Well, today on the internet—in the midst of the Democrats’ efforts to put together an infrastructure plan that keeps losing key policy components—senators Mitt Romney and Kyrsten Sinema decided to celebrate Halloween by dressing up as Jason Sudeikis and Hannah Waddingham from the beloved and Emmy-winning Apple TV+ series Ted Lasso. Romney posted a GIF of the two of them, with him sporting a fake mustache and Sinema in red-framed glasses and a hot-pink dress.
Sudeikis was Saturday Night Live’s resident Romney impersonator for a period of time, so the Romney costume is maybe a jab back in that direction. But the tableau of Romney-as-Lasso offering Sinema-as-Rebecca a box of biscuits is presented as entirely wholesome—just two coworkers who enjoy the same television show, how utterly charming.
Really, it’s some masterful trolling, a bit of semiotic chicanery that is bound to make a lot of people who see it incredibly angry. Ted Lasso, a show that champions being nice, has often been positioned as a counterpoint to the horrors of 2020 and the vulgarity of the Donald Trump administration. Romney, a Republican deemed “moderate” because he speaks in complete sentences on camera, has a folksy persona that marries well with the Ted Lasso character. Of course a Mormon from Utah would love Ted Lasso’s great faith in courtesy and polite respect.
Fortunately for Mitt, Ted Lasso’s “being nice” ethos is so essentially reductive that it comes with no attendant stipulations—like “providing comprehensive health care for those with less privilege than you,” “taking care of the planet we call home,” or “providing adequate family leave for vulnerable new mothers.” Here, “being nice” means “reaching across the aisle” to do a couples’ costume with Sinema, a Democrat apparently so compromised by campaign contributions that she’s derailed her own party’s efforts to meet their policy goals.
Sinema has become one of the most frustrating figures in Washington because of her refusal to discuss her “thinking” on the Joe Biden administration’s infrastructure bill. She’s held up negotiations and forced the Democrats to scrap or weaken extremely popular policy positions, like reforming drug pricing in Medicare and paid family leave. She has been receiving contributions from donors who have vested interests in these policy positions. She (and Joe Manchin, who was apparently not invited to the Ted Lasso costume party) have set back the progressive policy agenda for years to come. The New Republic’s Alex Pareene has speculated that she’s planning to break from the Democratic Party entirely; this cozy image with Romney can only add fuel to that speculation.
Lately it’s become clear that there’s nothing Republicans love more than getting to repurpose what they describe as “liberal” or “woke” rhetoric for their own devices—such as the anti-mask and anti-vax movement’s usage of “my body, my choice,” a classic abortion-rights slogan. Here, it’s Ted Lasso. Are you upset about what the Senate is doing—or, to be exact, not doing, even as they are paid by your tax dollars to secure your future? Well, that’s no matter, because they too watch Ted Lasso, and they too are determined to be very nice. They are very nice to each other. They bring each other cookies. So don’t worry too much about what’s in the spending package, because at least they know that kindness, kindness, is all that matters.
It would be easy to say Romney and Sinema don’t “get” Ted Lasso…except that I think they “get” it just fine. Ted Lasso is a show about being kind. But it’s also a show about winning. If I understand sports correctly, AFC Richmond—the football club that Lasso coaches and Rebecca owns—is a competitive team that seeks to score more goals than the other teams, typically in the form of running around on grass with a ball. Lasso connects to his players, and his fellow coaches, by bringing out their inner strengths, their best features, and then using them to crush, however politely, their competition.
That’s what I see here. Romney and Sinema might be very kind to each other, and their fellow senators (well, maybe not the rest of the Democrats). But they are kind to each other because it serves their purpose of winning: winning at maintaining a deadly status quo in the face of climate change; winning at buoying corporate profits at the expense of the worker; winning at advancing their interests, their positions, over those that would seek to dilute their power.
“Being nice” isn’t really a value system. It’s easily coopted by people who are, literally right now, actively mortgaging our futures to line their profits. Worst of all, in this moment where Romney and Sinema are posing as these beloved TV heroes, you get the sense that they think this notion of being nice is sort of funny. It’s a costume you can put on. It’s a pantomime. Look, we can do nice too, they say, as the animated GIF of Romney offering a box of cookies to Sinema loops infinitely in your browser screen. Then they stand up and get out of their costumes and get back to work.
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