Did you all see the racist cartoon U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles of Tennessee's 5th Congressional District posted on social media last week? The one featuring a depiction of Democratic Socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani? (See below.) I was going to write something about how I appreciate Ogles’ effort to become Tennessee’s most nefarious Andy, and how I’m sure The Hermitage also appreciates it.
A tweet posted by U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles
But I keep staring at it and then getting the giggles. Honestly, who let him do this?
Set aside the racist part for a moment, and the fact that Ogles (who himself has been investigated by the FBI) is asking U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to subject Mamdani to denaturalization proceedings. Just look at the comic-book-hero version of Ogles. He’s got broad shoulders, a trim waist, a strong jawline and a great hairline. Needless to say, this is not what Ogles looks like in real life. Plus, this Andy is brave enough to confront his opponent in person, whereas the real Andy, when he comes to Nashville, hides behind closed doors in the state Capitol building.
If I ever posted such an image, with such a flattering (presumably AI-generated) cartoon of myself, on the internet, when I got to my office on Monday morning, I would find copies of it papering over everything on my desk. My brothers would have written, “Do we have another sibling we don’t know about?” on a Post-It note and stuck it to the image.
Hell, they’d put up billboards featuring the cartoon and saying things like, “Do you recognize this person? Because we sure don’t.” When I died, they’d make sure I was buried with 20 copies of this image. I would never live it down.
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There’s something so pathetic about this. And I don’t mean in the sense of it being small-minded and half-assed. I mean in the “pathos” sense — in that I look at this image and I realize that this image is a metaphor for how Ogles lives his life. He wants to be seen as someone brave and decisive, willing to take a stand, in the same way he wanted to be seen as someone who eases the burden on parents suffering the loss of their child, or the same way he wants to be seen as an expert on various things.
He wants to be seen as someone worthy of respect. But he sure as hell doesn’t want to actually do the work to earn people’s respect. And so he’s trapped in this hell of his own making, where he talks a good game, but everyone knows he hasn’t actually done the things he wants people to think he’s done.
Ogles is constantly constructing some better version of himself, the man he wishes he was, and then we’re constantly discovering that he’s not actually that dude. This iteration has just unraveled much more quickly than the versions of himself he pretended to be before, because anyone with working eyes can see that the cartoon version of himself is not actually him.
It’s really fascinating. Of all the things you can fake, being mean is one of the hardest to fail at. But Ogles isn’t coming across like a guy who is big and tough and willing to hurt his enemies however he can. He’s coming across like a guy desperate to believe that he’s big and tough and willing to hurt his enemies however he can. We can all see that he’s a fraud at this. But can he?
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Does he get that this is just another iteration of the same old pattern we’ve watched play out for years? Andy Ogles asserts something. We wait. It turns out the thing he asserted isn’t true. We laugh and wonder who the hell voted for this guy. Or does he think that this time — this time — the thing about himself he wishes were true would just become true based on the strength of him wishing?
And the funniest part is that he’s a congressman! He has a ton of power. He could actually do good things that would earn him the respect he so clearly craves. But he’s just going to keep heading down the stupid path.
If he were self-reflexive, it’d be tragic. But for now, it remains hilarious.
