Searching For Graham Platner’s Authentic Self At The A-Hole Store

I recently wrote a piece on how the New Yorker is unpatriotic, unbelievably backwards in its thinking, and contemptuous of the very institutions it claims to defend, even as it quietly tears them down.

They must have missed it because they just doubled down.

The New Yorker says Graham Platner, the baritone communist running for Senate in Maine, who is now facing allegations of physical abuse and sexual misconduct, indeed has a problem: He’s “too authentic.”

Ha. He’s authentic alright. An authentic a**hole.

How’s this for authenticity? Sexting multiple women on a child-predator-coded messaging app within months of his wedding, physically intimidating past girlfriends, getting a Totenkopf tattoo because the symbolism struck him as fitting, publicly wishing that Purple Heart veterans would die in combat, and admitted that if someone broke into his home, he would “rape them to show I’m dominant.” (Authentically gay, maybe.) All that is just “authentic baggage.” The New Yorker goes on to argue there are “unresolved questions” about who Graham Platner really is. Are there? He’s a self-described communist who masturbates to phallic erotic images in porta-potties. He called rural Maine voters “racist and stupid” and campaigned on “F*ck these cops.”

He’s not a mystery. He’s not an onion we need to peel. For the love of everything, we beg him to keep all his layers on. He’s shown us who he is. An authentic a**hole.

Here’s what Democrats and the New Yorker, in their finite wisdom, apparently believe: that Graham Platner, hirsute and tattooed and foul-mouthed, was the secret to winning over Right-wing men. Slap a flannel on a Harvard-adjacent oyster farmer, film him splitting wood, have him drop a few F-bombs over a brewski, and watch the dumb rednecks come a-runnin’.

That’s all Republicans are to the liberal media. Stupid. Reactionary. Easy. The kind of voters who forgave the evil Trump, so surely they’ll forgive anything with a pulse and a pickup truck.

Democrats don’t take the time to actually meet Republican men because they don’t think they need to. For years, they banked on reliable coalitions to carry them across the finish line. Now those coalitions are fracturing because their policies are heinous, and they’re in a panic. So they need men. Real ones, working-class ones, men with rough edges and war stories (not Anti-military veteran vs. The Throne King war stories). But instead of finding one, they manufactured one. Graham Platner, Hotchkiss dropout, grandson of a prominent architect and D.C. bar regular, put on the costume and played the part. Henry Higgins cosplaying as a dock worker.

Republican men aren’t Graham Platner. They’re nothing like him. They’re not performing ruggedness for a camera. If they’re rugged, it’s because they’re living it. And they can spot a fake.

As for The New Yorker, what a pathetic attempt at salvaging this campaign. They wouldn’t know authenticity if it smashed into them at 70 mph.

Kamala Harris was one of the most hollow candidates in modern political history. She bypassed a primary, leaped onto Joe’s crumbling throne, and the public quickly discovered she was inept, pompous, and unbearably rehearsed. Unless she wasn’t rehearsed enough, and then you got something like “We must work together to work together to work … the significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So, when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time.” She was most relatable when she was visibly tipsy. We’ve all mostly been there, at least.

Hillary Clinton called half the country “deplorable.” James Talarico is a man in a flannel cosplaying as a less convincing Pete Buttigieg in a flannel, who was recently photographed grimacing over barbecue after a previous campaign pledge to run a “meat-free” Texas Senate campaign. Tim Walz dispatched on a PR hunting trip that looked about as organic as a man in a dress. Graham Platner, “oyster farmer,” has one primary commercial customer: his mother’s restaurant. He wears flannels to look dumber, because he thinks voters are dumb.

None of these people are authentic. They’re poorly branded. And when the media labels them authentic anyway, they’re not paying you a compliment. They’re telling you exactly what they think of you.

Moreover, the New Yorker kindly reminds us of the double standards on display.

Pete Hegseth: Combat veteran, Ivy League graduate, Fox News host. Has a Jerusalem Cross tattooed on his chest. According to progressives, that makes him a Nazi. Donald Trump? Nazi. George W. Bush? They called him Hitler with a Texan accent. Elon Musk made an awkward gesture at a conference and triggered a week of think pieces about fascism. But Graham Platner has an actual SS Totenkopf tattoo, the insignia worn by units that ran concentration camps, and the New Yorker calls it “authentic baggage.”

Awesome.

And then there are the women.

Jean Carroll, who has described rape as “sexy” and whose account of an alleged assault in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room contained no date, no corroboration, and a history that raised serious credibility questions, was treated as unimpeachable. Believe all women. To doubt her was to enable abuse. We were told this repeatedly, loudly, and by the very same politicians now lining up behind Graham Platner.

The New York Times interviewed three women who described Platner’s behavior as physically intimidating, emotionally abusive, and “unsettling.” One shared a diary entry from 2016 in which she called him “the most toxic literally abusive man on earth who destroyed my life.” Hakeem Jeffries, AOC, Ro Khanna: crickets. Believe all women, apparently, has an asterisk. *Unless they’re accusing a Democrat we need.

The media that would burn a Republican’s house down over a bad tweet is running full cover for this man. Because he has a (D) next to his name. Anybody else tired of this? Because #MeToo.

For argument’s sake, let’s grant the New Yorker its premise. Let’s say Graham Platner is exactly who he appears to be. No performance. No artifice. The real deal!

Doesn’t that make it worse?

He’s authentically a communist. He’s authentically cruel. He authentically embodies everything Democrats have spent years denouncing in Republican men — the aggression, the vulgarity, the contempt for institutions — and now they want credit for it. The nerve.

He’s an “outsider candidate” with “limited political experience,” which, when Republicans put up veterans and businessmen, is disqualifying. But Platner gets to wear it as a badge of honor. He has a Nazi tattoo he claims not to have understood, even though, by his own account, his unit adopted it specifically because they were killers and the symbolism felt apt. And yet the man with the Jerusalem Cross tattooed in faith is the fascist.

It was never about the tattoo. It was never about the women. It’s about the letter next to the name.

At least the New Yorker was right about one thing. Authenticity is the coin of the realm, and Graham Platner is a wooden nickel.