Pivoting to the God Thing

James Talarico is an actor who plays a character named “James Talarico,” and we’re all pretending he isn’t doing amateur theater. The point is bigger than just this one very strange man. The reality of both his performance and the baffling reception to his performance tell us a number of interesting things about the current state of politics and the media, and you can try to guess my facial expression as I say “interesting.”

Talarico is currently being treated by idiots as a significant theologian, a leading teacher of Biblical wisdom. He has emerged from some humble parsonage to inject moral clarity into our political life, after his many years of deep contemplation on questions of faith. He delivers sermons. His campaign website says, “It’s time to start flipping tables,” unselfconsciously making him the rhetorically equivalent actual Jesus Christ of Texas. He holds campaign rallies while standin’ in the back of an old pick-up truck out in front of a church, like the old-time circuit rider he deep down really is. Real life Wall Street Journal headline, Feb. 20:

“Bible scholar.” Name his most important scholarship.

But Talarico was a political activist and a leader in student government as an undergraduate, and he led a non-profit after that, and then he entered the state legislature eight years ago. At the age of 36, he’s been talking in public for at least fifteen years. We have a long record of his public themes and the way he’s presented himself. And it’s not really that hard to figure it out.

Start here, six years ago, with the “Texas State Legislative Election 2020 Political Courage Test” from VoteSmart (which they recently re-posted as Talarico runs for the US Senate). They asked him a series of questions as he worked to hold a legislative seat in the Austin suburbs. Here’s his answer on “Abortion and Reproductive Issues,” for example:

Reproductive justice, healthcare access, and gender equity are all top priorities of mine because they’re foundational issues. A person’s decision to have an abortion should be left up to them in consultation with their doctor. Addressing our state’s maternal mortality rate requires long-term investments in available, affordable, and judgment-free preventative care for all people. I trust Texans to make their own healthcare decisions. While I will never compromise on the constitutional rights of Texans, I will continue to work to find common ground with Republican lawmakers to reduce the number of unplanned pregnancies through scientifically-valid sex education and accessible contraception.

See what language isn’t there? Go through all of his 2020 answers. Here’s his answer on “Social Issues”:

I will support the dignity and civil rights of everyone in Williamson County, including people of color, members of the LGBTQ+ community, undocumented Texans, and Muslim Americans. I work every day to be an ally to underrepresented groups in the Texas Legislature and commit to always growing and learning how to better represent the many communities that I serve. I will firmly oppose any attempts by the Legislature to discriminate against Texans, whether it’s regulating bathrooms or restricting civil protections in the workplace.

In 2020, running for re-election in progressive district, he does not mention religious faith as a factor shaping any of his answers.

This fact represents at least ten of his fifteen years as a public persona.

In 2011, the University of Texas student activist Jimmy Talarico — the “executive director of student government” — spoke out on the need for more education funding: “We know that students at our university can’t just be people standing in line demanding more state assistance. We have to give a sales pitch about why the state funding is not an expenditure, but an investment.” No religious themes of any kind. Here he is in 2010 leading Hook the Vote, a voter registration drive on campus, also with no religious themes of any kind.

In 2016, Talarico was running Reasoning Mind, “a Houston-based math software company.” Here’s a story on the company from the San Antonio Report, quoting Talarico at length. No hint of religious themes.

In 2018, as Talarico entered the state legislature for the first time, the headlines looked like this: “Education focus of new HD 52 Rep. Talarico.” That story described Talarico as a technocrat with a graduate degree in policy, pursuing rational education reforms:

Talarico earned his master’s degree in education policy in 2014 and began working for an education nonprofit based out of Houston named Reasoning Mind. The organization wanted to launch a Central Texas region, so Talarico was asked to come on as executive director.

At Reasoning Mind, Talarico helped implement innovative academic programs at all grade levels — including a program that taught algebra to pre-kindergarten students.

Not the slightest reference to religious faith. From the same story, here’s how he described his beliefs in 2018:

“I’m a proud progressive,” Talarico, 29, said. “But I have worked with people who don’t have those values to achieve what’s best for Texans…my constituents will allow me to use my judgment on every issue to fight for what’s best for them.”

Are you getting a picture of the missing theme in young James Talarico’s political messaging?

The Austin American-Statesman, 2017, under the headline, “James Talarico launches Democratic bid for Round Rock-based House seat,” again describing the candidate as a technocrat: “Talarico is executive director of Reasoning Mind, an education nonprofit that provides software to schools in and around San Antonio and Austin, to help low-income students with math and science. He is a former public school teacher in San Antonio. Talarico earned a bachelor’s degree in government from the University of Texas and a master’s degree in education policy from Harvard University.” Zero mention of religious faith, no Christian themes of any kind.

The Austin American-Statesman again, 2018, under the headline, “Texas House candidate James Talarico takes campaign to the streets.” More of the same: “He said that his top priority if elected would be to find a solution to the state’s school finance system — a vexing topic during last year’s legislative session…Talarico said his experience in the classroom and a master’s degree in education policy would make him uniquely qualified to take on the challenging issue.” No religious themes, no mention of Christian faith at all.

I can go on, and it would bore you to tears. I’ve been reading James Talarico juvenilia all weekend. The “Bible scholar” who gives sermons on the campaign trail spoke in public, often, for over a decade, in the voice of a distinctly secular technocrat. Then his ambitions pointed toward a statewide election, and he became a thin parody of a deeply confused tent show revivalist.

Trying on his new Christian character in 2021, Talarico spoke on the floor of the Texas House to denounce that state’s successful effort to ban transgender competitors from girl’s sports.

God, he warned, was also gender non-conforming. Screenshot, with captions, 3:24:

Longer excerpt from the transcript at YouTube:

See, God says trans children are made in God’s own non-binary image, so stop being mean about it. Obvious question: If there’s nothing wrong with them, why do you have to cut off their genitals and sew on new ones?

This man is strange, and he’s playacting. I don’t read minds, and I have no idea what James Talarico actually believes. But I’m certain (on considerable evidence) that his self-presentation is a calculated performance, and that there was a moment in his life when he decided to switch on the Jesus stuff for the cameras. Maybe he’s playing up some real faith that he used to play down, but there is a moment in his past when he made a choice about public themes that he had not previously made.

Here’s the thing that sets my teeth on edge: There’s no way there aren’t journalists in Texas who don’t remember that Talarico came up as a secular technocrat who had little or nothing to say about religion, and there’s no way some of the people who are currently pretending to cover him as a Bible scholar weren’t more or less in the room when he decided to switch on the new character. They could just read their own newspapers, for crying out loud, going back less than a decade.

Fake politics needs fake media. The falsehood is deeply layered.

I also wrote about Talarico at the Federalist this week, and described Hillary Clinton as “the Eileen Gu of politics.” And now it’s the middle of the night here, and I’ve spent the weekend reading old news stories about James Talarico. Life choices, the high school counselor told me, but did I listen?