There’s No Greater Joy Than Watching Ted Cruz Humiliate Himself

All living things are born with a desire to watch Ted Cruz be humiliated. It is natural and ineluctable, like the need for air. Even if you agree 100 percent with everything Ted Cruz has ever said, you have still imagined a scenario in which you see him in real life, he is eating a bowl of cereal, and you push his face down into it. In these divided times, it is comforting to know we can all come down on the same side of one thing, even if that thing is, “Fuck that guy.”

But this week, our hunger to see Ted Cruz handed his ass was put to the test. How bad do you want it, the universe asked. Bad enough to watch Tucker Carlson do it?

Tucker Carlson did it. He did it on his Twitter video show, a few episodes after the one where he taste-tested various flavors of Zyn pouches. The dispute and corresponding Cruzmiliation was over whether the U.S. should enter the conflict between Israel and Iran. One of the relevant clips is here.

Oh, that is the stuff. I will admit I only lasted a few seconds looking at these gentlemen before I had to turn away, but then I could still hear their reedy, awful voices, so what I did was put it on mute, turn on the closed captioning, and put heavy electrical tape over every other part of my laptop screen. But still, you’ll agree this is very satisfying. It’s those Freddy vs. Jason movies, if those movies were good, and if those characters had worse faces.

It goes on for two hours (or so the legend goes; nobody will ever know for sure). Later in the interview, Cruz explains that his support for Israel dates back to his childhood, when he was taught in Sunday school that “those who bless Israel will be blessed.” I don’t want to call Ted Cruz a liar here, but I had Catholic parents just like he did, and what I learned in Sunday school was to color and be quiet. Also, at one point, Cruz says he hates communism, because his father was tortured in Cuba, and then almost as a throwaway, he adds, “I mean, he was tortured by Batista, but …” Great stuff.

Questions remain: If you look up the word “prissy” in the dictionary, which of these two faces will you see? What is the point of being Tucker Carlson—cast away from Fox News but still commanding a six-figure speaking fee—if you have to talk to Ted Cruz? Doesn’t Ted Cruz already have his own podcast to run his mouth on? (He does: Verdict with Ted Cruz. Not THE Verdict. Just Verdict. Any verdict. It’s listed on Apple Podcasts as a semi-weekly, but new episodes seem to come out every day). Isn’t he a United States Senator? Isn’t there a limited number of United States Senators? And isn’t this kind of an all-hands-on-deck moment for our government? (Actually, scratch that. If there is anyone who should be reading ad copy for Wayfair instead of governing, it’s this guy). Do you remember that thing where Ted Cruz sort of tried to hug someone on stage and ended up elbowing his wife in the face?

But perhaps the most important question of all: guys, can we go up one neck size on these shirts and see how we feel?

If it is true that the enemy of your enemy is your friend, then I guess we’re friends with Tucker Carlson now. Let’s hurry on through to the part where we don’t see each other very much anymore.

Now here’s some more of the news and the noise of the week.

Starting it off with this song by Real Estate.

Last weekend’s Trump parade cost anywhere between $25 million and $45 million, and that money has to come from somewhere. This week, The Department of Health and Human Services cut its $33 million annual funding of the Trevor Project’s LGBTQ-plus crisis intervention hotline. Today, a person in crisis can call the nationwide 988 crisis hotline, and if their issue is one of the many that are unique to the queer community, they can hit option 3 and speak with a Trevor Project counselor, who is trained in such issues. On July 17, that will stop.

The department’s rationale was that callers to the LGBTQ-plus-specific service were "encouraged to embrace radical gender ideology by ‘counselors’ without consent or knowledge of their parents,” which is a lot of ignorance to pack into thirteen words. The radical ideology is “don’t die.” Parents don’t know what anyone of any sexual or gender identity says on a crisis intervention hotline, because it’s required to remain confidential.

Anyway, the Trevor Project will continue its work, and its counselors will still take calls. They’ll just lose that federal funding, and queer people in crisis will have to know how to get to them directly, which is to call 866-488-7386 or text 678-678. Just one more obstacle for people in crisis, announced right in the middle of Pride Month, which is not an accident. Rotten.

That parade looked like a drag, by the way, and Charlie Pierce has already beautifully and brutally said everything that needs to be said about it. The only parade I want in my life is Prince’s 1986 soundtrack to Under The Cherry Moon, thank you.

