Hi, I'm George Santos (or am I?)

My name is George Santos* and I’m so excited to take my seat in the House of Representatives today! While today is a day of celebration, I am aware that there are a few little inconsistencies in my biography. I’d like to address those all today and clear the air. There is a simple explanation for each.

 

First, let me clear up the question of my employment. People heard me say I worked for “Goldman Sachs” and “Citigroup.” I’m afraid this was a case of people mishearing what I said. I actually worked for Goldman Sax, a mom-and-pop business that sells saxophones. I also worked for City Group, a monorail sales company, where I’ve sold monorails to Brockway, Ogdenville, and North Haverbrook. People need to listen closer.

 

I also said I went to Baruch College, New York University, and Horace Mann prep school. I actually got my GED and didn’t go to college. But who doesn’t embellish their resume just a little? Is it really an ethical problem to tell a prospective employer you graduated when you didn’t?

 

I also claimed my avó survived the Holocaust. I guess I misspoke but I did watch Shoah—well, most of it. Doesn’t that count? I’ve used the name Zabrovsky in the past but we’re not actually Ukrainian or Jewish at all. I guess I was just caught up in all the pro-Ukraine fervor when Russia invaded. But my heart was in the right place.

 

While I’m on the subject of my racial and ethnic background, I am of Brazilian descent, not Caucasian and African, as I once said. Here’s my thought process on this: Africa is the cradle of humanity, so in a sense, we all came from that continent, right?

 

No, my mother did not survive being at the Twin Towers on 9/11. But really, didn’t we all survive 9/11? It was something we all went through and it brought the whole country together.

 

It’s also come out that despite claiming falsely that I own a bunch of real estate, that I’ve been evicted multiple times and caused thousands of dollars in damages to the places I’ve lived in. I’d like to take this moment to distract everyone by saying this: landlords—UGH, am I right?

 

Some people might say that despite being gay, I never revealed until recently that I had been married to a woman. What is true is that I’ve always been proud to be gay and to support the LGBTQ community. That’s what I’ve found a home in the Republican Party, where an impressive 39 GOP House members—nearly 20 percent of the caucus—voted to protect my apparent current marriage with my husband.

 

Now, there have also been reports that I self-funded my campaign with $700,000, despite having recently reported $50,000 in income and no assets. There is also a report that I spent $43,000 on air travel for my campaign, which might seem excessive when running for a geographically small district on Long Island. Pay no attention to any of these. I’ll explain them in two weeks. There’s no reason for anyone to think this was money laundering. None at all.

 

Here's who I am: I’m a hard worker who’s going to do the best for his constituents, and I also invented Post-It notes. You can trust me on that or my name isn’t George Santos.*

 

* Devolder

Television Programs I Enjoyed in 2022

TV shows I liked this year but just don’t have anything to say about: The Patient, She-Hulk: Attorney at Law, Derry Girls, Moon Knight, Obi-Wan Kenobi, Russian Doll, Grace and Frankie, Letterkenny, What We Do in the Shadows, Umbrella Academy, Shoresy, Upload, The Boys, Dead to Me.

 

13. House of the Dragon. … I mean, it was OK. I appreciate that establishing so much up front and jumping through time is probably difficult to do conceptually. I thought it got better at the end and the one nice little touch I liked was Alicent protecting her son from the roaring dragon, and Rhaenys choosing to spare the royal court. I probably shouldn’t judge a show on what it’s not but I can’t help seeing how much Game of Thrones had that House of the Dragon is missing. They don’t yet have any characters who are as enormously watchable as, for example, Cersei. They also don’t yet have the scope of the former show—right now we’re only seeing the Targaryens, the Velaryons and the Hightowers, and I miss the multiple houses and characters of Game of Thrones. It also misses the humor of the previous series. But I’m down for seeing how this evolves.

 

12. The Crown. There was a noticeable dip in quality this season. Imelda Staunton just didn’t do it for me as Queen Elizabeth II (Claire Foy and Olivia Colman were both tough acts to follow), although I did like Jonathan Pryce as Prince Philip and Elizabeth Debicki, uncanny as Princess Diana. This was probably the most soap opera season, so maybe it demanded some soap opera–level writing, but some of it was ridiculous. Did Diana really tell randos about the state of her marriage? Did John Major really consider all the royal divorces happening in 1992 and ominously say how it was all about to come crashing down? I had mixed opinions on some of the more standalone episodes. I really did not need a whole episode on the Al Fayeds and certainly didn’t need to spend any more time with the Nazi sympathizers in the House of Windsor. However, I did enjoy the episode and history lesson about the Romanovs. Still, this was mostly fun and gossipy.

