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Does Ted Cruz Truly Have Nothing Better to Do?

Sir! Photo: Evan Vucci/AP/Shutterstock

Listen, I have no idea what Texas senator Ted Cruz does with his days, and frankly, I do not want to know the ins and outs of his schedule. Particularly if he is the Zodiac Killer. But given his job, I would think that he has just a couple more pressing things on his plate than goading a celebrity online. And yet here we are: Ted Cruz has engaged in a spicy Twitter beef with Seth Rogen, who, may I just add, is winning.

Let us go back to the beginning: Inauguration Day, which saw freshly installed President Joe Biden sign a raft of executive orders, including one that recommitted the United States to the Paris climate accord. Responding to the news, a grumpy Cruz tweeted that Biden is “more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh.” Presumably Cruz knows that the agreement was not engineered specifically by or for Parisians, and that Paris was simply that year’s host of the UN Climate Conference.

Now, lots of people — including the actor Mark Ruffalo, and a top Pittsburgh official — jumped in to correct Cruz, but Rogen went another route. “Fuck off you fascist,” he replied. That was the barb that really landed. “Charming, civil, educated response. @Sethrogen,” he tweeted. “If you’re a rich, angry Hollywood celebrity, today’s Dems are the party for you. If you’re blue collar, if you’re a union member, if you work in energy or manufacturing … not so much.”

Rogen then countered that, actually, he is a member of four unions, and “If you’re a white supremacist fascist who doesn’t find it offensive when someone calls your wife ugly, Ted Cruz is the exact motherfucker for you.”

Things continued this way for days: Cruz tweets about seeing Fantasia as a child; Rogen asserts that “everyone who made that film would hate you.” Cruz says Rogen “behave[s] online like a Marxist with Tourette’s,” and also Walt Disney was a Republican. Rogen clarifies that his “very mild case” of Tourette’s actually presents as twitching, and informs Cruz that he “once again take[s] great pleasure in telling you to go fuck yourself.” Rogen calls Cruz a “fascist piece of shit,” Cruz calls him a “moron,” Rogen reminds Cruz that he supported the effort to overturn the election, which culminated in a deadly attack on the U.S. Capitol.

It is not hard to see where Rogen is coming from, and with the movie industry largely shut down, he probably has extra time on his hands these days — time to roast a soup-obsessed psycho while he waits for his pots to finish firing in the kiln. But a sitting U.S. senator? Shouldn’t he have more pressing matters than his mentions to address? Say, the impending impeachment trial, or the proposed coronavirus relief package, or the coronavirus crisis more broadly — more than 25 million cases nationwide, and over 414,000 deaths? Nothing that might compel him to put down his phone and focus on work? Hm, well, in that case, I think we will hand the mic back to Seth Rogen for a final word on this matter:

Does Ted Cruz Truly Have Nothing Better to Do?