Like many others, I have enjoyed laughing at the disgraced Republican congressman George Santos over the last few years. Hell, I’ve even maintained a running tally of his most brazen lies on this very website. I’m not above taking pleasure in the buffoonery of bad people – you’d have to be a fool to deny that Donald Trump, for instance, is one of the funniest tweeters of all time. But I’m worried that we are tipping over from laughing at George Santos to laughing with him. Now that he has been expelled from Congress, we can’t allow him to be embraced as a “gay icon” – however ironic it may be, the check will cash just the same. 

Since his exit from Congress earlier this week, Santos has already begun scoping out new opportunities and attempting to launch himself as a public figure. On Cameo, he is charging $200 for personalised videos (options include ‘gossip’, ‘roasting’ and ‘pep talk’), and people have already taken him up on this offer as a joke. A friend of Nebraska senator Megan Hunt, who is a socialist and supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, hired him to send her a message of support: “Be yourself unapologetically,” he said. “Just love yourself. Just make sure that you don’t buy into the hate and stand your ground and don’t let them force you out. Don’t let them bully you. You do you, girl. I’m cheering for ya.”

Santos has previously endorsed many of the anti-trans policies that Hunt has been fighting in her home state, but at the end of the day, he got paid $200 to send this message – so is the joke really on him? When deciding whether to join the platform, do we think he didn’t factor in the potential revenue from pranks like this?

In the same week, HBO has optioned the rights to a book based on his life, with a producer of Veep reportedly attached; this is likely to be a political sitcom that focuses on the absurd, comical aspects of his career. Talk show host Ziwe, meanwhile, has invited Santos to take part in a pay-per-view interview. Because Ziwe’s style is intentionally hostile, satirical and antagonistic, many of her fans seem to think this will be a richly deserved comeuppance for Santos – she’ll tear him to shreds! While this may be true, this is not someone who cares about being the object of mockery or looking like a fool. He seems to thrive on attention, negative or positive, and he probably needs the money. The real comeuppance would be for everyone to ignore him.

I understand that people are joking when they describe him as a “gay icon”, as comedian Louis Virtle did on Jimmy Kimmel, while also referring to him as a “‘bumblefuck little goblin boy who dresses like a three-year-old”. Rather than being an expression of admiration, it’s a way of mocking both him and poking fun at ourselves: “Lying is built into the gay experience,” as Virtle said. On a more serious note, Mexican writer and filmmaker Leo Herrera argued that Santos is like a mirror held up to the darkest aspects of the queer experience. He wrote: “​We’ve all known George: the homely Gay making a fool of himself for attention, the one who embellishes (lies) at brunch, who maxes out their credit on luxury or the closet meth addict who steals. George is endearing because he embodies a pathetic and familiar kind of queerness, the worst of the gay id [...] he’s also a traitor.”

Because Santos’s antics are so outlandish, it can be easy to forget that his politics are as bad as any other Republican politician (in fact, he is aligned with the right of the party, which is saying something). He has described police brutality as a “made-up concept”, has compared abortion to slavery, and has endorsed anti-LGBTQ+ policies which target the rights of gay and trans people alike. He is also an enthusiastic supporter of Israel and an opponent of the BDS movement, who recently screamed at a pro-Palestine supporter that they are a “fucking terrorist sympathiser”. There is nothing wacky, eccentric or endearing about his worldview, which is entirely in line with the most reactionary elements of American society.

Even if we are ‘stanning’ George Santos in the most disdainful, sarcastic way possible, it’s easy to see how he will be able to parlay this attention into a career. But the more that Santos himself is in on the joke, the less funny it becomes. It’s one thing for us to describe him as a ‘diva’, but it’s a lot less endearing now that this is a brand that he is cultivating himself. Apart from anything, it’s just kind of boring now. We should follow the lead of Congress and expel him from our minds.

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