When I performed standup comedy in New York City decades ago, I did a routine about the contrasting values of middle America and Big Apple residents. I noted that whenever tragedy struck someone in the flyover states, the ultimate compliment was their involvement in the community and their activities in local religious or other organizations.
The ultimate New York City compliment when tragedy struck a local resident: They minded their own business.
Bryon Noem, the husband of disgraced former Homeland Security chief and former South Dakota governor Kristi Noem, is a validation of my observation.
Britain’s Daily Mail this week published a story that Noem was active in an online scene known as “bimboification” and featured some cross-dressing pictures of him wearing large cartoonish balloon breasts in chats with others who have the same fetish.
One can hardly fathom Noem’s humiliation, coming in the wake of published reports that Kristi was having an affair with her close advisor, Corey Lewandowski. The Noems have three adult children and several grandchildren.
New York Times reporter Shawn McCreesh happened to be in Castlewood, an agricultural hamlet along the Big Sioux River in South Dakota, when the story about Bryon Noem’s fetish broke, interviewing residents about their reactions to Kristi’s alleged adultery. The Noems long were fixtures of Castlewood, where Kristi is still known as “Snow Queen,” a reference to the state beauty pageant where she was crowned.
Although Castlewood has a population of only about 700, it is incorporated as a city whose motto is, “A Small Town with a Big Heart.” McCreesh’s reporting documented that Castlewood’s townsfolk live up to their billing.
McCreesh’s findings: “the prevailing sense that emerged was this: People can’t help but feel sorry for Bryon Noem.”
Consider the reaction of Kevin Ruesink, a “burly cattle rancher” who refused to believe the published photos of Bryon Noem were real.
“I grew up playing ball with Bryon,” he said. “I’ve never known him to be part of stuff like that. I don’t believe that at all.”
Brad Johnson, a local real estate appraiser, conservationist and newspaper columnist who has known the Noems for years, had this to say: “People know Bryon as the supportive husband who worked to maintain a normal family life as Kristi’s profile skyrocketed,” Johnson said. “It shows the price of power and fame is very high. But Kristi invited this type of coverage by her actions at the Department of Homeland Security.”
At a gas station that sells AR-15s where “Kristi for Governor” stickers still adorn the countertops, McCreesh reported that one man looked at The Daily Mail report and shook his head sorrowfully. He didn’t know what to believe about Bryon Noem. Only that he liked him.
“Such a nice man,” he said. “It just tears me up.”
Then there was the reaction of Nancy Turbak, a former state senator who runs a law office in nearby Watertown. Bryon is her insurance agent, and a friend of her sons’.
“I am sorry that Bryon is now the subject of so much attention himself, and for any embarrassment he’s experiencing,” Turbak said. “He never asked for the public life in the first place, and I know him to be a kind and decent man. I wish he were not going through this,” she said.
Notably, Turbak is a Democrat.
Conservative influencers showed no such grace.
Laura Loomer, who reportedly President Trump consults with, posted on X that everyone in the Trump administration, including Kristi Noem, knew “forever” that Bryon “is a cross dresser and gay” and that she was shocked it wasn’t revealed earlier. Loomer also claimed, without evidence, that Bryon never divorced Kristi because they had an “arrangement.”
If everyone in the Trump administration indeed knew about Bryon’s fetish and his practice of frequenting online forums to indulge it, then Kristi was a known security risk because she was vulnerable to blackmail attempts to expose her husband’s sexual pursuits.
Late-night host Jimmy Kimmel’s response was predictable.
Kimmel framed the photos not as a private family crisis, but as the final, absurd act in Kristi Noem’s “failed” tenure as Homeland Security Secretary. He mocked the “pink spandex” and the “cartoonishly large” details of the photos, at one point comparing the images to a “low-budget superhero movie that even Marvel wouldn’t touch.”
“I’ve been in show business for 30 years. I’ve worn a lot of costumes, I’ve used a lot of balloons to fill things out for a sketch—but I have never, in my wildest dreams, done whatever it is Bryon Noem is doing there. That isn’t a costume; that’s a structural engineering project,” Kimmel said.
He then doubled down, mocking Kirsti Noem being known as “Snow Queen” and suggesting that “the only thing Kristi Noem successfully ‘secured’ at Homeland Security was a husband who needed a bigger shirt.”
These were the best “jokes” Kimmel and his writers could muster. Kimmel’s past costumes included dressing up in women’s clothing.
Then there was The Daily Show’s Desi Lydic, who offered this insight: “I can’t believe that the lady banging her employee on a fuck plane is the less messy one in their marriage,” Lydic quipped.
“You know what? You live your truth, Bryon. Oh, she can dress up but you can’t? Fuck that,” Lydic said, with photos of Kristi Noem in numerous sartorial get-ups featured in the background.
It’s disappointing that Lydic resorted to such lame humor. This was the comic whose parody of Kamala Harris was one for the ages.
The compassion and support Castlewood residents voiced for Bryon Noem suggest that America’s political and entertainment class is out of touch with the values and attitudes of many Americans, particularly those in small cities and towns in middle America. The trend these days is to mimic Trump’s undeniable mean-spiritedness and reduce everyone, including the president, to a parody.
California governor Gavin Newsom has garnered plaudits for trolling Trump from political consultants and media pundits, but I wonder if perhaps a significant number of Americans are as turned off as I am by pervasive nastiness and vulgarity. A recent talk I attended featuring Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro gave me some hope.
Shapiro said his political fortunes turned while canvassing houses throughout the state and stopped regaling potential voters with his agenda and plans. Instead, he chose to listen to what voters said was on their minds.
Shapiro also shared that political consultants advised him to play down that he was an Observant Jew – advice that he rejected. Shapiro is wildly popular with Pennsylvania voters and tellingly he lacks the support of state Democratic officials.
Skeptics, of course, will caution that it’s best not to romanticize Castlewood, S.D., given that’s where Kristi Noem, who has demonstrated considerable mean-spiritedness throughout her career, spent considerable time there. That she’s still regarded as the “Snow Queen” and other comments residents made to the New York Times about her, seemingly suggests that she isn’t remembered all that fondly.
In a town of 700 people, residents responded to humiliation with empathy, even uncertainty, but rarely cruelty. In the political and entertainment arenas that shape national discourse, humiliation has become premium click-bait content.
It’s apparent what each approach says about the country—and why so many Americans have tuned the other out.