The GOP Congressional Castrati Chorus

What’s the point of the office if you’ve junked your principles to cling to it?

Jan van Eyck

I listened to a 1904 recording of Alessandro Moreschi singing “Ave Maria” this evening. It is at the same time familiar yet eerie. A beautiful old classic sung in a voice that this 21st century opera lover finds otherworldly and, frankly, off-putting.

You see, Alessandro Moreschi was a castrato singer, one of the very last men who were castrated as a boy so as to sing as a soprano, but in a voice of great range and power, one no woman or ordinary male singer could match, creating a sound that was, in its day, considered sublime, voluptuous and apart. One contemporary said of Moreschi, “His voice rose above the choir in a crescendo and overpowered them as completely as a searchlight outshines a little candle.” He was known by his 19th century groupies as the “Angel of Rome.”

The gruesome practice of emasculating pre-pubescent boys solely to create entertainers for the culture-loving upper classes was practiced over centuries, largely in the Italian states. It lost favor as society modernized and died with Moreschi, the last of his ilk. A somewhat euphemistic synonym was evirato — emasculated; another was cantoretto — little singer — even though the lack of testosterone caused castrati to grow tall and broad. While the castrati were treated as the rock stars of their time, off-stage they were derided as freaks; so that as their fame increased, so did the scorn. Hence, they were simultaneously loved and loathed.

Much, in fact, like today’s congressional Republicans, whipped and browbeaten by Donald Trump into what I call the GOP Congressional Castrati Chorus, yet repeatedly voted in by their adoring MAGA constituents. Emasculated (at least the men) and subjugated, they sing “Ave Donald” in unison in a weird political falsetto that flies in the face of all the courage and ethical traditions passed down to us by the Founding Fathers. I look at the Republican senatorial women, particularly the ones who know better — Collins, Murkowski and Ernst — as merely female sopranos enjoined in cowardice with their allegedly male counterparts. House representatives Greene and Boebert, I view as operatic ogres prancing and japing at the edges of Hell.

Lindsey Graham is the grande divo of the show, the Alessandro Moreschi of his time — a kind of male who performs brilliantly for his master, but lacks any coglioni.

He deserves the International Opera Award (“Opera’s Oscar”) for his dazzling performance as craven supplicant right after the disgraceful Trump-Vance mugging of Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office on February 28. Let’s face it. It takes true talent to go from (2022) “As long as the fighting is going on, if we pull the plug on Ukraine, it would be worse than Afghanistan” to “I have never been more proud of the president. I was very proud of JD Vance standing up for our country… He [Zelensky] either needs to resign and send somebody over that we can do business with, or he needs to change.” Whenever I hear Graham mouthing off like this, I conjure up Foghorn Leghorn on a bad day.

And these Republicans sit silent, or even praise their Mad King, North Korean-style, as he destroys the country by —

• Giving free rein to a crazed billionaire to take a wrecking ball to federal agencies.

• Engaging in brazen corruption along with his family.

• Betraying beleaguered Ukraine while embracing its aggressor.

• Dissing our allies of eight decades.

• Creating economic chaos with nutso, destructive policies.

• Violating the Constitution almost daily with a flurry of dictatorial executive orders.

• Threatening insanely to invade and take over Greenland, the Panama Canal and, gulp, Canada.

Yet the GOP Congressional Castrati give it all a pass.

The Théâtre du Grand Guignol was a kind of dumbed-down entertainment for the late 19th century lumpenproletariat, featuring grotesqueries in a tawdry horror show. Trump has resurrected this lost art in the form of his picks for cabinet positions. I mean, they don’t get scarier than creepy RFK, Jr. and bug-eyed Kash Patel. People say good things about Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, but he frightens me. With his slick suits, gelled hair and constipated demeanor, the image that pops into my mind is of a psychotic undertaker. Tulsi Gabbard is the epitome of a 1950s B-grade horror movie beauty. And Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick could be cast as a mouthy Sweeney Todd — a mad barber who butchers his clients.

Republican senators voted to confirm this cast of Hell’s rejects. How they then live with themselves is beyond me. New York Times’s Frank Bruni sums it up:

Oh, they have their talking points. Their rococo rationalizations. They tell the world or themselves that they’re simply respecting the will of voters by giving a duly elected president his preferred team. That they’ll be keeping a close eye on how these unconventional department and agency heads perform. That they’ll speak up and step in if such intervention is required. (Pro tip: Don’t hold your breath.)

What’s the point of the office if you’ve junked your principles to cling to it? And what’s to become of a Congress — of a country — that watches a disaster unfold and convinces itself that submission is the prudent response?

Back in the day, castration was carried out as a means of subjugation, enslavement or other punishment. Eunuchs served as harem guards, but they were also valued as prominent political tools since they could not start a dynasty which would threaten the ruler. This is why Trump has successfully neutered Republican lawmakers, turning them into his servile protective palace guard. Just as with the singing castrati of yore, however, history will judge today’s Republican eunuchs as freaks to be ashamed of.