Deleted Comments: Why Is Hillary Clinton Cutting Off Donald Trump's Head With Renaissance Art?

What gives? Not one of these people is a pony.

Oh, gosh, guess nobody saw this coming: Yr Wonkette's frankly tacky and offensive T-shirt depicting Hillary Clinton as Judith and the least sentient portion of Donald Trump as Holofernes has caused some Outrage On The Internet after being featured in a piece at Media Equalizer. (The story was also reblogged by the Stupidest Man on the Internet's side project, Progressives Today. ) They were not pleased by Shypixel's Photoshop work, it appears:

Feel like Election 2016 could use a bit more incivility? Well, then, we’ve got the T-shirt for you!

For a mere $27.68 a pop, the overtly pro-Hillary website Wonkette is peddling anti-Trump apparel, complete with Clinton holding The Donald’s severed head.

Luckily, there’s a historical reference to hide behind here, the story of Judith and Holofernes. Whether that will keep the Secret Service at bay is anyone’s guess.

So far, so good! It would appear that the Secret Service has better things to do than to investigate t-shirts -- even frankly tacky and offensive ones -- based on Renaissance art. Still, the good civility-minded folks at Media Equalizer expect the federal jackboots to come no-knocking at any moment:

Huh. It seems like they may have left something out of their image there, almost as if they were deceptively editing the picture! What, oh what could it be? ENHANCE! 

Nope, no idea.

An explanation may be in order here, since this post may well generate many, many pageviews from visitors unfamiliar with Yr Wonkette (we hope! Hi, new visitors!): "With Votes" is actually an in-joke whose origin has been lost in the annals of Google, but your Editrix informs me that after Congresswoman Gabby Giffords was shot in the head, some gunhumpers responded that any threats against her or her ilk -- no matter how graphic -- were metaphorical threats to do awful things "with votes." Wishing outlandish things on bad people was later codified by terrible Wonkette readers in response to our Rules For Commenting Radicals, which informed those same terrible readers that we don't tolerate comments ideating on violence:

2. No wishing or ideating on physical threats to those with whom you disagree (i.e. ‘machinegunning’ or hoping for their deaths in any other sense than that you hope they die lonely and alone ).

And so people started saying things like "I'd like to see [Jerk In The News] get a chainsaw enema -- with votes!" It ain't a terribly original joke, but it's a thing that gets said here. And those thoughtful Media Equalizers' removing it was done quite deliberately to make the image seem more like it was advocating actual violence against Donald Trump.

This is where we should clarify that we wish no harm whatsoever to Donald Trump. We hope he lives out the fullness of a natural lifespan, loses all his wealth and privilege, and dies lonely, alone, and universally despised. What's more, we hope he someday achieves a hitherto unknown level of self-awareness that lets him see exactly what an awful excuse for a human being he is. If he were to live a long natural life plagued by crippling self-recriminations, we'd be delighted!

Also, we hope he gets a persistent (but medically benign) itch somewhere he can't reach with his freakishly short fingers. And may his wifi continually cut out and never get fixed quite right.

For all you art lovers out there, here's some bonus trivia: in the original 1613 painting our parody is based on, the severed head of Holofernes is a self-portrait of the artist, Cristofano Allori (1577-1621). That's a bit of playful self-derision we're also certain Donald Trump would never be capable of.

But let us move on to the important business at (short fingered vulgarian) hand: the deluge of rightwing poutrage that poured into the comments on our post announcing the t-shirts. Leading off the parade of derp was this note from "Fox Patriot X," who doesn't know Renaissance art from Shinola, possibly because he watches nothing but Fox News:

In a world where you can't see anyone else holding severed heads except for Muslims, and a devout Muslim who brought prayer mat to work, prayed multiple times/day and went to Mecca twice just slaughtered dozens of innocents in Orlando, these Hillary Clinton-supporting Islamophile #RegressiveLeft-ists are actually insane with this sort of incitement.

