A couple of days ago, The Hollywood Reporter published an essentialist trend piece that belittled advocacy as a mere matter of branding and seemed to assume every gay man is Mr. Clean. It introduced the “Stromo” — the straight homosexual (Channing Tatum was the oft-cited example).
It seems to us that there’s a gap in the market for a stromo-centric website, and we’re not the type to sit on our hands. (And today, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of same sex marriage, so it’s a great day for all sorts of ‘mos). And so, here is Stromohole’s expication-mo (i.e. when something is explicated with an abstract hint of profitable gayness) of the most important stromo issue of the moment: the Presidential campaign-mo, because it seems like stromo is all the rage. Mo!
It was just another scorching Sunday in Weho, when Gernie Sanders (i.e. when Bernie Sanders goes gayish), Lincoln Chapee (when Lincoln Chafee goes gayish by sporting assless chaps) and Hillary Hammrod Clinton (a term for all those times when Hillary Rodham Clinton will inevitably go gayish by invoking Jon Hamm’s rod — don’t we all?! — during the upcoming debates) were seen cruising (you caught me punmosexual-ing, another term that just rolls off the tongue and is what I cleverly call making a pun on the topic of homosexuality) down Santa Monica Boulevard.
There they were, three ripped, packin’ possible presidents sweating their approval atop a pride float perhaps shaped, I imagine — with completely good and progressive intentions on my part — like Barry Manilow’s sphincter, because gay. The maybz-prezzzzies were waving their rainbow flags and wiggling their nipple clamps in the wind in promotion both of their upcoming campaigns and of Magic Mike XXL — for which a scintillating trailer has revealed them participating in strip teases where, one by one, they remove American flag pins from their suits while making affirmative gestures behind a podium (schwing, eh?): but it wasn’t Clinton’s hip Downtown Brooklyn campaign office staff that made the call for them to appear at Pride — it was straight, married Clinton herself.
For, startlingly, it seems these days that people aren’t stressed out about treating homosexuals like normal humans. I’m personally patting myself on the back right now with my old Proposition 22 signpost, which I clearly won’t be needing after a certain 11-inch (aka very large) decision was reached by the Supreme Court earlier today.
Far from feeling stigmatized, the Presidential candidates welcome the gay gaze, which is scientifically proven to be a LED laser made solely of penises emanating from irises that are essentially just a layer-cake of cock rings that keep homosexuals’ testicular eye-balls perkily ready to shoot said gaze at hotties like Sanders, Clinton and Chafee, who, allies that they are, declined to wear ponchos at Pride. Such a gay-ish trend has led me, a humble journalist-ish who really wants to invent a word, to an explosive stroke of brilliance-ish: “Prestromo,” or straight homo presidential candidates. As a pneumonic device, think pastrami, which is a meat, which is the type of thing the gay gaze renders all bodies.
Bernie Sanders looked so prestromo atop the Pride float that he flashed pink and sent Stromohole’s camera into a distorting frenzy, leading his head to look almost superimposed onto another body
Prestromo didn’t start with the appearance at Pride, though. Bernie Sanders waxed Prestromo when, in April, he said that “it’s time for the Supreme Court to catch up to the American people and legalize gay marriage.” Hillary started letting her Prestromo flag fly recently, when she spoke to NPR host Terry Gross, after having been asked about her seemingly inconsistent policy and about her not-at-the-time-prestromo-husband signing no-prestromo-DOMA (which she also said, at the time, that she would have signed). She alleged that she’s been kinda prestromo all along, but was just focused on less prestromo stuff, and now she’s more prestromo, and is focusing on more prestromo stuff:
As secretary of state I was out of domestic politics, and I was certainly doing all I could on the international scene to raise the importance of the human rights of the LGBT community. And then leaving that position I was able to very quickly announce that I was fully in support of gay marriage. And that it is now continuing to succeed state by state.
Indeed, one could speculate that it seems Clinton’s going prestromo in part for profit: presidential candidates are realizing that they want those rotund but sculpted, pugnacious, firm-to-the-slap-but-not-lacking-a-little-bounce gay-butts-for-which-I’m-transparently-longing in the voting booths, punching those ballots (it’s something they teach butts to do at Gold’s Gym, to which I hear a membership is required to qualify as gay). Chafee, however, was trying to get homos all up in his ballot back in 2004.
Dapper Prestromo Lincoln Chafee sports tie in ‘Magic Mike XXL’
For this reason, gaydar is becoming increasingly difficult among presidential candidates. “It’s a common question at parties: ‘Is he gay, European, or a Presidential candidate?'” laughs Modetails editor-in-chief Penis Penis. Meanwhile, Urethra‘s editor-in-chief Penis Butt Penis Miller noted just how many presidential candidates are vying to show their urethras on the cover of their magazine. “What else is running for president but a bid for attention? They’re like, begging for a turn to get their urethras all up on our covers. Today’s presidential candidates are shameless hussies.”
“As our audience becomes ‘gayer,’ we have to become gayer or end up looking dad-ish,” Sanders himself suggested. Ergo, appearance is still key to prestromo. Take Chafee, for example, who’s famous for having been a Republican state senator who still defended gay marriage, but is even more famous for doing gay stuff like painting his nails, posing in Emporio Armani underwear in a 2009-2010… and listening to Cher because my Dummy’s Guide to 90s Straight Perceptions of Gay People ends there. Meanwhile, Sanders is famous for voting no on banning gay adoptions in 1999 but even more famous for that one thing all sex-hungry gay men want: owning Burlesque on Blu-Ray because my Dummy’s Guide still ended there.
Allegedly, it was Hillary who sent the missive to Supreme Court justices Stephen Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor, and Anthony Kennedy, saying, “Straight politicians now want to be sex objects — and what better way to get objectified than by other penised human beings?” Feeling up for an experiment, and desperately wanting a belittling trend piece written about their support and advocacy, the judges whipped out their dildo-gavels, started pounding and changed America for the better. “Eeeryyooo whoo anyeeeeoooo iiieeee doooin ieeeee,” said Kennedy following the 5-4 decision, as he attempted to remove a strawberry flavored ball-gag from his mouth.
“What he’s trying to say is, ‘Anyone who’s anyone is doing it,'” said Ginsberg, dipping her fist into a vat of vaseline. “Yeah, supporting a group who’s had a hard time finding a voice and an even harder time navigating the structures that define love in America is good and all, but the most important thing is that this is a trend and that straight male presidential candidates are going to eyebrow salons and calling themselves Yogis and that this is really going to work wonders for Magic Mike XXL at the box office. Let’s get those gay asses in those seats, y’know?”
“Eeeeee,” replied Kennedy with assuring glee — indicating that all issues of representation — in the media, for example — are now quelled for homos forever.