Tim Walz's normal dad energy is causing MAGA to come unglued [View all]

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Tim Walz's normal dad energy is causing MAGA to come unglued
Walz is the opposite of weird: Kamala Harris' running mate shows masculinity can be about love and not hate

By Amanda Marcotte
Senior Writer
Published August 8, 2024 6:00AM (EDT)


(Salon) In their first go-round in attacking Gov. Tim Walz, the Donald Trump campaign bet that maximum hyperbole could hoodwink people into dismissing the "chill dad" demeanor of Vice President Kamala Harris's new running mate. "Tim Walz will unleash hell on Earth!" a Trump fundraising email said of the former high school football coach turned top Minnesota executive. The campaign followed up with a barrage of emails describing the affable Midwesterner as "Dangerously Liberal," in clear hopes that brute repetition would distract voters from the fact that Walz reads more like "Ted Lasso" than "Che Guevara."

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Dubbing Walz "Tampon Tim" appears to have been kicked off by popular right-wing troll Phillip Buchanan, who goes by the Twitter handle "Catturd." As documented by Media Matters, the slur took off rapidly across the MAGA internet, with users photoshopping pictures of Walz surrounded by tampons. Within an hour, it had been informally picked up by the Trump campaign, with longtime Trump aide and speechwriter Stephen Miller amplifying the nickname. It all appeared to be a race to prove that MAGA is full of weirdoes with deep psychological issues.

The impetus for this freakout was a bill signed by Walz last year requiring public schools to make menstrual products available to students at no charge. The bill was the result of student activists and medical professionals making irrefutable arguments such as, "Teenagers don’t know when they will get their period," and "We cannot learn while we are leaking." Schools have toilet paper and school nurses, so why not provide this small amount of help? No one benefits, except the bullies, if students get blood on their clothes and on the furniture.

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As a male friend texted me, "there is a genuine hunger out there — I see it in many of my students — for some kind of positive model of how to be in the world as a straight white dude." Trump and his acolytes offer an exhausting and harmful model, that is entitled, rage-fueled, and its heart, deeply insecure. Walz, however, seems comfortable in his own skin. He shows there's nothing wrong with liking football and fixing your own car — both are fine uses of a person's time! All that "traditional man" stuff can live quite comfortably with "woke" ideas like "women are people, too." As Walz has persuasively posited, his is the more normal way to be. It's the MAGA try-hards who are the weirdoes. The phrase "tonic masculinity" — in opposition to the toxic masculinity of MAGA — soon started to spread online. ..........(more)

https://www.salon.com/2024/08/08/tim-walzs-normal-energy-is-causing-maga-to-come-unglued/