 

11. Kevin Can F*ck Himself. It was a pretty clear-eyed way to take a look at these characters and end this short series. The final reveal of what Kevin is like in the non-sitcom world was chilling and showed him as abusive without being over the top. Having Erinn Hayes, who was unceremoniously kicked off Kevin Can Wait—the inspiration for Kevin Can F*ck Himself—was deliciously petty. The pleasant surprise was Alex Bonifer as Neil. I was not expecting to be moved so much by his struggle with alcoholism and trying to break free from Kevin’s abusive influence.

 

10. Ms. Marvel. I don’t know much about the Ms. Marvel of the comics (the new one, not Carol Danvers) but this was a joy to watch, enlivened by a quirky animation style. I really appreciated the deeper look into the Pakistani Muslim community. You don’t often see things like the history of the Partition or a Muslim wedding on TV, and I was grateful that I could.

 

9. Stranger Things. A little bloated—hey, Netflix, those of us with kids want episodes under two hours to watch on a school night—but I got caught up in the epic of it all.

 

8. The Dropout. Amanda Seyfried got a well-deserved Emmy playing the Theranos fraudster, and deeply odd person, Elizabeth Holmes. I knew the broad strokes of this scandal and I was fascinated to learn the whole sordid truth.

 

7. The January 6 Committee Hearings. In addition to being tremendously important for our democracy, the House committee presented the insurrection attempt as compelling television. The clips from that day made me relive the same sick anger I felt when I watched it live. I was riveted by the testimony, particularly the shocking bits I learned about how Trump knew the crowd was armed but didn’t want to subject them to metal detectors because “they weren’t there to hurt (him).” Like many dark TV shows, there was a little levity, like the clip of Sen. Hawley showing an approving fist at the seditionists before running away from them like a little bitch. I take this very seriously, so I hope I don’t sound shallow when I say this was great TV.

 

6. Ozark. We binged this whole series this year, and I mostly loved it, but I’m still not sure how I feel about the finale. I had wanted Marty and Wendy to get a little more comeuppance, or at least have some self-awareness that as much as they preach to their kids that they only want to protect them, their parents are the ones who put them in danger in the first place. It was funny to see how full of shit Wendy was for four seasons of saying once they had enough money, they could focus on the issues she really cared about, but she never once did anything about those issues or even articulated them—like, you could have just cared about your causes anyway, without the drug money. Ozark did suffer in losing some compelling characters along the way, like Helen and Darlene. Darlene was a moral catastrophe but she did have a point about the how the land and its beauty were more precious than any development on it, and I missed that perspective. I was also hoping Ruth would get a happier ending, but she never did see that pool get built. Julia Garner burned through the TV in every scene she was in, and she earned every Emmy she got. She’s a hell of an actress.

 

5. White Lotus: Sicily. Tanya lived an operatic life and it was fitting that she died after an operatic shootout, and also fitting that her actual death was the result of a pratfall. As great as Jennifer Coolidge was in this role, it would have gotten old if she’d come back again. As blatant a show as White Lotus is, I was struck by how elliptical some of it was: we’ll never really know if Aubrey Plaza (love her) wasn’t telling the entire truth about her encounter with Cameron, or what happened between Daphne and Ethan on that island. Meghann Fahy gave my favorite performance of the show. I loved the delicious little exchange when she “accidentally” showed Harper the picture of her kids with a little “Whoopsie,” implying that the mistake wasn’t just that she showed the wrong photo, but that the trainer was her kids’ father. I also loved the emotions that played on her face when Ethan told her Harper and Cameron hooked up. She was sad to get confirmation that her husband betrayed her and disappointed that the woman she tried to befriend also betrayed her. What a powerfully subtle, deceptively complex performance.

