The Not-So-Great Gaetzby
F. Scott Fitzgerald has always been one of my favorite authors and The Great Gatsby a favorite book. It may have been the first Fitzgerald I read (though possibly that was The Diamond Big as the Ritz). Either way, I fell in love with Fitzgerald for his poetic style. The sheer beauty of his choice of words, and how they’re arranged. I’m not breaking any new critical ground by saying (but it does bear repeating) that’s why his works were so difficult to film. I think the only real success was David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. Of course, that’s a matter of opinion. It’s certainly the Fitzgerald story with the most plot.
Natty Matt Gaetz: (R-Fla.) photographed Feb. 3, 2021, in the Rayburn Building, during the House Armed Services Committee meeting to organize for the 117th Congress. His anchor-themed mask quotes Spanish dramatist Pedro Calderon de la Barca: “When love is not madness, it is not love.” Coming from Gaetz that sounds suspicious! (Photo: Tom Williams / CQ Roll Call, Inc.)
I don’t read Fitzgerald for the plot. For me, his work is about the prose and the characters, which is why I’ve followed with interest the revisionist takes on Gatsby. The Gatsby of my youth was a hero, romanticized, seen through the eyes of the admiring narrator Nick Carroway. I always thought that’s what Fitz intended, throwing in some dark undertones to add complexity and depth. In recent years, though, the great Jay Gatsby has been reassessed as shallow, callous and, well, a criminal. A guy in nice clothes with big—and hugely superficial—dreams. Fitzgerald tells us he was born Jay Gatz, son of farmers in North Dakota, later changing his name to the snazzier patronymic.
Which is why, of course, I can’t help but compare the Gatz reboot with that of a Gaetz far less great, the infamous Matt. I know, I’m kind of behind the curve blogging about Matt Gaetz. He’s been knocked off the news cycle for Afghanistan, abortion, voting rights. While I wasn’t paying attention he got married (to a woman named Ginger Luckey; sounds like a name made for small screens of dubious intent, but apparently that’s just how they name people in Long Beach).
We’re still waiting for that other crocodile loafer to drop. But when he was in the news, oh! Those ties! Those shirts! They can’t help but conjure the image of Daisy Buchanan, reunited with Gatsby after a nearly five-year absence. Touring his mansion, they share an intimate moment in his closet. “He took out a pile of shirts and began throwing them, one by one, before us, shirts of sheer linen, thick silk, and fine flannel,” says narrator Nick Carroway, who as chaperone shares the moment.
Gatsby achieves the desired effect: she is impressed with his wealth, and emotionally overwhelmed as she caresses the garments that land on his bed, stammering through through tears, “I’ve never seen — such beautiful shirts.
Those shirts, those ties! Gatez novelly accessorizes with a tiny ape (left) in boring yellow tie. (Photo: Joshua Roberts/Reuters)
There is debate as to whether Daisy’s tears are spillover from her suppressed love for Gatsby (who was uniformed, a lieutenant in the U.S. Army, when they first met) or, more cynically, the result of materialistic awe (which befits revisionist Gaetzby). In the sartorial department Gaetz is a match for Gatsby, with a flashy style that illuminates his news cycles, gleaming like plumage. I found myself mesmerized by the colors, the cut, even as I recoiled at the overall package.
Gaetz has the riveting quality of a Corvette wreck. I can’t keep myself from looking. Gatsby was a midwestern nobody who reinvented himself as a high-society gangster. Gaetz is a Florida senator’s son, who reinvented himself as a U.S. Congressman and applied gangsta veneer. Gatsby, of course, remains an enigma, while the not-so-great Gaetzby is obviously repulsive, despite the glossy packaging.
Some of what we know about Gaetz: In April 2021 he became embroiled in an unusual scandal with a former Florida tax collector, Joel Greenberg, whom he paid via Venmo $900 in fees later linked to sex trafficking, prompting Politico to ponder: “Wingman or Pilot?” (“You’ve heard about ‘Gaetzgate,’ the prurient scandal engulfing the provocative Trump ally Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.). His reputed wingman, a county tax collector named Joel Greenberg, pled guilty to federal charges including the sex trafficking of a 17-year-old — and Greenberg reportedly claims Gaetz had sex with that 17-year-old.”)
From Jimmy Kimmel Live: Matt Gaetz says, “If you want something done, hire a woman.” Kimmel: “Well, that sounds like a confession to me.” The talk host summarizes: “The odds of Matt Gaetz eventually going to prison seem higher than his hair.”
From New York Magazine’s Intelligencer: “The son of a former president of the Florida state senate who made a fortune in the hospice industry, Gaetz was first elected to the Florida state legislature at age 28. He never made a secret of the fact that his personal life was as libertine as his politics are libertarian: He boasted in his memoir about answering a phone call from Donald Trump mid-coitus and allegedly created a sex game rating his conquests while serving in the statehouse.” (Gaetz denies the latter.) After three terms, he won an open congressional seat in the deep-red Florida Panhandle.
From Mother Jones: former president Trump’s most sycophantic fanboy: “President Trump says Rep. Gaetz is ‘handsome, going places’,” and “The meanest member of Congress hails from a town called Niceville, a sleepy enclave of about 15,000 nestled on Choctawhatchee Bay, just off the Gulf of Mexico.”
From Business Insider: Matt Gaetz’s future sister-in-law Roxanne Luckey called him ‘weird’ and ‘creepy’ and said he pressured an older man to date her when she was 19. Roxanne Luckey said in describing Gaetz, she “should have used the term ‘ephebophile,’ a person attracted to adolescents, to describe Gaetz instead of ‘pedophile,’ a person attracted to prepubescent children.” (Who doesn’t want to improve their vocabulary?)
From HBO’s docu The Swamp: