Humiliation Derby

Let us begin with the word “scum.”

One potential GOP candidate for the soon-to-be-vacated U.S. Senate seat of Mitch McConnell is 44-year-old Nate Morris, a technology entrepreneur from Lexington. In a recent Breitbart interview, as reported by Austin Horn of the Lexington Herald-Leader, Morris recounted an interaction he said he had with a wealthy McConnell donor during the Kentucky Derby earlier this month. “I said, ‘Let me tell you something: Mitch McConnell is scum.’”

In announcing his candidacy for McConnell’s seat, Republican Andy Barr, 51, said, “The woke left wants to neuter America, literally.” We can assume Barr meant figuratively, but this sort of talk can inspire real acts of violence by those who take it literally.

When asked during a KET panel this week about the president’s statement that he doesn’t know if he needs to obey the Constitution, Kentucky’s GOP communications director Andy Westberry pivoted to chastising Democrats for “fear-mongering” and pearl-clutching.

Kentucky communications professional Scott Jennings, age 47 and the most prominent GOP commentator on CNN, recently stood on stage at a rally with the president and said, “Michigan, we were flying in here today, and I said look at these farms. I got to get a farm in Michigan, because when you own as many libs as I do, you gotta get a place to put ’em all.” Later, Jennings posted on X that he got “caught up in the moment” with a sideways laughing emoji.

Is this how grown men, professional men, speak now in the commonwealth?

We hear much (and rightly so) about how American boys feel isolated and angry, that they are growing up in the age of outrage; of 24/7 cell phones and internet and social media; of the damage being done due to the lack of common decency and good role models. 

And yet the above are everyday examples of the kind of sneering, childish, mean-spirited, petty behavior we see regularly from grown men in power and public service.

On May 10, I talked privately with a pastor about the damage social media, the tech bros (like Elon Musk) and podcast bros (like Joe Rogan and Ben Shapiro) are doing to our kids, about the ripping down of decency and civility in families and among neighbors. One reason cited for folks no longer going to church: They are so hurt and dispirited by what they see family members and neighbors post on Facebook, X and Instagram — yes, much of it about politics — that they don’t want to see them in church where they will have to shake hands and smile and pretend they haven’t seen what they’ve seen. So they just stay home.

When writer Zadie Smith reviewed the 2010 movie “The Social Network” about the founding of Facebook, she wrote, “When a human being becomes a set of data on a Web site like Facebook, he or she is reduced. Everything shrinks. Individual character. Friendships. Language. Sensibility.  … Our denuded networked selves don’t look more free, they just look more owned.” 

Just once, I would like to write about Kentucky politics without mentioning the current president at all, as I find him boringly repetitive. This is impossible. Not because I am obsessed with him but because GOP politicians and political operatives in our state are tripping over each other to win his approval and endorsement as though his gaze is all that matters. 

To quote Smith, they just look more owned.

GOP candidates do not use their TV appearances and social media to present policy ideas; they post and preen with the singular, embarrassingly desperate hope that the president will notice them frantically waving from the back of the room — Pick me! Pick me! — and make them the winner they think they can’t be without him.

In addition to calling him “scum,” Nate Morris recently said about McConnell — a man Kentuckians have elected to the Senate for almost as long as Morris has been alive — that he  “completely pulled his pants down for President Biden” when negotiating.

When asked on KET about the president’s potential abuse of the legal system — ignoring the right of habeas corpus, for instance — Andy Westberry said flatly to former Democratic Congressman John Yarmuth, “well, you all started it.” A 9-year-old in the backseat of his parents’ car comes to mind.

And Scott Jennings — also rumored to be considering a run for McConnell’s seat — has a book coming out with a title casting the president as the savior of Western Civilization, illustrating what happens when you’re a grown man who has to not only drink all of Dear Leader’s KoolAid but stir up a new pitcher and guzzle more than the other guys.

It is 2025. 

Kids are in crisis. Adults are in crisis. We need mature leaders.

But we now live in a world where the man whose name is on the Kentucky GOP headquarters is proudly called “scum” by his own party members, and the man who started his first presidency with the arrogant pledge that he can grab any woman he wants “by the pussy” is Kentucky’s GOP kingmaker. 

I have bad news. The Republicans who want to represent you in the U.S. Senate are engaged in a sophomoric, cage-match, hazing ritual, and the one on the ballot in 2026 will be the one willing to humiliate himself the most.