Thursday, October 13, 2011

Quixotic Gay Republican Still Thinks He's A "Presidential Candidate," Makes Obscure 70s Homo-Culture References Just Like Any Old Queen

Oh, gosh, Fred Karger. Lonely ol' Fred. I shouldn't be so mean about him, but let's face it: he is the saddest sad-sack in the whole GOP field. Here is a guy who has been utterly shunned by the vast majority of his own party, systematically excluded from every debate, and worse than being spoken ill of, he's not spoken of at all, and yet still he comes back for more. So is he Pollyanna, eternally optimistic that "they'll come around"? Is he Edina from Absolutely Fabulous, totally oblivious to all the hostility surrounding him? Is he Howard the Duck, trapped in a world he never made? Or is he simply a masochist?

Maybe he's totally weird. Or stupid, possibly? Both? Soooo hard to tell. For instance, now he's upset with Florida for all their primary date shenanigans, so he threatened –threatened!– the state with an orange juice boycott if they didn't cut it out. For real! OMG, how seventies. But... what is Fred Karger doing? Seriously, a Florida orange juice boycott? Is this an incoherent attempt to blow a gay dog whistle? If so, what does the Anita Bryant boycott of 1977 have to do with a wonky primary scheduling issue? It doesn't make any sense. Or, maybe Fred Karger is totally unaware of the strength of the gay cultural memory of the original orange juice boycott, in which case: WTF? Either way, I just totally can't make any sense of Fred Karger.  

There's strong evidence that he's just plain odd. Here he is last Saturday wandering around New Hampshire giving his gay Republican Frisbees™ to skeptical-looking suburbanites: 

(Photo: Grant Morris, Nashua Telegraph)

From the Telegraph's article:

“Hi, I’m Fred Karger, and I’m running for president,” Karger said, introducing himself with a handshake, a business card and a blue frisbee with his name etched on it.

Meanwhile, residents began spilling out of their homes, lured by the sound of bagpipes and the parade of campaign workers carrying blue frisbees and business cards.

Later in the article, Karger actually utters the words "I've hustled," and that's when you realize that this guy is totally, hilariously great, and we should enjoy this piece of inadvertent performance art while we can.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Considering the state of the 2012 Republican field, Fred Karger is completely normal. That's how bad these people are.

samael7 said...

Yeah, the GOP is being so "Fred who?" I feel kinda bad on his behalf. I'd love to see him actually get to debate someone else running for office.

And the audience reaction would be priceless.

Christopher said...

Through clenched teeth:

"So thats' what a gay man looks like."

"Just stay back, honey. He gave me this frisbee."

"What are you supposed to do with it?"

"I don't know ... Do you think it's some ... freak sex thing?"

"Just ... throw it at his head!"