Yep. That Judith was one fierce Muslim terrorist, for sure. Which is how she got into some versions of the Bible (those wacky Catholics and their deuterocanonical books of the Bible!)

Mr. Patriot X was so upset by the t-shirt design that he also took to the Twitters to explain how we are obviously supporters of ISIS. Featuring a graphic photo of a child holding a severed head, the tweet reads, "Here's a nice image of Muslims for @Wonkette airheads 2add 2their "Beheading" T-shirt line." We suppose if all you can think about is scary Muslims, everything reminds you of scary Muslims.

A couple of our instant visitors were Very Concerned about what they considered a serious threat to Mr. Trump. Joe Drager asked,

Isn't it illegal to threaten the killing of a presidential candidate?

We're pretty sure it is! And we're also pretty sure this t-shirt, while tacky and offensive, is doing nothing of the sort. In a similar vein, "Goodgold" observed,

The Feds will be looking into this company.

To which one of our regular Wonkers replied, "Sounds like somebody supports big government!" Goodgold explained, "Not at all. I just know you can't make a death threat against a presidential candidate." To which we agree, actually. If we thought any reasonable person could look at this t-shirt transposing modern political figures into a Renaissance painting and think "This shirt advocates the murder of a human being!" we would not be selling it. However, just as nobody was ever arrested for inciting violence by yelling "Moida da bums!" at a baseball game in the 1950s, we're reasonably certain this shirt says nothing more than "End Donald Trump -- with votes." As to the suggestion that he was reporting our little mommyblog to the Secret Service, Goodgold indicated he didn't need to do that, because he is aware we live in a surveillance state:

Just telling you what the law says. I'm sure they have algorithms to catch these threats.

This might be our favorite line from all of them. THEY. HAVE. ALGORITHMS.

 "Mia" was so upset by the shirt that she read about on a rightwing blog that she had to let us know that as ofright now, she was changing her vote:

And this dem site is promoting violence. She just lost my vote. Tired of my fellow democrats

Gosh, we're sorry about losing that vote for Hillary. Of course, a quick glance at "mia's" Disqus history finds her complaining at another website, eight months ago, about Hillary's upcoming "coronation." She's also expressed herenthusiastic support for Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, so it's quite possible she may not have been a Hillary voter at all.

Commenter "Charybdis69" very quickly sussed out that Wonkette is not a safe space for patriotic American patriots:

Scrolling down the right side-bar, I see this site collects donations with Soviet communist imagery. Sex-fetish Commies for Hillary! Seems pretty apt to me.

Egad! Our cover has been blown!

 "Steven Lang" called us out on similar grounds with this devastating critique of our communist hypocrisy:

The irony is that these products are brought to you by the wonders of capitalism....if you want to buy the product(s), by all means feel free to do so and if you don't wish to purchase any products, then phucking don't....see how easy that works, capitalism gives the consumer the final say in the matter....I hope the Wonkette sells a shat-load of product and I hope those vendors that have products in support of T-rump sell a shat-load too!

Dang, some commies we are -- you mean to say we might make some money off these things? Astonishing. Mr. Lang didn't accuse us of advocating violence, possibly because in other comments on other sites, he's very happy to advocate some violence his own self, only without any apparent comical intent:  

• Yes, I do want the establishment parties burned to the ground.....and any survivors hanged by the neck or shot.....

• burn the Democrat and Republican establishment down to the ground and let's hang or shoot any survivors...and if T-rump is the vehicle, I'm all in.

• and don't we also need ropes to hang POS political hacks??

He seems nice. And a tad homicidal. Shame on us for inciting him and his friends to violence.

Now, since the story of Judith and Holofernes involved Judith saving herself from rape by beheading Holofernes, we also got some very subtle jokes about how Bill Clinton is a big ol' rapist. And others who really think rape is hilarious:

• GuateNY: In reality, Bill would be playing the part of Holofernes. FEEL THE BERN!!!!

• Ambush Bug: Yeah but Bill Clinton is the rapist.

