You may think watching even five minutes of The Great American Road Trip, the godawful reality show starring Transportation Secretary and smarmy asshole Sean Duffy, his execrable wife Rachel Campos-Duffy, and their 97 children that suddenly dropped on YouTube this week is a waste of five minutes you could spend doing literally anything else. And you would be correct.
Still, it was worth watching the episode where the family visits Boston, even if it took us like three hours to get through all 27 minutes because we kept pausing the video to contemplate all the life choices that had brought us to that moment. It was worth it because watching Sean and Rachel Duffy absolutely freaking the fuck out in terror of their daughter attending the woke Grand Guignol that is Harvard might be the funniest thing we’ve seen in months. We haven’t seen anyone with that level of terror since our 10th-grade geometry final.
And it is not just one small moment. No, the fear that the Duffys’ daughter, Paloma, will turn into some sort of mind-controlled lesbian witch if she matriculates at Harvard is a theme the show returns to again and again and again. By the time we got to the final scene, we were half-expecting it to be Sean and Rachel either in therapy or becoming Old Order Mennonites.
The griping starts not even two minutes into the show. As the rest of the family scrambles around packing and getting ready, Duffy and Paloma sit at their giant kitchen island and talk colleges. He asks if she’ll push to be allowed to go if she gets in, and she replies, “I feel like you can’t say no to Harvard.”
“Well, me and Mom can say no,” says Sean, dickishly. The scene jumps to Sean and Rachel sitting on a couch discussing their cultural resentments reasoned opposition:
RACHEL: Catholicism to us is everything. It’s the basis of our marriage, it’s the basis of our family. So I’m nervous about the idea of Paloma going to Harvard. We spend a lot of time nurturing and providing formation for our kids, giving them an environment where they are steeped in faith and values. And so the idea of dropping her off at a place that would undermine that or try to undo all those things makes me worried.
Yeah, it’s so hard to remain connected to the Catholic Church in fucking Boston.
The idea that Harvard is a liberal indoctrination camp rubbing its hands together in anticipation of getting them on nice religious conservatives so it can corrupt them and turn them into the sorts of people who think transgender people should have basic human rights is at the heart of all this. We’re sure it sounds reasonable to the Duffys. To us, they just sound like the culture war dipshits they are in every other forum.
SEAN: I don’t want them to get one viewpoint. I want them to get a lot of different viewpoints, but I don’t want them fed only one viewpoint that’s contrary to the way my kids were raised.
We want them exposed to a wide range of worldviews! Just not those worldviews, if you know what we mean. (Anything to the left of Opus Dei, that’s what they mean.) This is how you know he’s not really open to his kids hearing different viewpoints. If he was okay with the idea, he wouldn’t be terrified that they might agree with some of it.
The Duffys have nine kids. Statistically speaking, five of them are liberals. If we were Sean Duffy, we’d prepare for some disappointment.
Back in the kitchen, Sean tells Paloma that if he sends her to Harvard,
“I think what happens is they have professionalized figuring out how they can take good young girls like you and I think corrupt their minds.”
These are your tax dollars going to fund this indulgence in paranoia and professional victimhood.
By this point, all of three minutes into this travesty, we were rooting for Paloma to get a full scholarship to Harvard just so she could call her parents a week after they drop her off and tell them how fascinating she finds her Intro to Queer Gender Theory class.
Paloma, it should be said, seems like a smart kid whose head is screwed on way tighter than either of her parents. After another minute of her father whining that Harvard isn’t that well-rounded (he doesn’t say because of woke but he might as well), she responds that she went to a conservative high school and comes from an extremely conservative family, and if she goes to a college in a liberal setting, that is way more well-rounded than if she goes to, like, Hillsdale.
“But they’re so good at it,” he whines. “You’ll see young people go to a conservative school with a conservative family, and they get perverted and contorted.” At which point we were hoping Paloma would show up at Thanksgiving wearing flannel and talking about her new best friend Jeanine who loves fly fishing.
Paloma, to her credit, recognizes that her parents are being “dramatic and close-minded.” No kidding, kid. Welcome to their entire careers. You don’t get that nice big house with a kitchen island you could play soccer on by being reasonable and open-minded wingnuts.
Then it’s into the car, where Rachel whines that schools like Harvard are beautiful and they will “woo you” and suck you in, like the Sirens calling out to Odysseus. Then once they’ve got you, presumably they spring their trap and turn you into the sort of person who thinks single-payer healthcare is a good idea.
This is the dynamic throughout the rest of the episode. The parents are neurotics spiraling over their daughter wanting to attend the sort of school they have spent their careers excoriating, and the kids find very reasonable ways to soothe their nerves. It’s some parenting job by the kids, calming down these riled-up toddlers.
Eventually it is on to Harvard, where the family goes right to meet with a Catholic chaplain at the school. He assures the Duffys that there are plenty of Catholic students at Harvard. Lots of them even come to Mass on the regular. Sean and Rachel both seem relieved that he didn’t say something like This is a godless place, full of heathens and drink and fornication. Any child who willingly attends this place will not know the eternal company of our Savior.
It was a bit surprising. We would have thought they would be disappointed that he’s not validating every horrific stereotype about Harvard the entire right wing has been telling itself about for decades.
By the end of the episode, Sean and Rachel have come around and decided to be open-minded about their daughter possibly attending one of the most renowned universities on the planet. In fact, they are so relieved that we’re semi-convinced it was all an act for their fans, they would be thrilled if their daughter went to the Ivy of Ivies no matter what, and everyone else is a sucker.
The Kardashians they’re not. We’re unsure if we mean that as a positive or a slur.
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“Catholicism to us is everything. It’s the basis of our marriage, it’s the basis of our family. So I’m nervous about the idea of Paloma going to Harvard”
Does this idiot really think there are no Catholics in the (checks) Boston area?
/FFS