I Miss Big, Wet, Embarrassing Kisses From My Father
By: John Devore
Tags: Politics, Fatherhood, Love, Masculinity, Election 2020

Photo: Universal Pictures

I Miss Big, Wet, Embarrassing Kisses From My Father

The tweet shaming Joe Biden for embracing his son Hunter is a mini-portrait of toxic masculinity

Who John Cardillo is isn’t as important as what he tweeted yesterday. He posted a photo of former Vice President Joe Biden, the current Democratic presidential candidate, kissing and hugging his troubled son Hunter. In the photo, Hunter is looking at the camera, and his father is focused on giving his boy affection.

The Twitter post read: “Does this look like an appropriate father/son interaction to you?”

Photo: Twitter

Cue Cat Stevens’ classic “Father & Son”

The message is both muddy and crystal clear. Cardillo is plainly suggesting there is something… off… about these two men. He’s also mumbling another message under his breath: love is weakness.

I like to think of myself as a dirtbag sommelier so I also detected notes of homophobia in Cardillo’s obnoxious little one-liner. He’s singing a sad jingle to the macho faithful: any physical affection between men is… gay.

This is a bad thing, of course. To be gay. To love who you love.

Don’t worry: Cardillo was brutally ratioed on Twitter. The roasting was hot and relentless. The truth is Cardillo was trying to talk to a very slim and ever-shrinking, group of people. The vast majority of Americans support public displays of affection between parents and their children. There was a time pop culture preferred fathers and sons to interact like bankers and clients.

But that is all over. Since he tweeted out his strange smear yesterday, Cardillo has poured squirts of brain batter onto the hot griddle that is Twitter over 100 times, and every tweet is an anti-Biden insult with armpit stains. He’s a locomotive, I’ll give him that. The man likes to tweet, but so does his political father figure, the president.

I thought about writing a post about him last night but then I decided to enjoy life (I finished watching HBO’s creepy, and somewhat muted, cult doc The Vow while eating hot dogs.)

A day is a year in internet time. I’m glad I waited to write about Cardillo’s tweet now, instead of when it was a viral locomotive. It is good to take a moment to breathe, especially now. I did, however, make fun of Cardillo once in real-time: like thousands of people, I posted his tweet copy about “fathers/sons” over a photo of my favorite father and son — Duke Leto Atreides and his son Paul from David Lynch’s 1984 masterpiece, Dune. In the movie photo I posted underneath the copy, Duke Leto has his hand on Paul’s shoulder, as they embark on a journey across the stars to a faraway planet where they plan to mine space drugs. He loves his son and small dogs.

But then I slept on it all and when I woke up I felt sad. Cardillo is a dude who is desperate to connect with other dudes, and the only dudes he knows are those who had fathers made of granite. Men who respond to other men who conform to a grim gendered worldview where men are either strong or soft.

I’ve been around two score and six years and in my experience, the ones who act strong are always the softies and vice versa. It’s the soft ones who surprise with hidden reserves of steel. Big strong men are almost always made out of parfait.

The Biden photo that Cardillo mocked is pretty raw and, also, beautiful. These two adult men have an immense, and complicated, love. I suppose there are all kinds of reasons not to support Biden but “this man is devoted to his son” is not one of them. I guess? I am clearly not the person Cardillo is trying to reach.

You see, my old man loved me. He used to give me the wettest kisses on the forehead. And he kissed me in public, which was mortifying. He handed out “I love yous” like unlimited breadsticks. He’s been dead a long time now and I still carry his kisses with me everywhere I go, like invisible magical marks warding off evil.

Cardillo is a former cop turned full-time Trump cheerleader who floods his social media accounts with aggressive pro-conservative invective designed to appeal to a very specific, very loyal, political base: men. A few of those dudes are college-educated, many aren’t. These men are mostly white. There’s a large slice that is retired, well-off, and bored. Another slice is skilled middle-aged professionals who are, also, bored. Both of these types have expensive hobbies, like boats or vaults full of guns.

These men have a few things in common though. One is a love of the song “YMCA” by The Village People. The second thing they have in common is a primal fear that their only real value is being lucky enough to be born into the most powerful caste of the wealthiest nation on earth. The idea that there are women and women of color and people who are not white straight cisgender men out there who are more talented and harder working than white straight cisgender men is terrifying to them.

These men are lost and Cardillo’s tweet was a foghorn, guiding them back home, where the memories of loveless, disappointed fathers wait impatiently.