•  UPDATED:  If you think this "T" is funny you should have a look on you tube at that video of her getting raped! Now that is funny and great CGI work! even Bill would love it

And then there were the hilarious graphic-design replies:

• The Halversons: New suggestion for your next Hillary T-shirt:

  

• Feet2Fire: Disgusting. Can't you find a decent way to make a buck?Feel sorry for any kid that might have the hard luck to be 'connected' to you.

  GO TRUMP! MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN! BUILD THAT WALL,

  AND MAYBE CATAPULT HILLARY AND HER "FANS" OVER IT...

  
  
  

 
 Yep, Feet2Fire (who has this genuinely impressive avatar) used the good old Donald Trump On A Lion pic to make the point that...uh. Something, we're sure.

There were a few folks who simply seemed confused:

•  Drugbunny:  This is just another reason to jail Hillary.

•  Paladin:  Wonkette has joined the Minions of Moloch along with Cankles!!!

•  You_Dirty_Rat:  Who knew Wonkette was a big ISIS fan. You go girl.

• Killary Obama Hussein: Yup Hillary did take millions from terrorist countries and Huma Abedin is a terrorist so that picture is accurate! So glad that that c u n t will go to jail soon!!

•  creeper:  Hey, weren't you guys the ones who screamed to the skies when Sarah Palin put a target over Shrub? Hypocritical much?Goose, gander.

That last one is an interesting bit of selective memory, and rather insulting to both Ms. Palin and Mr. Bush. Sarah's ad put a gunsight (or surveyor's mark) on Gabby Giffords' district, not on G.W. Bush's face. Now, if Hillary Clinton actually does use ballots to literally behead Donald Trump, we are going to feel all kinds of terrible about that. DO NOT DO THAT, HILLARY! 

 "Maplebob" had this intriguing thought, which manages to butcher both language and political history in a single line:

In the vernacular of the triggered Millennials; You guys are literally Nazi-Stalinists. Literally.

"Maplebob" is another person with fascinating thoughts on other blogs, like these insights at the Hollywood Reporter on a story about the Rio Olympics:

I think this zika thing is all a scam. Revenge by Obama for not having Chicago host the Olympics in his final year in office. Having the Olympics in Thug Central City would have made The Lame One a little relevant in his Autumn Year.

The whole pointed-head baby thing that happened in Brazil was the result of vaccinations. [...]

the Republicans know zika is an Obama revenge scam. Plus, whatever happened to the ebola money? Ebola hysteria seems to have petered out, don't tell me they spent all that cash they raised on that fear-scam.

Intriguing. Wonder if he has a newsletter we could subscribe to?

Then there was "ljm4," who wishes we'd have morereality-based t-shirts:

Typical BS from ignorant fluff for brains leftie. Her poor taste extends to T-shirt messages. How about a T-shirt with the 45 or so names of people the Clintons had dispatched. Or a picture of KiIIary watching the live feed from Benghazi... making sure no witnesses survived.

Any woman voting for cankles KiIIary needs their head examined.

We always take our advice on how women should vote from conspiracy theorists who mock women's looks, that's for sure.

In the interest of promoting civility in our political discourse, "Conservative American" noticed that Yr Editrix has a little baby. So he addressed this touching personal message directly to Donna Rose, because He Cares:

This is to the child that she gave birth to. I feel for you but always remember you are not able to pick the family you are born into. You will be able to walk away from such a bitter mother one day. Do not let her corrupt you with the leftist socialistic commie common core education. She knows not what she does. How a female is able to support Hillary Rodman Clinton who is an enabler for her rapist husband and take money from the Arab Muslims in the Middle East who have no respect for women. Who also believe women are to be owned and beaten when ever they get out of line.

Words of wisdom to be passed from anonymous weirdo on the internet to a complete stranger's child. He seems nice, too!

Finally, the exchange that made the whole troll invasion worthwhile:

Oh, yes. Don't forget to order your shirts before President Trump has them seized and mulched!