 

4. Abbott Elementary. Quinta Brunson is a TV genius. She was able to shepherd Abbott Elementary—fully formed, with a clear vision—to air, catching lightning in a bottle. The show is full of unforgettable characters, especially self-involved principal Ava, and the wise Barbara. Brunson also nails the show’s Philadelphia incidentals, like the local veneration of Jim Gardner and the way people light up when Gritty comes to an event. The best part of Abbott Elementary is the show’s hopeful tone—the kids and teachers may struggle and not always have what they need to succeed, but they try their best and never, ever give up. You get the sense that these teachers go home every day, exhausted but happy how they guided their students that day.

 

3. Andor. This was the best Star Wars TV show by a mile, and I won’t argue with anybody who says it was the best thing in that universe since the original trilogy. I’m not even a big Star Wars lover, but I was probably primed for this since I did love Rogue One. Maybe not being a huge fan helped my enjoyment, since this was the most terran of all the Star Wars stories. Andor really humanized the struggle against the Empire, and at times, this seemed like a story set on Earth with weird technology, making it much more universal and mature. The cast is top-notch, especially Stellan Skarsgard showing the price of living a life of rebellion, and Denise Gough and Anton Lesser, who were perfectly cast as villains in the Imperial Security Bureau. The standout was Fiona Shaw as Maarva Andor, and the incendiary holographic speech she gave at her funeral: “We’ve been sleeping … If I could do it again, I’d wake up early and fight the bastards from the start. Fight the Empire!” Wow. This got at the heart of the Star Wars mythos—the fight against fascism—and that never goes out of style.

 

2. Severance. Would you compartmentalize your brain so you could be more efficient at work and avoid the crushing grief of losing a spouse? Severance was a fascinating exploration of people who while at work have no memory of their personal lives, and vice versa. The production design was spectacular, with computers and office supplies that looked vaguely retro and vaguely threatening. The little world Severance built in the Lumon company—like the “music dance experience” that the employees got as a reward or the Break Room (that’s great) where employees are interrogated after straying—just fascinated me. It was thought-provoking and I can’t wait to find out more about what Lumon is actually doing moving those numbers around and how Helly R will feel when she realizes she’s the daughter of the company’s worshipped founder.

 

1. Better Call Saul. It didn’t quite reach the rarefied heights of Breaking Bad, but Better Call Saul is up there, and the last season was a satisfying, formally daring end to the story of Jimmy McGill, the man who became Saul Goodman. The end took them from the present day of the series, with Lalo murdering Howard in front of Jimmy and Kim, and the two parting after realizing they loved each other but were no good for each other. The Breaking Bad years, other than some pointed cameos from Walt and Jessie, are mostly a mid-season ellipsis until the last few black-and-white episodes focus on Saul’s downfall after one last, sloppy scheme.

 

As much as we all wanted to see how Saul finally ended up, the real concern for fans over the years was what happened to Kim Wexler. Rhea Seehorn won everyone over with an astonishing performance, and this year, the crowning moment for her was that tearful breakdown on the airport shuttle, when she finally feels the weight of what she did to Howard and the relief of telling the DA. Better Call Saul was at its heart a love story of two people who had a lot of fun together but were terrible for each other, and that was the best TV I saw this year.

I'm not mad!

I’m actually over here laughing! 😂 You can tell by all the laughing/crying emojis I’ve been posting!

 

It’s funny, it really is. First, I start yapping about how I’m dissatisfied with Twitter’s moderation and content and start buying a majority of shares. But—LOL—I don’t want to join the board because then I’d have to submit to their scrutiny. So I figure, I’ll have to spend $44 billion and buy the company outright.

 

Then, if you can believe this, I tried to get out of the deal! 😆 I had second thoughts and started complaining about Twitter having too many bots on its site. I said I wasn’t going to buy it unless they were more transparent about the bots. HAHA! Then, Twitter sued me to force me to complete the deal! Those were some hilarious times! I’m dying over here! 😂 😂 😂

 

Get this—I paid $44 billion for Twitter, a company that’s never really been profitable! 😂 I could have gotten away with paying $50 a share but instead I raised it to $54.20, just to make a hilarious marijuana joke! This will cost $1 billion a year in interest and fees. I’m banging on the table laughing! 😂 😂 😂 😂 😂

 

The funniest part is, it isn’t even real money! 😆 It’s all bank loans and Tesla stock! The day we announced the acquisition, Tesla stock dropped 12 percent and we lost $21 billion on paper! 😆

 

LOL I can’t even see through my hysterical tears! 😂 😂 😂

 

The hilarity continued when I walked into Twitter headquarters carrying a kitchen sink. How the world laughed and laughed at me! It got even funnier when I removed the blue check process and said I’d charge $20 to be verified. Stephen King told me to go to hell! 😆 Then I said people could pay $8 for verification. People complained that this would mean anybody could buy verification and that important sources of information might not be seen by the public! Then we scrapped the whole thing!

