Ted Cruz’s gender-centric jokes promote culture warrior image, raise eyebrows

Sen. Ted Cruz made an audition tape for The Simpsons while running for president. He read Green Eggs and Ham during an overnight filibuster, and he peppers speeches with movie references. But lately his humor has grown more crude, with jests suggesting that Sen. Elizabeth Warren has a penis and that Al Franken, the comic and former senator, is sexually obsessed with him. Cruz defends his crassness as a good-natured way to lampoon liberal foibles. But while the Texas Republican’s provocations make him a fan favorite on the right, critics see mean-spirited humor that spreads transphobia and homophobia in the guise of championing traditional values. “What is wrong with him?” George Takei, Star Trek’s “Sulu” and a vocal gay activist, tweeted after Cruz’s comments about Warren. “Elizabeth Warren told reporters that a guy came up to her and said, `I would have voted for you if only you had a penis,’” Cruz recounted Aug. 13 at a GOP rally in Nevada. “In today’s Democrat Party, how do we know she doesn’t?”

Suggestions that Warren, a grandmother, is better endowed below the belt than Texas’ junior senator quickly proliferated on social media. So did jabs about Cruz kowtowing to former President Donald Trump after calling him a “pathological liar” during their bitter 2016 rivalry. Cruz “may think Elizabeth Warren has a penis,” tweeted one progressive detractor, “but we all know Donald Trump took Ted’s when he emasculated him in public by insulting his wife and claiming his father was involved in the JFK assassination. Trump probably kept it in the safe at Mar-a-Lago and now the FBI has it.” The uproar gained steam days later when Franken guest hosted Jimmy Kimmel Live! The former Saturday Night Live writer overlapped in the Senate with Cruz for five years and resigned his Minnesota seat amid allegations of inappropriate conduct in early 2018. “I really think that one of the most serious issues facing our country today is just how big a d--- Ted Cruz is,” Franken said during his monologue, contending that Cruz’s prominence in the Senate stems from the fact that “he’s a huge d---.”