The "Let's Go, Brandon!" Freakout Goes Next-Level
A Southwest pilot earns ISIS comparisons for joking into a loudspeaker, as pundits continue to mass-forget the previous four years
FBI Special Agent-turned-CNN Political Analyst Asha Rangappa — gosh that resume sounds unsurprising, doesn’t it? — tweeted this yesterday night:
Put on your irony helmet, this is going to be a long ride. Rangappa was referencing a story involving a Southwest Air pilot who became a headline by saying, “Let’s Go, Brandon!” during a flight from Houston to Albuquerque. Sitting on that flight, incredibly, was an AP reporter named Colleen Long who was writing a piece entitled, “How ‘Let’s Go Brandon’ became code for insulting Joe Biden.”
How did it happen? On October 2nd, at a NASCAR race at the Talladega Superspeedway in Alabama, a crowd broke into a chant of “Fuck Joe Biden!” after 28-year-old Brandon Brown won a race. NBC reporter Kelli Stavast was interviewing Brown during the chants, and quickly spoke over them, saying, “You can hear the chants from the crowd. Let’s go Brandon!”
The phrase has since become a war cry for people all over the country, being at once a burn on Biden, the anxious, airbrushing press, and the corporate conglomerates who are taking pre-emptive action to try to prevent such outbursts from ever again darkening America’s door (“NASCAR and NBC have since taken steps to limit ‘ambient crowd noise’ during interviews,” as the AP put it).
Now WFBI agent Rangappa has essentially declared “Let’s Go, Brandon!” the equivalent of an ISIS war cry. Supportive hand-wringing from press/natsec colleagues (is there a difference?) was instantaneous. “Donald Trump tried to overthrow American democracy and at least one Southwest Airlines pilot thinks that’s just fine,” cried HuffPo’s S.V. Date. “Come fly the extremist skies,” chimed in official #Resistance mascot Aaron Rupar. Then there was Rangappa’s fellow spook-to-CNN pipeliner, former Homeland Security official Juliette Kayyem:
Is it really possible that these people don’t get they’re being trolled? Part of the joke of “Let’s Go Brandon,” of course, is that you couldn’t go five minutes during the last administration without hearing someone in pearls or a bowtie screaming “Fuck Trump!” I don’t remember Rangappa pumping out “Osama de Niro” tweets after this celebrated Tony Awards appearance:
The bigger part of the “Let’s Go Brandon!” gag is that such outbursts during the Trump years were not only not condemned, they were celebrated, as pundits and reporters for the first time told us directly profane insults of presidents were okay. “Robert de Niro’s Comments at the Tony Awards Go Viral,” was CNN’s bemused take, in a story quoting artist Ferrari Shepard saying, “Robert de Niro is my favorite rapper.”
“Robert De Niro drops the f-bomb bashing Trump at the Tony Awards,” was the headline over this USA Today account:
Meanwhile in the press room, Tony winners were surprised and amused by De Niro's comments, including Harry Potter and the Cursed Child director John Tiffany, who entered the press room immediately after the incident.
“Did Al Pacino just say (expletive) Trump?” Tiffany asked the press room, chuckling as the room corrected his mistake. “It was Robert De Niro? That's even worse!”
“Robert De Niro told the Tonys audience, F*ck Trump.’ He got a standing ovation,” was the Vox headline in a story that did include criticism of de Niro — not for cursing out a president, but for overshadowing Angels in America winner Andrew Garfield, who “referenced the Supreme Court same-sex wedding cake decision in his acceptance speech, calling for more understanding and empathy for the LGBTQ community.”
When Samantha Bee called Ivanka Trump a “feckless cunt” on TBS, she and the network did apologize, but the commentariat was far from unanimous in believing she should have. A New Yorker column that referenced Chaucer, Marvell, Donne, and Shakespeare said of Bee, “She should not have apologized,” while Sally Field said Bee was wrong to use the word to describe Ivanka, because “cunts are beautiful, nurturing, and honest.” The Daily Beast headline about the show was a visual high-five, complete with a “DAMN”:
The official canonization of the F-bomb came when Jim Gaffigan, the least potty-mouthed comedian on the planet, entered into a profanity-laden Twitter rant last summer. He said things like “I don’t give a fuck if anyone thinks this is virtue signaling or whatever…We need to call Trump the con man and thief that he is.”
Pundits reacted as if Trump had inspired Beethoven to the 9th symphony, or moved Gandhi to the Salt March. “Why Jim Gaffigan, The World’s Nicest Man, Decided He’d Finally Had Enough Of Trump,” was the Forbes headline, in a piece that explained how remarkable it was that a man who “literally” opened for the Pope, a “non-controversial pasty-white Catholic father of five” who admitted “loving bacon,” had been forced to drastic action by Trump.
It was, Forbes said, a “fourth wall experience” revealing a man who “simply wants things to go back to normal.” CNN added a solemn campaign think piece by Dean Obeidallah that said Gaffigan dropping his nice-guy veneer was genuinely predictive, a bad omen for Trump’s chances with the “silent majority” voter. “Jim Gaffigan, arguably America’s most wholesome comedian, has finally had enough of Donald Trump’s shit,” was Gizmodo’s take.
I personally don’t have a problem with comedians flipping off presidents, in fact I’m pretty sure that’s part of their job description, but if you’re going to imbue the presidentially-directed F-bomb with holy significance under Trump, you should probably avoid wigging out over “Let’s Go Brandon.” A huge part of the reason everyone is chanting it with such glee is precisely because it’s not profanity, and sounds like the title of a Jim Gaffigan special.
“Let’s Go Brandon” is supremely obvious humor-bait, but prestige media types have been unable to avoid swallowing it. “Biden’s critics hurl increasingly vulgar taunts,” complained the Washington Post, describing how Florida congressman Bill Posey violated the “decorum” of the House with “Let’s Go Brandon”:
The vitriol has even entered the House chamber. Rep. Bill Posey (R-Fla.) wrapped up a floor speech this week with the sign-off, “Let’s go Brandon.” Then, in a jarring return to House decorum, he concluded, “I yield back.”
The Post, it should be noted, rated de Niro’s speech one of the “hits” of that year’s Tony awards. Others, like perpetual foot-in-mouth sufferer Cenk Uygur, are using #LGB to shake their heads at Republican incivility:
This is the same Cenk who moments ago was guffawing to a story about a woman in Texas who was selling “Fuck Trump” bumper stickers, and also had a message on her pickup truck for those who voted for him. “I like that she not only said Eff Trump, but eff you for voting for him,” he chuckles. “That lady’s got some balls on her!”
There are other approving TYT stories on the same theme, like “Anti-Trump Chants TRIGGER President Snowflake,” about an exactly analogous story to the Talladega scene, when American ex-pats in France sandbagged a Fox broadcast about the World Cup with chants of “Fuck Trump!”
I don’t exactly have standing to get moral about F-bombing any politician, but if mainstream mouthpieces can’t see how this looks to middle America — people getting seriously compared to terrorists for ironic G-rated versions of the same rant that had pundits lining up to send Jim Gaffigan to Oslo — they’re dumber than I thought.
The rules are below:
Mocking Bush: Funny
Mocking Obama: Racist
Mocking Trump: Your Patriotic Duty
Mocking Biden: Terrorist
I'm as liberal as the day is long and I think the "Let's go, Brandon" stuff is a hoot. The Southwest pilot was dumb to say it at work--why antagonize half your passengers?--but it's not The End Of The World As We Know It. Very tired of rage being peddled like Viagra.