James Talarico is an actor who plays a character named “James Talarico,” and we’re all pretending he isn’t doing amateur theater. The point is bigger than just this one very strange man. The reality of both his performance and the baffling reception to his performance tell us a number of interesting things about the current state of politics and the media, and you can try to guess my facial expression as I say “interesting.”
Talarico is currently being treated by idiots as a significant theologian, a leading teacher of Biblical wisdom. He has emerged from some humble parsonage to inject moral clarity into our political life, after his many years of deep contemplation on questions of faith. He delivers sermons. His campaign website says, “It’s time to start flipping tables,” unselfconsciously making him the rhetorically equivalent actual Jesus Christ of Texas.