 

HAHAHA! It’s like I don’t even understand the company I bought! Like I don’t get that the product we produce is content from posters and that Twitter will fail if too many people leave! 😆 😆 Too funny.

 

I just had to laugh at all the people who were impersonating Twitter posters. Like when someone impersonated Pepsi and told people to drink Coke! Or when an Eli Lilly parody account tweeted that the price of insulin was free and the company lost millions in market cap! Classic!

 

The one thing I’m not laughing at is when people parody me. It’s not funny. It’s not funny at all. I’m a free speech absolutist, but that really only extends to hate speech. I have no problem with people tweeting the N-word or antisemitic conspiracy theories. But if you impersonate me, I delete your account.

 

The last few weeks have been particularly amusing! I fired everybody, LOL! 😂 Even funnier, we did it over email! Advertisers started pausing campaigns! Then I got this class action lawsuit because I didn’t give people enough severance, which violated some California law. One time I fired a bunch of people and had to ask some of them to return because those people were actually critical to running Twitter and we were flailing without them! 😝😝

 

But the best—the best—is the other day when I gave people an ultimatum: either be ready to work hardcore at high intensity, achieving some benchmarks we haven’t defined, or you’ll be fired. So there were mass resignations! 😆 Turns out we can barely keep the lights on at Twitter now! The people who quit were in charge of payroll and other critical services! I'm hearing Twitter could have a catastrophic failure as soon as tonight! 😆 So three weeks after my acquisition, the site that I paid $44 billion for is barely functional!!!

 

😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 I’m dying over here, guys!!!

Reddish Trickle

The most important outcome of the midterm elections is that I am vindicated. I knew the prophesied “red wave” wasn’t going to happen! I knew it. I had given in for awhile to all the hype over a Republican takeover of Congress, because the out-party usually does take over, but I tried to ignore all the bad punditry from the media and Eeyore-ism from the Democrats because I was seeing some signs that my party was going to have a better night than predicted.

 

And after all that red wave talk, here we are. The Democrats are holding onto the Senate and may even get a 51^st seat. Even if the Republicans win the House, it will be by a much smaller margin than everybody had predicted (and best of luck to Kevin McCarthy trying to wrangle that clown car full of howler monkeys). I believe just about all of the extremist election deniers lost their races for governor and secretary of state.

 

I believe it was abortion that prevented the Republicans from having the night they were bragging about having. I read awhile ago that record numbers of women were registering to vote for the first time. Why is that? What is new this year that so many women are so fired up to vote? It’s Dobbs overturning Roe. It turns out abortion is a bipartisan issue—neither Democratic nor Republican women were keen on having “local political leaders” control their bodies, or having women die senselessly from ectopic pregnancies, or criminalizing miscarriages, or forcing young girls to carry their rapists’ babies to term, or any of the other barbarism that’s starting to happen in America. You see this confirmed in Kansas, Kentucky, California, Michigan, Vermont, and Montana. These states are blue, red, and purple and when voters had a clear choice of whether to protect their reproductive freedom, they voted to protect it.

 

In the aftermath, I wonder why more pundits and pollsters didn’t see that. In the summer, they acknowledged how much the Supreme Court’s decision was going to galvanize voters, but by September and October, it’s like the news industry had decided it was in fashion to pretend that caring about reproductive rights was out of fashion. But why else would so many women be voting in such numbers, and why would so many people be voting early? The news told us it was the economy people cared about, but I don’t buy that it would fire people up quite that much. The economy is always going to be a concern for voters. We have inflation this year, but every two years there’s something in the economy that people want to fix, so the economy isn’t some novel thing that would get people to vote for the first time. (I think polls that say the economy is a top concern have some nuance that’s not really explored. The economy is always a top concern for me in the sense that it’s the job of legislators to care about it, but it doesn’t fire me up, and I wonder if that’s true for other voters.)

