag till you can catch someone else, the No. 1 wanker remains in his post till someone outwanks him. Christie was finally replaced this week by America’s favorite Cuban-Canadian, Rafael Edward “Ted” Cruz of Texas.
Cruz is what might result if Fidel Castro and Justin Bieber had a child. And when he aroused America’s ire by taking his family to a Mexican resort to escape the Texas freeze, he only thought he was taking them to Cancun.
His true destination was Wankun.
Just as the meme of Christie had him in a chair and Sanders’ meme was all about the mittens, the photo that captured Cruz at his funniest was him pulling a small suitcase across an airport concourse. Couple that with the fact that we landed a rover on Marsh that sent back photos and you have the meme at the beginning of this piece.
Cruz doubtless knows he’ll never be president.
He may also know he needs to start looking for a landing place when his Senate term expires.
Once you’ve been outed as a wanker …