Sen. John Fetterman, Democrat of Pennsylvania, was walking through Capitol Hill on Wednesday when TMZ DC's Jacob Wasserman asked him about Larry David's reaction to the White House UFC event. Fetterman didn't pause. He didn't hedge. He quoted a 1981 Bill Murray movie.
"I'd say lighten up, Francis."
The line comes from Stripes, where Sgt. Hulka, played by Warren Oates, dresses down a soldier named Francis — played by Conrad Dunn — who's taking himself way too seriously. Wasserman didn't recognize the reference, which honestly made the whole thing better.
The backstory: Larry David, the co-creator of Seinfeld and star of HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm, attended the premiere of his new project Life, Larry and the Pursuit of Unhappiness and decided to share his feelings about the UFC Freedom 250 event held on the White House South Lawn for President Trump's birthday. His review was not subtle.
"It was a travesty," David told Variety's Marc Malkin. "What else can you say about it? It was embarrassing. I was embarrassed to be an American."
Embarrassed to be an American. Over a sporting event. On the South Lawn. For the nation's 250th birthday celebration.
Dana White organized the fight card. Thousands watched. The administration's lawyers had already argued in court filings that athletic events on the White House grounds have decades of precedent — which they do, from Easter egg rolls to T-ball games to the NFL and NBA champions trotting through for photo ops. But cage fighting apparently crossed some invisible line of decorum that Larry David, a man who built a television empire on stealing forks from restaurants and arguing with Girl Scouts, has decided to enforce.
Fetterman wasn't done after the movie quote. As he stepped into an elevator, he added the plain-English version: "Hey, I'm proud to be an American, and if you are embarrassed or whatever because of a UFC thing, get over yourself, dude!"
Now, we should note what makes this interesting. Fetterman is not a Republican. He's a Democrat from Pennsylvania who won his Senate seat running to the left of most of his party. He's the guy who showed up to the Senate in hoodies and shorts until they changed the dress code. He is not, by any standard definition, a conservative culture warrior.
But he keeps doing this. He keeps breaking from the progressive script on moments exactly like this one — where the institutional left's position is essentially "we find normal Americans enjoying themselves to be distasteful." And each time he does it, the reaction from his own side tells you everything about where the Democratic Party's center of gravity actually sits.
Larry David's complaint isn't really about UFC. It's about who likes UFC. It's about the kind of Americans who'd tune in to watch a fight card on the White House lawn and think it was awesome rather than appalling. The "embarrassment" isn't about the venue. It's about the audience.
This is a man worth an estimated $400 million telling working people that the thing they enjoy is beneath the presidency. That the building where state dinners and classical quartets perform shouldn't be sullied by something as vulgar as athletic competition. The White House has hosted jazz concerts, country acts, and Broadway casts. Nobody called those a travesty. The difference is the crowd.
Fetterman seems to understand something that David and the Malibu wing of the Democratic Party do not: you cannot build a political coalition by telling people their entertainment is embarrassing. You cannot win Pennsylvania by agreeing with a billionaire comedian that regular Americans have bad taste.
The TMZ reporter kept asking Fetterman who "Francis" was. Fetterman just repeated the line. The senator got the joke. The reporter didn't. Larry David, presumably, wouldn't either.
That's the whole Democratic primary in one elevator exchange. One guy quoting a movie every enlisted kid in the '80s could recite from memory. The other guy not recognizing it. And somewhere in Malibu, a man who made billions writing about nothing is embarrassed that Americans had fun.