 

In the end, I think the pundits ignored women voters and ignored the message you could see them sending for months before the midterms. This is just coming from me as someone who follows politics closely. I don’t have the means to do a deep dive into any of this, and I’m not an expert. But if a rando voter like me, working from publicly available information, could see through all the hype about the red wave, and could see Dobbs wasn’t something people would forget, why couldn’t these professional pundits and reporters see that? Instead, the press listened to those who scolded the Democrats were focusing too much on abortion.

 

I don’t know if it was as much that the polls were wrong but that the framing journalists erected around that polling was wrong. Two weeks before the election, the New York Times interpreted a poll saying Democrats were ahead in four bellwether districts as “fresh evidence that Republicans are poised to retake Congress this fall as the party dominated among voters who care most about the economy." So for the Times, Democrats ahead equates to Republican victory. This happened a lot in the runup to the midterms and I think it was because reporters grasped at the lazy narrative—the president’s opposition party always wins significant seats in Congress in the midterms—and manipulated whatever data it had to so it could write the analysis it planned to write. And they ignored the other data that was right in front of them. I saw so much of this in the last few weeks: reporters saying a tight race meant a GOP win, while no Democratic lead, no matter how big, was safe.

 

How can we expect reporters do a deep dive when it’s easier to keep refreshing FiveThirtyEight for polling averages and reprint whatever Nate Silver says? The problem with that was there were shady pollsters like Trafalgar, which always lean Republican and don’t share their methodology, flooding the media in the last few weeks, and I think this skewed the results. Trafalgar ended up being hilariously wrong in many of its projections. The Wall Street Journal had a poll a week before the election saying women had shifted 27 points from D to R in three months. That doesn’t pass the smell test, and yet the media fell for it.

 

I got tired a few months ago of all the Eeyore-ism in a lot of people, including some in my party, about the election. (I know that’s pretty rich coming from me, as I always worry and catastrophize and see the dark cloud in every silver lining, but I’m trying to fight that tendency.) I kept reading people saying, “The party in power always loses seats in the midterms” with this “whaddya gonna do?” shrug. And I thought, “How about we try not losing power?” For my part, I wrote out a ton of postcards to voters and phone banked for the Delaware Democrats.

 

I had never done that before. Since I was 18, I’ve always voted faithfully in general, midterm and primary elections, but I felt I needed to do more—just something so I could say I tried to stem the tide of this mythical red wave. I’m going to keep doing that type of volunteering in the future. Don’t tell me we can’t do something when we cast off the negativity and become happy warriors for the things we care about.  

Magic

The best thing about iconic moments, in sports and otherwise, is that they feel inevitable in retrospect. Of course Bryce Harper hit a two-run bomb in the eighth inning to win the Phillies the pennant. Doesn’t it seem now like the only way that game and the NLCS could have ended? Everything that happened before that fades away: the Padres taking the lead after that stupid wild pitch in the rain (giving me unpleasant flashbacks to Game 5 Part 1), the blown early lead in Game 2, even the disappointment that the Phillies might miss the playoffs altogether.

 

All of that fades away and here we are as the Phils get ready to take the field in Houston in the World Series, and it kind of feels like they were always meant to do so.

 

You really couldn’t have written a better ending to a deciding playoff game than Harper’s home run. I don’t know how you rank the most iconic moments in Philadelphia sports history, but that one is way at the top, and that’s not recency bias. Other big moments in sports can sneak up on fans, like a great performance when nobody was expecting it in a low-stakes game. Harper’s home run was decisive, as close to a walk-off as it gets, at dizzyingly high stakes, and when everyone’s eyes were on him.

 

File that soggy home run on Sunday as yet another example of how sports can bring people together. This week you could probably walk down the street and see a stranger wearing that red “P” and say to them, “How ‘bout those Phillies?” and get a smile. You don’t know that person; you might not even like that person if you got to know them. But you have that little, fleeting connection.

 

This is why we watch. To watch that baseball disappear into the stands and to be able to feel that exact same burst of joy with so many other people in your blast radius at the exact same time is a kind of magic.

