The GOP Wishes He Would Be More Like Madison Cawthorn: Invisible
When Madison Cawthorn kept making unwelcome noise on Capitol Hill and then ratted out Patrick McHenry for inviting him to a (two-man) orgy, he was effectively banished by the Republican Establishment. And he’s pretty much stayed banished. He moved to a $1.1 million house in Cape Coral, Florida and— at least so far— disappeared (and lost his good looks).
George Santos, on the other hand, has no intention of disappearing… at least not ’til he’s behind bars. Trial starts in September. Meanwhile, he claims he’s raking in the dough by making Cameo videos. He’s exaggerating how much he’s making— I mean he is George Santos— but his price has gone up from $75 to $150 to $200, $300, $400 and now $600. Over the weekend, he was hanging out in NYC at a fascist gathering with Lauren Boebert and Byron Donalds; he even picked up the tab. He was on the local CBS affiliate too and it’s pretty entertaining. Take a look:
He talked a bit about not wanting to go to prison and about his openness to a plea. But what does he have to offer? He was fuzzy. Snitching on Nicole Malliotakis, the Staten Island congresswoman, for making trades based on inside information, isn’t going to do it. He says he has plenty more to offer.
And then late yesterday CNBC reported that his talk about a plea deal was more than just chit-chat with a friendly TV anchor. “Federal prosecutors on Monday said in a court filing that they are ‘engaged in plea negotiations’ with [him] to potentially resolve his pending criminal fraud case,” reported Dan Mangan… ‘The parties are presently engaged in plea negotiations with the goal of resolving this matter without the need for a trial,’ prosecutors wrote. ‘The parties wish to continue those negotiations over the next thirty days.’” Still nothing about what he could offer the feds to settle the case without a long jail term.
I doubt we’ll find out from the upcoming Ziwe interview either. People treated him like just another celebrity, reporting that he “for an interview with satirical talk show host Ziwe on Monday. The comedian— known for her confrontational, no-holds-barred interviews with ‘iconic guests’— posted apparent photo evidence of their sit-down on her social media accounts after the two publicly flirted with the idea earlier this month. In Ziwe's first photo, Santos is pictured wearing a blue blazer and carrying what appears to be an Hermès Birkin bag with stacks of cash hanging out of it... Since leaving office, Santos has made light of the allegations, including on Ziwe's set, with the Hermès bag (it's unclear if the bag is real or faux).”
Not everyone is amused. Yesterday Charles Warzel suggested that Atlantic readers stop paying him for clout. “No matter how silly or fun the videos appear,” he wrote, “they are also gross and depressing. Like Rudy Giuliani’s appearance on The Masked Singer or Sean Spicer’s turn on Dancing With the Stars, Santos’ success on Cameo is another example of American politics’ cynical descent into a spectacle that seems more concerned with big personalities and drama than with effective governance. That people are happy to shell out hundreds of dollars for a 30-second video from a politician who is currently facing 23 federal charges (including identity theft, theft of public funds, money laundering, and wire fraud) is proof of a general desensitization toward corruption, provided it is entertaining enough… Perhaps most disheartening is the Fetterman example. From a public-relations standpoint, commissioning a recording from Santos is a smart move—Fetterman’s post with the video has more than 7 million views on Twitter alone. But paying your disgraced former colleague to help with your social-media strategy has a secondary price: It makes it harder to take Fetterman himself seriously. No matter his staff’s intention, highlighting a Santos clip only manages to link the two lawmakers together in a joint bid for attention.”
Interesting. I wanted to do one for one of the Blue America candidates and the response was a flat “thanks, but no thanks.” She wanted nothing to do with Santos and felt being connected with him in any way would damage her campaign. Apparently Warzel agrees.
Cameos don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re meant to be shared online. As NBC News reported this weekend, online influencers are buying Santos’s videos to grow their own accounts. The strategy is easy: Get Santos to say something absurd, post it to their social feeds, and harvest likes, reposts, and follows. In this sense, Santos is offering a valuable and all-too-rare internet service in the form of premade, zeitgeisty, ready-to-go-viral content. This proposition has proved irresistible not just for influencers but for politicians who should know better— and for Kimmel, who has spent considerable time moralizing about politics in his nightly monologues.
Yes, these videos ostensibly exist to make fun of Santos. Fetterman’s team likely bought the Cameo because it was a quick way to make a point about an issue his office cares about: corruption in the Senate. Kimmel’s broader point seems to be that politicians like Santos will do anything for money or fame. Almost every Santos Cameo post I’ve seen is winking or ironic.
But this isn’t how things work anymore. The logic of these Cameo purchasers is from a different era, when shamelessness wasn’t a superpower. That time is long gone, replaced by an internet where platforms give an attentional advantage to the individuals who excel at manufacturing drama or outrage. Whether from Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Real Housewives, or your garden-variety main character of the day, shamelessness is not a road that leads to ostracism. It is a shortcut to notoriety, however fleeting. If you’re unwilling to admit defeat, any reaction online is a good reaction.
The most valuable resource in our culture is attention. You cannot manufacture more of it; you can only compete for the finite amounts that exist, which makes it unfathomably precious. And it’s not just politicians who cultivate this attention, of course. The clamor for attention has sucked in the entire media ecosystem. Being able to attract attention, even for being shameless, deplorable, or unserious, is like a cheat code— a surefire way to receive coverage. That newsworthiness then justifies more attention. Rinse and repeat.
Pushing back against this attentional cycle makes me seem like a miserable scold, I know. But to participate in this cycle, even ironically, is to perpetuate it. Santos’s Cameo popularity reflects a tricky circular logic. As a lawmaker, he embodied a moral rot in our politics that leaves us feeling powerless. Paying him to dance for us feels like clawing back a little of that power. But for Santos, the opposite is actually true: Though it is quieter and less satisfying, denying him the attention he seeks would be a far more effective way to exert your power. In order to push back against the very system that led Santos into a position of authority, we need to learn to stop giving attention hijackers what they desire. The absolute worst-case scenario for Santos is not mockery— honestly, it might not even be jail time. It’s becoming irrelevant.
Breaking this cycle doesn’t require taking some grand, self-important moral stand. Withholding attention is deceptively simple: You just need to ignore people acting in bad faith and redirect your focus to … anything else! The internet is positively teeming with enjoyable things to do.
