George Santos was expelled from Congress on a Friday in December. The next business day, he announced a new role: as a sort of clown-for-hire at Cameo, an app and website where he offered his personalized video recording services to his fans. He first priced the messages at $75 each, but soon started charging $200, then $400, then $500 each. But last week the market contracted. The videos down to $350 each.
Working on Santos’ Cameo (there is a TikTok account, @georgiescameos, that compiles clips) is a miserable exercise. In a typical offering, you sit in a drab apartment or a darkened van. His face seems glazed over by Botox, his eyes search for the script. He plods along between condolences and congratulations. He says “kill, girl,” he says “kill it,” he says “diva down.” He sometimes refers, with a wink, to the fraud accusations against him. He says goodbye with an air kiss. Mwah. Cha-ching.
I felt bad watching the videos, not because they have enriched a fabulist, but because they are very tedious and flat. There was once a transgressive appeal to Santos’ personality. As he wandered erratically through the halls of Congress, his deception damaged the serious reputation of the American government itself. It was the inadequacy of his high status that made it funny. Now that he’s fallen to a low, viral fame doesn’t create tension for a Santos character. There is nothing transgressive about a scammer on Cameo.
Santos is right in sensing that his political fall had a kind of entertainment value. Bowen Yang took on his form repeatedly on “Saturday Night Live” last year, playing him as a languid, pathological elf. There was a Mad-Libs quality to Santos’ claims, a dizzying randomness that seemed attuned to social media. He said he had family trauma from 9/11 and the Holocaust; that he had worked at Goldman Sachs and on “Hannah Montana”; that he played competitive volleyball and saved puppies. (None of this was true.) As reporters chased after him, his erratic on-camera performances — tripping over the door to his office or, inexplicably, holding a baby — seemed to explode against the wooden interiors of Congress.
Among Santos’ audience, made up of not entirely fanatics, his misdeeds came to seem absurd and relatable. Even when he was formally charged with serious crimes (including conspiracy, wire fraud, credit card fraud and identity theft, all of which he denies), the details were delightfully paltry. The House Ethics Report released in November discussed campaign funds spent on Botox injections, Onlyfans subscriptions and Sephora products. Trump turned politics into countryside, and now there was a true “Drag Race” fan in Congress, one who was well-versed in the tropes of the genre and who seemed to live for messy drama.
When his colleagues voted to expel him from office, making him just the sixth member in history to be expelled from the House of Representatives, the phrase “DIVA DOWN” trended on Twitter. Compared to the power that truly functional legislators can wield over our lives, their crimes passed off as low-risk, almost cute. A millennial in his era of failure.
Now Santos hopes to parlay his political scandal into some kind of influential role. But like a comic book villain, he has landed in a new dimension only to discover that his superpowers have dissipated. He continues to insist that he is an “icon,” but his act is impossible to observe outside of the political scene. His story was fascinating not because he had any special charisma, but because the reporters on his case worked with such persistence, uncovering his lies with such exciting speed that he seemed to be a more dynamic character than he thought. it really was.
Even when trolls (Jimmy Kimmel among them) try to prank Santos, sending him increasingly ridiculous prompts for his Cameo videos, the results have been frustratingly boring. A one-minute video offering confusing congratulations to a woman for transferring the spirit of her dead husband to a mannequin – “I hope you enjoy creating all those new memories now with your new boyfriend Jacob on his new boat, goodbye!” — It just proves that he will say anything.
In their defense, a cameo is rarely interesting as content. A video of a famous person has a meta-value; There is a satisfaction to be claimed in reaching out to an untouchable person. It may seem like a way to use a celebrity as a ventriloquist’s dummy for a minute or two. There is a touch of humiliation in the exercise, for both parties. But Santos is not untouchable and is apparently immune to shame.
Two weeks after his expulsion from Congress, Santos gave an interview to comedian Ziwe for his YouTube channel. Some complained that it was unwise for her to further publicize Santos, but the accusation feels like blame shifting: Our standards were low enough to raise it to Congress, but is YouTube where we draw the line? In the segment, Ziwe was as sharp as Santos was careless: “What advice would you give to diverse young people with personality disorders who are considering a career in politics?” —She asked, but he was so clever that he couldn’t pinpoint it.
When Ziwe asked, “What can we do to make you leave?” He had an answer: “Stop inviting me to your concerts.” Then he added quietly: “But you can’t. Because people want the content.”
There it was, George Santos’ moment of truth. But the value of his assets is falling and he has expensive tastes.
