In an age of billionaire nerds with chips on their slumped shoulders, bros are often caricatured as beefy dipshits or smeared as preening, bullying date rapists. Well, put a big fat tally in the W column, for bros of America have scored a resounding victory: Paul Ryan, bro king, has been elected Speaker of the US House of Representatives. Congrats, bro!
Ryan’s bro career spans his entire life. Born in the Midwest (bro, yes!) to a lawyer dad (again, feeling you, bro), Ryan went on to attend Miami University of Ohio, one of America’s most Bro colleges, where he joined a fraternity (which is basically the bro equivalent of a menarche) and majored in econ and political science, the most bro combination of majors behind, simply, “Business.”
He had two bro internships for proto-bros Senator Bob Kasten and Rep. John Boehner. He cites Ayn Rand as his political inspiration, yet identifies as a practicing Catholic, a philosophical conflict that encompasses two things bros love: holding to diametrically opposed ideas at once without thinking that might be perhaps-not-logically-sound, and loving female celebrities who would almost certainly hate them in real life.
To this day, Ryan continues to carry on several proud bro traditions. First of all, he goes to the gym wearing a backwards baseball cap, probably because he is vain about his hair (another bro trait). We know Paul Ryan goes to the gym because Paul Ryan once famously consented to having photos taken of himself in gym clothes, posing with an adequately bro-sized weight, with a baseball cap on his head. Paul Ryan does P90x, bro. Paul Ryan worked as a fitness trainer when he was in college. Fuck yeah, bro.
While he is almost certainly in better shape than 90% of Americans, Ryan has still famously felt the need to exaggerate his athletic prowess. In 2012, he told a radio host that his “best” marathon time clocked in at around 3 hours. Turns out, Paul Ryan had only ever run a single marathon, and it took him 4 hours and 1 minute to complete. When confronted with his fib, he tried to pass it off like his marathon time had simply slipped his mind. This is unequivocally the best Paul Ryan fact, and among the most bro things a grown man can do.
Like many of his bro-theren, Paul Ryan hates both appearing to work hard and losing. Ryan, like many bros, loves Ronald Reagan. His appearance in a 2013 documentary about Mitt Romney’s ill-fated 2012 Presidential campaign, to borrow a phrase from my coworker Anna Merlan, “bleeds with effort” and a palpable desire to be seen as chill and laid back. Above all, bros desire to appear chill to other bros.
Things, obviously, didn’t pan out for Romney/Ryan, but that didn’t damage Ryan’s relationship with his old almost-boss. Here, look: they have their own hashtag.
Paul Ryan explaining this photo to one of his bros: “This is me and [Borat voice] mah wiiife.”
So, a hearty and Will Ferrel film quote-heavy congratulations (“That escalated quickly!”) to Paul Ryan as he now celebrates the most vaunted bro tradition of all: being handed a job for which he is unqualified and unprepared. Fuck yeah, dude!
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