Cor, Blimey! Make me prime minister, guv'nah!

No, I’m not a citizen of the United Kingdom. I’ve never been there and my passport has expired. If I were British, I would not be a Tory. I don’t know anything about running a government. I don’t even know too much about macroeconomics or how to fight inflation.

 

But I was reading about how Liz Truss is entitled to a pension of £115,000 a year for her 44 days as prime minister, and now I want the job. So I’m sending a job application to King Charles III on Indeed, or however one applies, and standing to become the political leader of 67 million people (or do they measure people in kilograms? I forget how the Brits do it) and the world’s sixth largest economy.

 

I mean, shit—I can hang on for seven weeks of turmoil and scandal and screw up my (their) country at least as well as Truss did if it will net me a cool $129K a year for life. I’m not even 50 so that money will buy me plenty of new gold-embroidered suits and diamond-encrusted kitchen backsplash.

 

Here is my proposal for my premiership:

 

·      Eliminate all taxes for anybody making more than—oh, let’s say £115,000 a year—and double the taxes for people making less than that. The money the rich save will literally slide down a hill to the poor people.

·      The National Health Service will be converted into a fireworks factory. Nobody will be able to get dialysis, but we’ll all have plenty of fireworks for a Fourth of July (that we don’t celebrate)!

·      Pantsless press conferences outside 10 Downing on Thursdays. Get ready to see a lot more of me!

·      Fish and chips will now be combined with bubble and squeak.

·      All Britons will now be required to pronounce the “c” in “schedule.”

·      At Question Time, I will only answer questions from MPs with a yes/no response.

·      The Crown will be illegal to screen. All current and former stars of the Netflix show will be executed. So will Dame Judi Dench, just for the hell of it.

·      Oh, and I’m also cutting funding for all social services in half, including government pensions and child care funding. Good luck!

 

It won’t be an easy 44 days, that’s for sure. All the U-turns I’ll have to do will be exhausting. Plus, I’ll have to stand in the House of Commons while the MPs berate me with savage witticisms and beat me with the Mace. I’ll also miss some of my son’s basketball games. But perhaps I can fly the family over for Thanksgiving at Chequers as I tank my adopted country’s economy and try to hang on for the full 44 days. Then I’ll come home with $129,000 worth of presents in time for a nice American Christmas! 

 

So pick me, Tories! It’s not like you can find anyone better.

 

(Please read the preceding to the tune of “Yakkety Sax.”)

 

I’d trade it all for some decorative gourds

It’s fall now, so all I can think of is fall, fall, fall, fall, FALL! Apples ‘n’ pumpkins ‘n’ sudden sunsets ‘n’ two-month-long Halloween cooking contests on the Food Network ‘n’ wearing earth tones that make me look like ass!

 

Autumn is just a string of one amazing day after another with no downside and today is the best day of all. It’s the day when our pool is officially CLOSED! Yes, summer’s reign of terror is over and now I can fully enjoy having a little less daylight every day as I drive home from work!

 

I mean, I guess we had fun all summer splashing around in our pool. I would be in and out all day on Saturdays and Sundays, and after dinner on weeknights, floating with Steve in the deep end and listening to music, and it was fine. I would jump into the salt water after working up a sweat mowing the lawn on a 95º day, and I suppose the relief was adequate. Sometimes we would jump in real quick before a storm came, and we’d watch the dark clouds gather in the west and we’d stay in as long as we could, and then watch the lightning by the side of the pool until rain forced us inside, and that was OK, I guess.

 

Our son’s birthday is in July and we always have a BBQ and party, so we spend a glittering Sunday splashing around with him and our nephews and nieces. And that’s fine as far as it goes.

 

But now, relief! I can turn off the filter, close the windows and throw on a brown sweater! The pool men will come to lower the water level, add a bunch of chemicals and throw a tarp over the pool. Instead of a view of that garish, horribly undulating blue, I’ll be able to spend months looking out the window at a black tarp, as all around the pool my flowers die! Ahh, autumn!

 

You know, floating in the deep end of the pool as the midsummer sun filters through the constantly shifting cumulonimbus clouds above me, with only the sounds of the birds and a distant lawnmower to disturb me, brings me a feeling of peace and contentment that is a true blessing in my life. But I’d trade it all for some decorative gourds.