Just to get all of Donald Trump’s janky Presidential showmanship out of the way at once, he has announced that he’ll be making a decision on whether the U.S. will get involved in the attack on Iran in two weeks. You get the sense that he wants to turn it into a prime time television special, like when LeBron James announced his decision to sign with the Miami Heat back in 2010. Will We? on ABC, sponsored by Carl’s Jr. and Screamin’ Freedom Oops All Tianeptine Energy Drink, with special musical guest the video for “Down With the Sickness” playing on someone’s laptop.

This collaboration is in many ways the anti-Carlson/Cruz. This single was released this week in honor of watchmaker Audemars Piguet’s 150th anniversary, as part of their AP x Music series. If it weren’t already the first day of summer, this song would remind you that pool party season has begun. Mark Ronson’s memoir Night People is out in September, and I would like it right now.

And now, a question from a reader.

“Why am I so skeptical of the Addison Rae hype train?” – @b1956d

Friend, you have done what all the world’s most exuberant podcast hosts have thus far failed to do: you have made me hit play on that new Addison Rae album. Here we go.

I will say that the answer to your question is age. When you are young, you are involved in the hype around the new pop thing by default. Whether you love it or hate it, pop music is youth culture, and you are youth. And then you get older, and your finger slips off the pulse, and you’re off to the side watching all the young people loving or hating something that feels slightly foreign to you. You think the young people must be kidding, or in some kind of mass delusion. You don’t feel the new thing at the cellular level, because you can’t. It’s not for you.

I’ll put it like this: When I was 12 years old, my friends and I used to hang out at the mall. We’d meet by the side door at Famous-Barr, the big anchor department store, and walk through it to the other shops. But to do that, we’d have to pass through Famous’s crystal section, with the fancy goblets and the fragile figurines. Our ears would ring as we passed through that section. Our teeth would be set on edge. Eventually we learned to go around it, but once, I walked through that section with my mom. I said, “Doesn’t this section drive you nuts?” She didn’t know what I was talking about. And then years later, I came to find out that it was common practice in department stores to wire that noise in, an unpleasant high frequency that only children’s ears can pick up, to keep kids from hanging out and potentially breaking some thousand-dollar Lladro porcelain unicorn.

Addison Rae is that tone, and you can’t hear it anymore. Or you’re biased against YouTubers. I deem this album perfectly fine so far, but I’m turning it off, because I can’t do a second thing while it’s playing. I will keep it in my back pocket should I find myself at one of those Lorde “What Was That” MDMA-in-the-back-garden gatherings.

Shouts to comedian Christian Finnegan and his excellent Substack New Music For Olds for putting me on to this one, from a Canadian singer-songwriter who is exactly up my alley.

Maybe the kids won’t find this as vexing as I do, but if you are an artist named Dora, releasing a song called “The Explorer” is only going to confuse me.

This trio of opera-trained pop singers released one of the great party albums of the century with 2023’s Silver. This is the title track from their next one, coming in October. Get on board, and see them live if you can.

“You Oughta Know” – Alanis Morissette

Jagged Little Pill was released thirty years ago this week. It took a bit to catch on in the States. It wasn’t until KROQ in Los Angeles started playing this song that it really caught fire. I was in New York in the summer of 1995, when the unquestioned song of the summer was Montell Jordan’s “This Is How We Do It.” But one hot summer Sunday in the Sheep Meadow, drinking Budweiser tallboys on a blanket with my friends, I heard “You Oughta Know” on a nearby boombox, and Alanis owned the following eighteen months.

The trailer for the Jeremy Allen White Springsteen movie came out this week, and I am cautiously optimistic, and so is my colleague Josh Rosenberg. But I would like to bring your attention to this: Deliver Me From Nowhere is based on the Springsteen biography of the same name, which was written by Warren Zanes, who was the guitarist for the Boston band The Del Fuegos, who deserved to be much bigger than they were.

Alright, one more question and we’re out.

“Song of Summer, Dave Holmes. Lay it on me.” – @so.this.is.annie

The situation is fluid, it is only the first day of summer, and an invitation to one of those Lorde MDMA garden parties could upend the standings. But so far, in this household, Bon Iver’s SABLE, fABLE album is the pool party soundtrack. We’re as surprised as you are. My favorite track changes by the day. But today, this track, about shaking off your sadness and toughening up for the challenges ahead, kind of nails the general mood, doesn’t it?