Meet Robert. Robert Wants To Be Governor Of Mississippi. OH NO, EVERYBODY THINKS YOU'RE F*CKING ROBERT NOW!
Stop us if you have heard this old yarn before!
There is a politician with weird Christian beliefs, and no, we don't mean he's weird because he's a Christian, we mean he's weird because he's got these fucked up stupidass beliefs, deserving of mockery and scorn, that say that women are, at heart, nothing more than sexual objects. Therefore he and his wife have a rule that says he's not allowed to be alone with any woman ever, even in work situations, because he might be forced to fuck her, by virtue of the fact that he is MAN. No seriously, this is what he believes! He says it's about preserving the so-called sanctity of his "Handmaid's Tale" marriage, and that he's only doing this because "people" will talk if they see him walking around the office by himself with a woman, or discussing a project at the water cooler, because everybody will look at them and immediately assume they are engaged in rollicking nightly bouts of #ForbiddenCoitus, and it will never even cross their minds that maybe they are coworkers. But you can tell that there is something much more gross at play, because WHAT THE FUCK ADULT WITH A MODICUM OF SELF-CONTROL NEEDS TO HAVE A "RULE" LIKE THIS? Upon hearing about the so-called couple's so-called rule, what people actually assume is that he has probably cheated on her with a lady, or possibly a gentleman, but shhhhh let's not talk about that.
No, we are not talking about Mike Pence (though of course, we are talking about Mike Pence).
We are talking about Robert Foster, who would like to be the GOP governor of Mississippi. He's a state representative from the metropolis of "Hernando," which is a suburb of Memphis, which means yr Memphis Wonkette right here is going to be keeping our eye out for Mr. Foster walking around with hot dudes half his age, just so we can nod to ourselves and say, "He's respecting his wife right now." Or maybe we will point and loudly say to bystanders, "Those guys right there are a good example of two people who are NOT fuckin'!"
The President Raped Who? What's That? Oh Right Well ...
This morning, the New York Times released an interview on their The Daily podcast in which the two women E. Jean Carroll had told about her assault by Donald Trump identified themselves for the first time. Former news anchor Carol Martin and Lisa Birnbach, author of The Official Preppy Handbook, remembered clear as a bell both her telling them about the rape and their reactions.
Ms. Birnbach said she told Ms. Carroll to call the police, while Ms. Martin told Ms. Carroll not to talk about it because Mr. Trump was too powerful. Ultimately, Ms. Carroll, thinking she was partially to blame for the encounter, remained silent about it for decades.
"I said: Don't tell anybody. I wouldn't tell anybody this," Ms. Martin said.
Now, I don't know about you, but I sure as hell wouldn't be too eager to say I told a woman to not come forward about an obvious rape if I had never done any such thing. That's not necessarily something you'd want on your record.
This should obviously be bigger news. Instead, the bigger news coming from that podcast is that E. Jean Carroll does not like to refer to what happened to her as rape, even though it obviously is rape. That is what is being discussed over on Vox, and touted by the Daily Caller as some kind of evidence that Trump obviously did nothing wrong.
Carroll says she's entitled to her choice of words and that is fine and dandy and sure, we can discuss that, but also can we maybe not forget that THE MAN WHO ALLEGEDLY PUT HIS DICK INSIDE OF HER WITHOUT HER PERMISSION IS THE GODDAMN PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
Isn't that the more important thing here? I don't care what word she wants to use. She can call it a "fight" as she prefers, she can call it "the Charleston," she can call it "stamp collecting," she can call it "the episode of Seinfeld where they're all stuck in a Chinese restaurant the whole time." If what she means by whatever she calls it is that he put his dick inside her without her permission, that's what the concern is and ought to be. Semantics be damned.
In the meantime, while we all have our Trump fatigue -- aka "he's gonna get away with it anyway" -- the Right is rallying to his side and indulging themselves in their usual onslaught of absurd conspiracy theories.
Trump is claiming that she's "not his type," which would make sense if rape had fuck all to do with a man being simply overcome by insatiable lust and unable to control himself or satisfy himself in any other way, which we know is not true.* It is a crime of power, often perpetrated against those the assailant thinks will be least likely to be believed or least likely to tell. This is why the children, the elderly and the developmentally disabled are often most at risk of sexual abuse.
*Also she looked exactly damn like his wife at the time, COME ON.
Radio host Chris Plante went on Tucker Carlson to share his theory that Carroll is just coming out with this story in order to sell books. You know, because at 75 she's suddenly decided to go all out on a get-rich-quick scheme involving ... selling books. As such schemes go, this is not a very good one! Not only do very few people get rich off the sales of one book that is neither a diet book nor a self help book these days, but she would also have to have been highly aware of the fact that coming forward in this way would lead to a whole lot of shit being slung her way and to having her entire life completely dissected by Trump goons. Which she was aware of! She wrote all about it!
Donald Trump Jr. has taken to repeating a bizarre conspiracy theory that Carroll actually ripped her story from SVU, because some QAnon idiot on Twitter found an old Law and Order: SVU episode in which a man describes fulfilling rape fantasies in a Bergdorf Goodman dressing room.
That would be quite the story, if not for the fact that the episode aired in 2012, decades after Carroll told Martin and Birnbach about the assault. Also, given that SVU has been on the air for 20 years now, it would almost be more difficult at this point to find a rape case that had nothing at all in common with any episode of the show. What's next? Are they going to say that all rapes occurring in New York City are just SVU-related fabrications, because the show takes place there?
Also, Donald Trump Jr., your own mother accused your father of violently raping her, under oath. How's that for credible?
