You know the old Vicks commercials with the guy who played a doctor on "General Hospital" saying "I'm not a doctor, but I play one on TV?" And it was funny because of how it would be super weird if anyone took medical advice from a guy who just played a doctor on TV? Because we all understand that the parts actors play on television and in movies are not who they are in real life? Unless it's like a "Curb Your Enthusiasm"-type thing or it's Tony Danza always playing guys named Tony who seem a lot like IRL Tony Danza? Like, we all understand that Tom Ellis is not actually Satan and Mariska Hartigay doesn't actually solve sex crimes for the New York Police Department, right? We wouldn't see Anthony Hopkins and go "Oh no! He's gonna eat me!"

Well, we do. GOP Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz? Not so much!

Last week, the congressman had a super weird tantrum about soccer players being allowed to kneel during the national anthem and announced on his podcast that he would try to pass a law forcing them to do so. Actual patriotism, compelled shows of patriotism, Gaetz really doesn't care if they're faking it so long as he's satisfied. He can't really tell the difference anyway.

Am I slyly inferring here that Matt Gaetz has never given a woman an orgasm? You be the judge.

Via Law and Crime:

"I don't like soccer enough, for the U.S. to even have a soccer team, if that soccer team is going to disrespect our anthem and our flag," Gaetz said. "It is not like some essential thing that we have to have, if latched to the U.S. Soccer Team is this sense of such extreme wokeness that we cannot be proud of the United States while wearing the uniform of the United States."

To that end, Gaetz promised, he would release a plan that would force U.S. Soccer players to stand for the national anthem.

"I certainly think that we have the right to compel that our national team stand for the national anthem," he continued. "While our anthem is playing, while you serve on the team, I think there is an obligation to respect our country."

Gaetz then tried to make the case that the soccer players were federal employees, which they're not.

This brings us to Sunday when National Treasure Ron Perlman dragged Gaetz for his bullshit in a very adorable "The US Soccer team called ..." kind of way. He is allowed to still use that joke structure on account of the fact that he is Ron Perlman. Being a lot classier than I am, he did not find multiple ways to aggressively infer that Matt Gaetz has probably never given a woman an orgasm.

The next day, after thinking it over for a real long time, Gaetz came back with this zinger in which he suggested that Ron Perlman, a Jewish man with a black wife and black children, was a secret white supremacist because he played one on "Sons Of Anarchy." A television show. That is fictional.

This is just silly. Ron Perlman is not a white supremacist just because he plays one on TV. Clearly, he is a sexy beastman who lives underground, protects his human girlfriend Linda Hamilton while she solves mysteries, and thinks Matt Gaetz is an asshole.

Gaetz's big comeback to that was that his message — of wanting soccer players to do fake patriotism for his entertainment or Ron Perlman being a Nazi, we are not sure — was "true & effective," and that Ron Perlman will be sooooooo triggered if Donald Trump wins again. Gaetz is, for the record, 38 years old.

Perlman came back by pointing out how very sad it is that he keeps trying to tell his "crowd" that "culture" is what's keeping them down.

At that point we all thought it was over, but at 1:00 a.m. this morning, at some point after Ron Perlman told Gaetz he would be the ugliest man in Congress if it weren't for Jim Jordan (are we forgetting about Mitch McConnell?), Ted Cruz decided it was time to get weird.

So he tweeted at Perlman and challenged him to a wrestling match. With Jordan. Which is a little awkward because ... well, you know. So Perlman challenged Cruz to wrestle him himself.

But Cruz, being Cruz, declined and suggested that Perlman was too scared to wrestle Jim Jordan and that this made him the kind of man who gets manicures. You know, like a woman! I guess!

Men are weird.

[Twitter]

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