Saturday Night Live devoted considerable time last night to making fun of Ted Cruz because everyone hates Ted Cruz, and even his friends don’t like him.

As if being blamed by their father for his fiasco wasn’t bad enough, the Cruz children now have to be in quarantine for 7 to 10 days following their return before being allowed back to their school. Their private school has returned to in-class lessons so they cannot go online.

A divide had formed between the parents and students who followed the safety guidelines and those who flouted them — a microcosm of the broader societal conflict that plays out daily across the nation.

Cruz’s trip this week wrenched that divide wide open. As newly released text messages and Cruz-mocking memes exploded on social media, St. John’s parents demanded the school enforce the safety rules that will keep his kids out of class, taking the scandal out of the political realm and into his home.

“At the end of the day, he’s taking this heat for using his children as an excuse for taking a vacation. And that’s a mistake,” said Lara Hollingsworth, a parent of three kids at the school. “From a parent standpoint, all I’m asking is the school follow the CDC guidelines, and I need to say I have no reason to believe they won’t.”
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The topic of the Cruz family’s travel became so hot that administrators of the St. John’s School Parents Facebook page closed down comments Friday on a post that referred “to this recent communication from the school regarding … advisories (including CDC requirements links) for international travel.”

One sign of how much Cruz is disliked is that the text messages sent by his wife to their friends inviting them to Cancun were immediately leaked to the media, prompting one observer to say, “The question isn’t who leaked the text messages. It’s who didn’t leak them? It’s an example of how universally reviled Ted Cruz is in public and private life, and even in his own neighborhood.”