Men's Lifestyle June 5, 2026 0 Comments

"James Talarico Shattered the Mold — But Which Conservative Pundits Dare Define What a ‘Real Man’ Even Means?"

Ever wonder what happens when a thoughtful, empathetic pastor starts shaking up the macho Texas Senate race — and the right-wing pundits respond like it’s open mic night at a stand-up comedy club? Yeah, me too. James Talarico isn’t your average political hopeful; he’s breaking the mold by being genuine in a world that usually rewards loud and brash. Meanwhile, the usual suspects—guys who equate masculinity with immature jabs and weird obsessions over straws—are scrambling for their best insults, which mostly boil down to questioning his manhood. It’s like watching a bunch of kids throwing tantrums because someone else learned how to play nice. But here’s the kicker: if being a “real man” means tribal posturing and relentless mockery, maybe it’s time to rethink what that label even means. So, who do you want leading the charge — the guy who brings wisdom or the one stuck debating the manliness of drinking utensils? Let’s dive into this Texas-sized clash of masculinity and politics, shall we? LEARN MORE

4 min read

In the great state of Texas, a young pastor and Senate hopeful named James Talarico is gaining popularity while coming off like a thoughtful, empathetic, and evolved kind of guy. The men of right-wing media are being super cool and normal about it. Let’s take a look.

Great stuff. “He’s so dumb that when he heard it was chilly outside, he brought a bowl! He did this instead of putting on a light jacket or sweater, because he was thinking of chili, the food!” Right out of the gate, it is obvious: The right actually is getting better at comedy. Please welcome to the stage: Todd Starnes.

Thinking out loud about a political rival’s undergarments and bodily fluids is textbook secure-guy behavior. It’s great that these guys get paid to do it, and it’s great that actual congressional candidates like Florida’s Dan Weldon are taking the ball and running with it.

Let me tell you a story: When I was a sophomore in college, I had a poster of Michael Jordan on my wall.

Did I care about basketball? No. Did I want people to think I cared about basketball? Maybe, but that wasn’t the whole thing. It was more that I was raised to believe a boy was supposed to have a whole long list of characteristics, one of them being “liking sports.” If he did not possess those characteristics, as I mostly did not, then there was something dubious about him. I had a deep and deeply weird insecurity about the fact that I did not care about sports, to the degree that after many failed attempts at trying to make myself care about sports, I guess I just took the chance that if I had the right sports-adjacent items around me, the interest would absorb itself through the skin like a nicotine patch.

It’s a man’s world, I figured, and sports are the lingua Franca of men, so be the kind of guy who talks about sports rather than the kind of guy who says things like “lingua Franca.”

This is of course very stupid. I had a cool dad, yet these bullshit messages got in there, whether from my peers or some red-assed gym teacher or a Miller Lite commercial I caught at an impressionable moment. Those messages got in there, and at the time when they were playing the loudest in my head, nothing was more upsetting to me than a man who didn’t follow those rules but had the nerve to be happy anyway. Like, you’re not spending every day of your one life on this planet torturing yourself for not living up to some imagined ideal? How dare you?

I was lucky that I had friends who understood me better than I understood myself. I am grateful that none of them used this poster as a jumping-off point to ask questions as detailed as, “What is happening in this picture?” or, “Do you like the Chicago Bulls?” or “name him.” I am glad that I took it down and began to face the fact that I was not the kind of man I thought I was supposed to be, and I am pleased to report that everything in my life got about a million times cooler once I did. I am now a man who couldn’t name a single famous wide receiver from right now, and I like it that way.

We cannot say the same for Jesse Watters and Stephen Miller and Evil Dick Van Patten up there. Jokes like these have never come from a place of comfort or security. These men fall short of their own definitions of masculinity, and it is killing them. And the conflict is happening in a part of their brains and souls that they are too terrified to examine, so all they can do is lash out at the men who don’t care to follow. All they can do is reflexively insult a James Talarico, and the only insult that they can come up with is that he’s not actually a man. “Examining his own manhood, instead of living inside a cage of his own making? What is he, some kind of girl?”

Those messages still get in there. A boy still grows up with all sorts of dumb and rotten ideas of what a man is supposed to do or say or like or be, and now they’re being hollered into microphones by smirking millionaires who just got out of the make-up chair, all in supplication to a man who just sour-grapes’d himself into yet another speaking engagement because Milli Vanilli wouldn’t come to his party.

Event announcement tweet by Donald J. Trump for a rally on June 24th in Washington, D.C.

Donald Trump/Truth Social

James Talarico is injecting some wisdom and intellect and empathy into Texas politics and becoming extremely popular doing it, while Jesse Watters is on the television talking at length about whether it’s gay for a man to drink from a straw. I know who I’d rather spend my time with. I know who I’d rather be.

These are not real men, and they know it. They are not real men, and when I say that, I do not mean to suggest that they are women, or that they are transgender, or that they are closeted Catholic college sophomores. They are not real men, because they are children.