An ex-Jimmy Kimmel producer made the ad to show ‘a more real version’ of masculinity, which allegedly includes crying at movies and buying tampons for women.
There’s the cowboy hat-wearing farmer and mechanic who’s not afraid to rebuild a carburetor because “I eat carburetors for breakfast.”
There’s the rancher sitting on a pickup be who’s “man enough to cook my steak rare.”
There’s the muscular gym rat sitting on a bench who’s “man enough to deadlift 500 [pounds], and braid the s*** out of my daughter’s hair.”
“I’m a man,” they declare. “I’m a man, man,” says an old man with a motorcycle.
These are just some of the “manly” stars of a viral pro-Kamala Harris political ad aimed at reshaping the national conversation around masculinity and helping other men overcome their reluctance to voting for a woman for president. While the ad clearly has a tongue-in-cheek tone, it’s been ripped online as “the cringiest political ad ever created,” an example of “complete, shocking incompetence,” and reason enough not to vote for Harris.
Others have criticized the cast, saying the men in the ad are “beta” males. Viewers may be shocked — SHOCKED! — to learn that there are no real cowboys, ranchers, or farmers in the ad; the stars are actors, many of them improv and absurdist comedians.
Winston Carter, the “farmer” who’s “man enough to tell you I cry at Love Actually,” appears to have been part of a comedy collective called Heckbender, which released a low-budget 2016 movie called Spaghettiman. Carter was a co-star of the movie about a superhero who wears a paper bag on his head and shoots spaghetti from his hands.
Wayland McQueen, an actor with Los Angeles’s Upright Citizens Brigade comedy group, plays the rancher with the pickup who cooks steak rare and “ain’t afraid of bears.” In addition to performing with the Upright Citizens Brigade, McQueen teaches improv, charging $75 for a two-hour lesson, according to an online listing.
While his X account is now private, McQueen appears to have made a post in June 2020, in which he provided “COUNTLESS examples in which you benefit from white privilege.”
In 2019, McQueen appeared on the Too Effing High podcast, where he announced he was a “pretty much daily user” of marijuana. During the episode — recorded soon after the release of the Game of Thrones finale — McQueen was asked to improvise a skit where he was a furniture salesman tasked with selling a chair made of swords.
“Sword is the most comfortable weapon,” he jokes during the skit. “There was an article. National Review had an article about it.”
Lanre Idewu, an actor and model, plays the gym rat in the video. And in this case, the casting doesn’t appear to be too far off. The Chicago-born actor whose credits include the sitcoms South Side, Arrested Development, and Everybody Hates Chris, is also a celebrity trainer and a fitness model for the P90X workout program, according to an online bio.
Idewu posted a Christmastime photo of himself with President Joe Biden and his wife, Jill Biden, on Facebook on July 22, the day Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race. “Good call @potus @joebiden. Let’s make history @vp @kamalaharris,” wrote Idewu, who attended medical school before becoming an actor.
Other actors in the ad include Mike Leffingwell, another Upright Citizens Brigade comedian who posts short comedy bits on Instagram, and Tony Ketcham, a character actor, whose credits include The X-Files, the movie Ghost World, and an Aerosmith video. In a “dancing redneck” audition video, Ketcham says his favorite hobby is “riding my motorcycle just about everywhere I can go.”
Leffingwell, who appears in the ad with a horse, plays a rancher who’s not “afraid of women.” He says he’s fine with women using in vitro fertilization “to start a family,” because “I’m not afraid of families.”
Ketcham plays the old-man biker with a long white beard who says that women can have “all the cats you want,” and if women want to control their bodies, “I say, ‘Go for it.’”
The ad, which was not produced in conjunction with the Harris campaign, was directed by Jacob Reed, a director and visual artist affiliated with the Creatives for Harris collective.
Reed is a former producer for the rabidly anti–Donald Trump late-night host Jimmy Kimmel.
On X, he describes himself as a “Dad with two art degrees trying to make ends meet.” But he no longer uses X and deleted all his posts, “due to the toxicity of the platform.”
On his Instagram account, Reed dutifully includes his pronouns, “he/him.”
“I think about masculinity a lot, because I’m a dad raising kids,” Reed said during a recent CNN interview. “I think in this country it’s something we don’t talk about a lot.”
Reed said he came up for the idea of the ad after watching the Democratic and Republican conventions. During the Democratic convention, he said, the men looked at women with “admiration and respect.” That’s not what he saw at the GOP convention, he said.
“At the Republican National Convention, you have, everything’s about size, crowd size, this size, that size,” he said. “You’re playing ‘Macho Man.’ Literally, Hulk Hogan is ripping his shirt off. The juxtaposition was hilarious.”
Reed said he wanted to show “a more real version of what it means to be a man,” including men who admit to crying at movies and are willing to buy tampons for women.
He said he thought using those examples, “but treating it as if it’s a real rugged political ad would be funny. And I still think it was funny.”
In a recent Substack post, Reed said he “felt validated” by the response to the ad, which he created with a “crew of volunteers.”
“With the rise of role models like Tim Walz and Doug Emhoff on the national stage, I think the Left is finally finding its footing on how to talk about masculinity,” he wrote. “I hope this campaign can start to shape that conversation.”