Vote For A ‘Heterosexual’ President? No Way, Say These Real People In Head-Shaking Video


Would you vote for a “heterosexual” president? The folks in this “man on the street” video sure wouldn’t, as they say, quote emphatically, in this alarming series of interviews conducted in Austin, Texas, earlier this month by Joseph Costello, who does his own Jimmy Kimmel/Jay Leno shtick.

Watch Costello ask these Texans, with a straight face, if they would vote for a heterosexual president. And what you’ll learn is that these folks clearly have no idea what the word “heterosexual” means.

And because they clearly mean “homosexual,” you’ll also learn that for all the advancement in LGBT rights issues that has been made over the past decade, America is likely still a long way from electing a gay president.

At about 1:40 into the clip, the otherwise amusing if somewhat depressing video gets hijacked by a guy whose face is obscured by a smiley face. Reportedly, his name — or the name he chooses to be called — is Romeo Rose, and the extreme, hate mongering statements he makes in the video seem to be typical of other statements he has made online.

Late last year, the women’s news site Jezebel picked up a Twitter rant unleashed by Romeo Rose and captured it for posterity.

Romeo Rose has also, since Costello posted this “heterosexual president” video on YouTube, posted a similarly vitriolic and profane NSFW rant against Costello on Twitter, and declaring, “I don’t have any regrets about anything I say about f*****s.”

As one site pointed out, the confusion over the word “heterosexual” recalls a famous political story from 1950 — one which was quickly exposed as a hoax but that nonetheless entered political lore and played a part in the Florida senate race that year. Yes, there were viral hoaxes even in 1950, decades before the internet.

The story was actually invented by a reporter, poking fun at what he saw as the ignorance of Florida voters. Supposedly, Republican candidate George Smathers delivered a speech attacking his Democratic opponent Claude Pepper in what came to be known — even though the speech was totally fictional — as “The Redneck Speech.”

Here’s what Smathers was supposed to have said:

“Are you aware that Claude Pepper is known all over Washington as a shameless extrovert? Not only that, but this man is reliably reported to practice nepotism with his sister-in-law, he has a brother who is a known homo sapiens and he has a sister who was once a thespian in wicked New York. Worst of all, it is an established fact that Mr. Pepper, before his marriage, habitually practiced celibacy.”

The joke was that the audience would have an entirely different definition for words like “thespian,” “homo sapiens” and “extrovert.” But at this “heterosexual president” video shows, the joke’s still on us 64 years later.

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