Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign is officially in full swing, and a vast mix of self-declared affinity groups are pulling for her. Last week, inspired by Win With Black Women’s four-hour mobilization call — the collective has been organizing to support Black female politicians for four years — Harris’s Alpha Kappa Alpha sisters activated their group chats, and Swifties for Kamala readied their friendship-bracelet kits. Meanwhile, a large cohort of white women assuaged their 2016 (and 2020) election guilt with White Women: Answer the Call, a 200,000-person Zoom fundraiser that contributed over $8.5 million to Harris’s campaign.
On Monday night, their counterpart emerged: 200,000 white men convened on Zoom to prove to the world that not everyone in the powerful demographic is a backward-looking Trump supporter. They called their summit White Dudes for Kamala and managed to recruit an impressive number of Caucasian celebrities to join the fray, including Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Josh Gad, Mark Ruffalo, Jeff Bridges, Bradley Whitford, Josh Groban, Lance Bass, and NFL quarterbacks Joe Burrow, Daniel Jones, and Jared Goff. (Tragically not present: Harris’s No. 1 white-dude fan, her husband, Doug Emhoff.)
To be fair, the group’s intentions — and, ultimately, its impact — were net-positive. According to the New York Times, it raised over $4 million for Harris’s campaign. Nice! Yet the corniness of a Zoom room full of thousands of white men was impossible to ignore. Here are the most on-the-nose moments.
“A rainbow of beige”
Whitford, a white dude famous for playing a politician on television, opened his remarks with an astounding sound bite, observing that there was a “rainbow of beige” in the Zoom room. “What a variety of whiteness we have here,” he marveled, providing us with meme fodder for years to come.
One guy got his wildest Star Wars dreams fulfilled
NYU business professor Scott Galloway pledged $50,000 if actor Mark Hamill, Luke Skywalker in the original Star Wars franchise, would deliver the line “I am Luke Skywalker, and I’m here to rescue you.” After some inevitable struggling to unmute himself, the guy gave these nerds what they wanted:
The original Dude
In the most literal interpretation of the evening’s theme, some particularly ambitious white guys managed to wrangle Bridges (who played “the Dude” in The Big Lebowski) to deliver a rousing speech from his home office. “I qualify, man,” Bridges croaked. “I’m white, I’m a dude, and I’m for Harris!” He added that he “dug” what the guy before him had contributed to the conversation before praising Harris’s “championing of women’s rights” and “stance on the environment.” “A woman president, man,” he contemplated. “How exciting!”
Pete Buttigieg taps in
In case you’re worried that this was simply a circle jerk of wispy Hollywood elders, some actual politicians were on the line, including governors Tim Walz of Minnesota, Roy Cooper of North Carolina, and J.B. Pritzker of Illinois. Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg (who, along with Walz, is rumored to be on Harris’s VP shortlist) had the misfortune of speaking directly after Bridges, a guy whom, I need not remind you, everyone literally calls “the Dude.” Perhaps sensing the powerful white-guy enthusiasm Bridges had stirred up, Buttigieg observed, “The vibes right now are incredible.” I don’t know about that, but they were certainly … white?
