Nashville Scene writer Betsy Phillips says she can’t stop giggling at U.S. Rep. Andy Ogles’ (R-Tenn.) “racist cartoon” Twitter post long enough to properly denounce the thing. Not because of the damage it does to New York Democratic primary winner Zohran Mamdani, but because of Ogles’ colossal lack of self-awareness.
Ogles, who has already asked U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to subject Mamdani to denaturalization proceedings while being investigated by the FBI himself for alleged campaign finance discrepancies, does not appear to have a solid grasp of his own self-image, Phillips said.
“Just look at the comic-book-hero version of Ogles,” she writes. “He’s got broad shoulders, a trim waist, a strong jawline and a great hairline. Needless to say, this is not what Ogles looks like in real life. Plus, this Andy is brave enough to confront his opponent in person, whereas the real Andy, when he comes to Nashville, hides behind closed doors in the state Capitol building.”
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Phillips said if she ever posted such a “flattering (presumably AI-generated) image” of herself she would find “copies of it papering over” her desk when she entered her office Monday morning. Friends and relatives would pay good money to plaster the mockery on billboards
“When I died, they’d make sure I was buried with 20 copies of this image. I would never live it down,” writes Phillip, adding “there’s something so pathetic about this” that that you can’t stop gasping at Ogle’s disconnect from reality.
“… [T]his image is a metaphor for how Ogles lives his life. He wants to be seen as someone brave and decisive, willing to take a stand,” writes Phillips, while in real life the state representative has been accused of diverting $25,000 intended for building a memorial for children and for hiding his college transcript.
Ogles’ cartoon emphasizes Mamdani’s otherness, depicting a bearded, foreign-looking adversary cuddling communist symbols while raging at the cool, blonde image of the intellectual Ogles rejecting Mamdani’s message.
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“Does he get that this is just another iteration of the same old pattern we’ve watched play out for years?” asks Phillips. “Andy Ogles asserts something. We wait. It turns out the thing he asserted isn’t true. We laugh and wonder who the hell voted for this guy. Or does he think that this time — this time — the thing about himself he wishes were true would just become true based on the strength of him wishing?”
As a congressman, Ogles is in a position to actually “do good things that would earn him the respect he so clearly craves. But he’s just going to keep heading down the stupid path,” Phillips reports. “If he were self-reflexive, it’d be tragic. But for now, it remains hilarious.”
As of July 1, Ogles has not pulled the cartoon, and it remains on his X page.
Read the full Nashville Scene report at this link.
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