What’s behind the Brazilian President’s ‘golden shower’ tweet?

I’ve never thought I’d telephone a political scientist to talk about pornography and the act of a “golden shower.” However, in Jair Bolsonaro’s Brazil, anything is possible.

In case you’ve missed the latest controversy stirred up by Brazil’s president, a quick summary. On Tuesday evening, Mr. Bolsonaro used his official Twitter account—the same one he uses to make official announcements of policies and government measures—to post an explicit video to “denounce” the moral laxity of Carnival. The footage shows one man, barely dressed, standing atop a newspaper stand and masturbating anally. Then, a second man begins urinating on the first man’s head.

“I don’t feel comfortable showing this, but we have to expose the truth so the people can be made aware,” the president wrote. “This is what many Carnival street parties have turned into.”

The post unsurprisingly gained a lot of attention, but the coup de grâce was a subsequent tweet from the president, asking “what is a golden shower?” If you don’t know by now, we’ll let you google the term.

While I’m by no means condoning the behavior of the two men featured on the lewd video published by the president, it means that Mr. Bolsonaro has completely missed the point about Carnival. This year alone, almost 600 parties took to the streets of São Paulo, with...