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Watch: Women on 'The View' Get Beta Male Beto To Disavow Own Magazine Cover as Too Privileged

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You almost feel bad for Beto O’Rourke. Almost.

When the former Texas representative and defeated senatorial candidate announced his bid for the presidency a few months back, he was touted as an alternative to Joe Biden for people who wanted a hyper-electable cipher who was good at manipulating the media. Those people have since realized two things: If you want a hyper-electable cipher, you should just go with Joe Biden and get it over with; and that O’Rourke has neither the experience nor the personality to get elected.

Experience? O’Rourke was a representative from El Paso for six years who failed at almost everything before or after those elections. His top accomplishment is almost beating a Republican senator in Texas in a campaign where he had more money than God to play around with. In Congress, he didn’t distinguish himself one whit.

Personality? Beto is best known for being either cluelessly arrogant or obeisantly apologetic. Both of these unpleasant character traits were on display during Beto’s appearance on “The View” this week.

O’Rourke was asked about his campaign’s rollout, which didn’t come via a rally or even a campaign video. Instead, it came in the form of a Vanity Fair cover piece with an Annie Leibovitz photograph of him on a dirt road with his dog and a pickup truck, complete with the quote, “I want to be in it. Man, I’m just born to be in it.”

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This is obnoxious for so many reasons, and if Beto wants I can put aside my weekend plans and draft a several-page memo detailing what he should be apologizing for regarding the puff-piece announcement. Instead, asked about whether the cover was a “mistake” that came across as “elitist” by host Joy Behar, he apolobragged about how in tune he is about his white privilege now that the cover story is an issue.

“No one is born to be president of the United States of America, least of all me,” O’Rourke said, adding that it “reinforces that perception of privilege” and that acknowledging his white male privilege was part of dealing with “systematic foundational discrimination” in this country.

Do you think that Beto O'Rourke will win the 2020 Democratic nomination?

“There are things that I have been privileged to do in my life that others cannot,” O’Rourke said in response from a question from “The View” co-host Meghan McCain about whether he could get away with certain things other candidates couldn’t because he was male. “And I think the more that I travel and listen to people and listen from them, the clearer that becomes to me.”

Video below:



The Washington Free Beacon pointed out that “‘The View’ hosts also pressed O’Rourke to once again apologize for his flippant jokes about being a ‘part-time dad’ on the campaign trail while his wife, Amy, takes care of their three children.” They needn’t have pressed him to be apologetic, as you can see. Ask Beto to apologize to you and he’ll gladly comply.

So, I think we can all be clear here: Beto’s problem isn’t his white male privilege. It’s the fact that he thinks he’s an ersatz Kennedy and feels the need to both trumpet and apologize for this status.

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After all, what kind of half-wit mediocrity would announce his candidacy via a Vanity Fair article with that photograph? Could neither Annie Leibovitz nor Beto’s people find a cow skull and a belt buckle for the photograph? I mean, if you’re going to be that blatant, go all the way, man. Don’t chicken out and be subtle with the details.

And if you’re going to do it — along with that laughable “I want to be in it. Man, I’m just born to be in it” quote, which should be the epitaph on Beto’s political career — don’t blame your own density on your white privilege.

You couldn’t find a single Kennedy in Hyannis Port sloshed enough to do something that self-centered and tin-eared. Beto could be a full-blooded Pacific Islander and he wouldn’t have done a single thing differently in regard to the Vanity Fair story. That’s who Beto is. Much like clotted cream, Robert Francis O’Rourke isn’t thick and rich because he’s white. That last part just happens to be an incidental quality.

Beto got a bit closer to the truth — or at least his personal version of the truth — when speaking to reporters in Wisconsin about the Vanity Fair piece: “I saw the cover with that quote ‘born to run’ or ‘born to do this’ and I was like, man, I hope I didn’t say that,” O’Rourke said, according to CNN. “I think the context of that, which makes sense and is the way that I feel is that I’m born to serve. I’m born to try to help bring people together.”

I totally agree with all of that — or at least, I agree that Beto feels that way.

Yes, he certainly hoped he didn’t say it. He did, though, precisely because he’s Beto O’Rourke.

Yes, he thinks he’s born to serve. So does every politician with an inflated sense of self.

Yes, he’s born to help bring people together — in rolling their eyes at O’Rourke. Outside of a thinning cult of followers who believe Beto’s gonna bring America together by livestreaming himself on his skateboard or something, the former congressman is becoming a running joke with plummeting poll numbers and a campaign as disorganized as an 18-year-old pothead’s room.

And what’s he busy doing? Apologizing for the role his white privilege has played in his self-immolation because that makes him sound terminally woke or something. If you didn’t roll your eyes at his self-explication on “The View,” you’re probably too busy rewatching that Facebook livestream of him at the dentist and thinking, “This guy gets it.” Right. Meanwhile, this guy has to stand up to Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. For whatever reason, world leaders aren’t as impressed with skateboarding as the Beto believers are, and this guy can’t even stand up for himself on “The View.”

Meanwhile, in the hyper-electable cipher sweepstakes, Biden is averaging near 40 percent of the vote in the polls while Beto is down to about 4 percent. Forget about apologizing for your genes, Beto. Apologize to your donors.

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C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014.
C. Douglas Golden is a writer who splits his time between the United States and Southeast Asia. Specializing in political commentary and world affairs, he's written for Conservative Tribune and The Western Journal since 2014. Aside from politics, he enjoys spending time with his wife, literature (especially British comic novels and modern Japanese lit), indie rock, coffee, Formula One and football (of both American and world varieties).
Birthplace
Morristown, New Jersey
Education
Catholic University of America
Languages Spoken
English, Spanish
Topics of Expertise
American Politics, World Politics, Culture




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