On ‘Jimmy Kimmel,’ the Talented Mr. Cruz

If there is a sweet-spot persona for Ted Cruz to hit in public appearances, it is, for many audiences, “not as repulsive as you might have previously suspected.” Cruz is often considered, among both political opponents and congressional colleagues, a bit of a reptilian creature, the sort of Nixonian calculator who inspires memes that he’s the Zodiac killer and widely shared videos about a strange thing he does with his lips while accepting applause. But there’s something surprising about Cruz that sneaks out occasionally, like on Wednesday night’s appearance on Jimmy Kimmel Live!: He’s incredibly comfortable, and almost even appealing, on television.

This hasn't been the conventional wisdom about Cruz in this campaign. It’s Donald Trump, after all, who has supposedly mastered the art of media manipulation and transfixing television theater. But Cruz turns out to be just as much a creature of television, in a very different key. Unlike Trump, Cruz—who, we remind, is younger than Melissa McCarthy, Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Sarah Silverman, Mariah Carey, Jay Z, Jennifer Aniston, Jack Black, and Marilyn Manson—grew up in an age where television was the dominant form of media, when the ability to craft a clever quip, at a slight ironic remove, was the primary currency of a social economy. Cruz is not of Hollywood, but he’s a child of that David Letterman/Generation X comedy age that, in a certain way, will always see the world partly through the prism of Simpsons quotes.