I’ve lived in the Florida Panhandle since 2008, when I moved to the area our Congressman was Jeff Miller. I liked Jeff, we didn’t hear much from Jeff. Since Jeff retired I started thinking, if you don’t hear that much about your Congressional Representatives it means they’re probably working hard for the district.  Jeff did work hard for our district.  

Jeff retired in 2017, sigh. Since then we’ve been afflicted with Matt Gaetz, proof that affluenza is real and one of the comorbidities is stupidity. Affluenza is another affliction that has permeated our cultural DNA as a society. An entire segment in our society who walks through life never suffering a consequence for their actions, driving offenses, sex games while in the state house, I’m sure there are a lot we don’t know about.

In addition to affluenza Matt suffers from what I like to call Fame Whore Syndrome, which I consider an addiction. Matt has myriad of different ways to reach his audience, who don’t care that he took a holocaust denier to the SOTU, or that he brought the Proud Boys to provide “security” for an event in our community.  In our society our politicians no longer really have constituents, they have fans. Stan culture and celebrity worship culture have always been a thing in politics, it is epidemic now. For people like Matt who suffer from Fame Whore Syndrome WOW!!! Perfect timing. For the rest of us not so much, because the fame whores don’t have to prove substance, policy, or even legislate because fans are loyal, constituents who really care about policy and the character of their political representatives are not.

 To really analyze what Fame Whore Syndrome is and what it isn’t we need to broaden our definition of whore, whores are not always women, people whore themselves in lots of ways unrelated to sex (see dark money pimps) I bet you’re you’re asking yourself, how does Maria Cristina know about Fame Whore Syndrome? That one is easy because of social media fame whores are everywhere (not just in politics) they all want to be famous or infamous they don’t care which. I also wrote about Marco Rubio and Wannabe Syndrome, just as damaging in a politician.  You probably won’t find those descriptions in the DSM. Hell, I don’t even know if anyone ever used them before. I call myself a student of human nature, Matt and Marco are easy to peg.

Matt got lucky, he entered federal politics, basically being the hype man for the biggest fame whore in the country (possibly the world). Suffice it to say that with the exception of Pensacola, Destin, and Fort Walton Beach, not many people can name one town in his district. Matt is member in good standing of the clique I call the Redneck Mafia.  I use mafia not as an indicator of crime, but a nod to the closed circle of families who control most of the economic engine and political agenda in Florida 1.  Couple that with the fact that Matt’s behavior and lack of consequence was the worst kept secret in the Panhandle (insert the famous mugshot here) was a recipe for fame whore disaster.

Fame whores don’t whore themselves in a vacuum, the more outrageous their behavior the more airtime and followers they get. Matt even got himself his own personal Cuban to parade around cosplaying that he’s not racist, because of his “son” Nestor. For a man who wanted to keep his “son” from the prying eyes of the political media it certainly was a strange time to introduce him to all of us. Anecdotally, I’ve lived in his district since 2008 and have never seen or heard of Nestor until Matt needed to use him politically.

Find yourself a Cuban seems to be written down in the Republican play book somewhere (I’ll write more on this later). While certainly outrageous, this brought Matt a lot of fame, the jokes, they wrote themselves. Again, the fame whore was rewarded, they’ve warned us as parents not to reward bad behavior because even negative attention is still attention.

So if we as a society are parenting and guiding the moral outcomes we desire, we have to stop engaging with the fame whores in our society. Yes, even the ones we agree with. Engagement is promotion.  Matt’s whorish behavior has been rewarded with a national audience.  

I started writing this article before Matt’s current scandals became public, it’s taken me a while to collect my thoughts, because I was not surprised. I certainly hope that he’s not guilty of the most egregious things he’s accused of, I know he is not ethical or moral. Fame whores run into this kind of trouble a lot, because they think their fame allows them certain a certain moral latitude. “When you’re a star they let you do it”, we hear even our most “conservative” neighbors telling us things like, “I’m not voting for the pope” or “I wouldn’t let them date my son/daughter” but I’ll vote for them because they care about people like me.  Breaking News: They don’t give a fuck about you.

They use your fears, to manipulate you into voting for them, fear of the other (listen Fulano that’s racism), fear of losing your freedoms, when smaller and smaller governments keep taking power from the people. In Cuba people ran into the streets with joy when Castro overthrew Batista, then came the Oh SHIT moment.  We just survived our Oh SHIT moment via 45, January 6. Castro had a bunch of people in the streets fighting for him, until they realized he wasn’t who he said he was, he formed the smallest of governments. People of questionable morals like Matt Gaetz AKA fame whores are going to hang on to the very things that helped them acquire most of their fame will keep fighting for the very person who helped them gain their fame no matter how destructive it is to them.

That’s why Matt spends more time in Palm Beach that he does in his own district now. He’s holding on to the big fame whore in hopes that he still gets the political dick that comes with being a political whore-it’s the people of his district who are getting screwed. Take from that what you will, we voters can continue to reward the biggest fame whores in politics for their outlandish behaviors or we can be smart informed issue based voters. I choose the latter. I hope you’ll join me.