Mike Johnson is a Funny Name for Mike Johnson

Let us begin today with the premise that “Mike Johnson” is a pretty funny name for a Christian nationalist Republican lawmaker who shares accountability software with his son to monitor each other’s porn intake. That’s just good comedy right there. Let us also stipulate that our new Speaker of the House looks like a Mike Johnson. He’s handsome in a banal kind of way, his look reminiscent of a 1960’s social studies teacher that maybe used to date the Home Ec. teacher before he asked if he could shit on her chest, an incident both of them decided not to discuss with anybody else after their courtship abruptly ended. “Mike Johnson” is the name of a Boy Scout leader with secrets, or maybe the name of an undercover Lizard Person on some USA Network sci-fi show. It’s such a wonderfully elastic moniker. Mike Johnson could be anybody. And maybe that’s the point of Mike Johnson.

Already we’ve been treated to various and sundry quirks in the strange life of Mike Johnson. The time he “adopted” an African-American teenager when Johnson was a twenty-five-year-old bachelor. There is the fact that his wife runs a gay conversion therapy in their home state of Louisiana. There is this oddity – Mike Johnson does not have any assets. No investments, retirement account. It was reported that he does not even have a bank account, although Johnson has recently clarified that he does have a checking account which earns no interest. Yet, somehow this humble servant also lives in a 12,000 square foot home. How does this make sense? I don’t know. Is it, somehow, scandalous? I have no reason to believe so.

Would you trust this man to valet your car? Photo by: Tom Willliams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc./Getty Images

There appears to be a lot of peculiarities around the new Speaker of the House whose name is the pretty funny “Mike Johnson,” but as far as I’m concerned, that’s the end of it. Yes, his lifestyle raises eyebrows. Yes, it’s odd that his adopted-child-who-was-never-adopted appears to have been disappeared from Johnson’s life by the time he married his covenant bride, Kelly Renee Lary, in 1999. There is much about Mike Johnson that appears strange to me, but as far as I can tell, there is no scandal around Mike Johnson, and I actually don’t like the way that many on the left are trying to tarnish his pretty funny name with hints and innuendo. It’s exactly the kind of guilt-by-weirdness that those of us who claim to promote tolerance and diversity decry when it’s done to members on “our side.”

When they attacked John Fetterman for his cargo shorts and punk rock wife. Or AOC for dancing in the hallways of Congress. Krysten Sinema is another odd duck. So is everybody. So are you. One of the most disheartening developments of the last few decades has been the rise of the politics of personal destruction, in which any quirk or foible is elevated to near-scandal through media magnification. “What do you mean Barack Obama asked for Dijon mustard? Isn’t that… French?” It’s easy to fixate on people’s eccentricities in lieu of their actual policy positions because the level of American political discourse has descended to schoolyard taunting. I’m just waiting for one Senator to call another “Four Eyes.”

On the other hand, we can learn something about those who would lead us by some of their bizarreness. Ron DeSantis’s penchant for parading around in high heels tells us something about his insecurities. So does Tim Scott’s imaginary girlfriend. Marjorie Taylor Greene’s CrossFit obsession seemed to coincide with her tryst with her CrossFit instructor. Does that speak to her character? I don’t know. Does it speak to her hypocrisy? It does. And yet, I’m even loathe to criticize her for her affair because how many of us say one thing and do another? The answer: all of us. All of us are hypocrites. All of us are flawed and weird. All of us make choices in private that we might advocate against in public. A body politic that never crosses the line of good sense and propriety would be no more representative of the American public than a legion of Carmelite nuns. The halls of Congress are filled with freaks. Good.

As for the humorously-monikered Mike Johnson, my inclination is to leave the man’s personal life out of the current discourse and focus on the dangerous policy proscriptives he would impose on the nation. Twenty years ago, he worked for an organization now, ironically, known as The Alliance Defending Freedom. During his time there, he sued the city of New Orleans for giving health care benefits to the partners of gay city workers. Mike Johnson wrote an amicus brief for the Supreme Court arguing in favor of criminalizing homosexual sex. Mike Johnson plotted to overturn the 2020 election results. Mike Johnson wants to create a federal abortion ban and prosecute those who would provide or seek abortions. Mike Johnson wants to outlaw birth control. Mike Johnson wants to cut Social Security, Medicare, and food assistance to poor Americans. The Clark Kent demeanor obscures personal bigotry and animosity towards those who do not share his biblical worldview. We can raise our eyebrows at his unusual lifestyle and personal history, but it’s his Handmaid’s Tale belief system that keeps his pretty funny name uppermost in my mind these days.

I have no reason to believe there is anything untoward in Mike Johnson’s personal life. That’s not to say I don’t hope there is. I do. I hope all the oddness one day reveals him to be the head of the Sinaloa drug cartel or something. But I don’t think that’s the case. Rather, I think the Republican conference has elevated a shiny-eyed Christian nationalist to one of the highest offices in the land because they are an extremist party both incapable of - and uninterested in - governing. There may be skeletons in his closet or there may not be, but I do know that his ghoulish policies, if enacted, will produce misery for millions of Americans. We can decry religious extremism when we see it abroad. Let’s not be afraid to call it out when we see it here.