From disingenuously parsing her words and actions for "clues" meant to prove that what she says is not true or that she is bad at being a victim to straight up making shit up, the Right is taking over the show here, trying to remake her story into one that looks good for Trump. They want to shut her up and make it harder for the next victim to come forward. Even if we don't think that this story will have any ill effect on people voting for him, we can't just let them win this one. So we've gotta keep talking about it, we've gotta keep it in the news, and we can't let it just slip away, never to be brought up again. That's how they win.
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Republicans Absolutely Do Not Care If Trump Raped Someone, And They Never Will
Yesterday, Elle writer E. Jean Carroll dropped what, in any other timeline, would have been a bombshell allegation against the President of the United States. She wrote, in explicit detail, how Donald Trump raped her in the dressing room of a Bergdorf Goodman's.
It would have been bigger news that he claimed to have never met her, when there was a picture of the two of them together in the very story where she made that accusation. When outlets reported that he said he never met her, they probably would have made a reference to said picture.
In that other, saner, timeline, people who supported the President would read what she wrote and say to themselves "Good fucking lord that is horrifying. He should step down now, but either way, he sure as hell won't be getting my vote next time around. I don't want a rapist for a President!"
I keep laughing. The next moment, still wearing correct business attire, shirt, tie, suit jacket, overcoat, he opens the overcoat, unzips his pants, and, forcing his fingers around my private area, thrusts his penis halfway — or completely, I'm not certain — inside me. It turns into a colossal struggle. I am wearing a pair of sturdy black patent-leather four-inch Barneys high heels, which puts my height around six-one, and I try to stomp his foot. I try to push him off with my one free hand — for some reason, I keep holding my purse with the other — and I finally get a knee up high enough to push him out and off and I turn, open the door, and run out of the dressing room.
I absolutely believe her. You, I assume, believe her too.
So do, most likely, most of Trump's supporters. At the very least, it is highly unlikely that they truly believe he has never raped anyone. They might not think of it exactly that way. They may think of it as him being very "alpha" and not willing to take no for an answer, but they probably don't think he's never put his shriveled little dick inside a woman who did not say she wanted it there.
You may be wondering why this story is not "bigger news," why it is not all we are talking about right now. And the reason for that is not only are we in no way surprised or astonished by this news, but because we know it's not going to fucking matter. It is a depressing reason, but it is the truth. We watched as Brett Kavanaugh got appointed to the Supreme Court with the allegations against him. We watched as Alabama very nearly elected Roy Moore as a Senator. We have seen 21 other women accuse Trump of sexual assault, and though we cared, it has been very clear that his supporters do not. Of course they don't. They voted for him after he announced on tape that he regularly "grabbed women by the pussy" without their consent. They know what he is and they don't care. They're not going to care, and we know they're not going to care. Women, especially, know they are not going to care.
It's depressing to know that they are not going to care. That they will make whatever excuses they need to, just as they will with anything else he says or does. It is depressing to be constantly reminded of that each time something like this comes out. We do not want to have to go through the part where we hear or read the excuses. It is exhausting and it sucks.
The best thing we can all do now is to simply support E. Jean Carroll, and to support any other women brave enough to come out and accuse Donald Trump of sexual assault. Well, that and hope that more of the 100 million people who didn't come out to vote last time will come out and vote this time. The Trump voters are lost to us, but they might not be.
[The Cut]
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Incels Are Mad Because Air Force Briefing Got Their Precious Memes Wrong
On Monday morning, 22-year-old Army veteran Brian Isaack Clyde showed up, armed to the teeth, at the Earle Cabell Federal Building and Courthouse in Dallas and opened fire. No one was seriously injured, except for Clyde, who died being taken down by law enforcement.
In a development that should shock absolutely no one at this point, Clyde had recently been posting "incel memes" on Facebook, notably one delineating the differences between a "virgin shooting" and a "Chad rampage."
Classy, no?
In light of attacks like this, personnel at Joint Base Andrews, an Air Force base in Maryland, were recently given a briefing on the threat posed by incels. The briefing was made public when a slide (the featured image on this post) was posted in an Air Force Facebook group, and a spokesperson confirmed its authenticity to Task and Purpose.
Happy Pride! Trump Got You This Federal Judge Nom Who Hates Gay People, Birth Control, Non-Christians, Joy
Rightwing extremist Matthew Kacsmaryk is set to be confirmed to a lifetime appointment as a federal judge.
Kacsmaryk is a Trump nominee to the US District Court for the Northern District of Texas. The Northern District covers a large part of the state, including the Dallas-Fort Worth area, and is home to nearly eight million people.
Kacsmaryk's current job is deputy general counsel to First Liberty Institute, an organization that promotes the belief that Christians in America are just constantly being persecuted. His nomination is opposed by a myriad of civil rights and public health groups and basically every LGBTQ rights organization.
As noted by Texas Observer writer Michael Barajas,
Matthew Kacsmaryk [has] worked to erode the firewall between church and state as lawyer for the First Liberty Institute, a Christian legal advocacy group that protects pastors who mobilize their flock to overturn local non-discrimination ordinances, county clerks who refuse to issue same-sex marriage licenses and anti-abortion centers that trick women into thinking they're walking into actual medical clinics.
Initially, Trump nominated former First Liberty Institute lawyer Jeff Mateer for a federal judgeship in Texas, along with Kacsmaryk. Mateer's nomination failed after a 2015 speech surfaced in which he called transgender kids "Satan's spawn" and part of "Satan's plan."
Kathy Miller of the Texas Freedom Network, an organization that advocates for the separation of church and state, called Kacsmaryk's and Mateer's nominations "a clear signal that President Trump intends to make our federal courts the place where civil rights go to die."
Only the best people.
