Tag: joe biden

Signs of the times (and watermelons) for the 2022 election

It’s almost election day. Time for a little sign round-up, and a look back to see how far we’ve come. 

Back in 2019, I was stopped at a red light near the commons, where a group of earnest people were gathering to protest climate change. They carried signs saying things like “I speak for the trees,” and the rally leader started up a syncopated chant about striking because the waters are rising.

Stopped next to me was a whiskery old man in a pickup truck full of rusted out auto parts. He chewed on a sandwich and watched with great interest as the crowd clapped along with the chant. It came to an end, everyone cheered, and the man in the truck shouted, “WATERMELONS!!!” Then the light changed and we all drove on.
 
I yearn for those days. I yearn for that clarity, when we were all able to receive each other’s words, look each other in the eye, shout, “WATERMELONS.” And then just drive away. 
 
 
 
Unlike Watermelons Guy, Trump Thumbs Guy did not listen. He did not shout. He did not drive away. He just sat there with his thumb inert, telling you all you need to know about China Joe. And look where we are now. (I actually don’t know. I have been using all my effort not to pay attention.)
 
I also have an album of additional signs and other public displays from medium-weird New Hampshire from around this time, as follows:
 
 
You could spend an afternoon trying to parse exactly what is meant by “NO” in quotation marks AND inside a “no” sign, and that’s even without the “CHINA” “JOE” “CONTROL” “MAN” aspect of it, not to mention the little snowman.
 
There was another sign at a different intersection, making the same point in a more concise fashion:
 
 
I realize this is superimposed on a Biden sign, but it’s also in keeping with the general feeling of the area, in and out of election season:
 
 
Whose woods these are, I think I–NO.
Take that, Robert Frost. 
 
Speaking of in and out of season, this area also sports an unexpected snowmobile
 
 
and about fifteen minutes down the road, the town commons had not only a nativity scene and a giant Hanukkiah, but also various other displays, because somebody read a thing about the constitution on Tumblr one time
 
 
This display was soon joined by a Festivus pole and something that was either some kind of other pole that was either a frickin Wiccan thing or else a Quiddich thing. I did not slow down to ask questions. 
 
Of possible interest, the brain trust who put up the I’ll Show You Constitution Nativity display ended up being harassed by a completely different brain trust who calls himself [gird your loins] The Hip-Hop Patriot, and who was at the Jan. 6 riots and before that was cocaine dealer turned snitch, although he says nuh uh he was not. Mr. Hop is now running for State House, because of course he is.  There is also a third brain trust, a former cop with some interesting extracurricular activities who was at the time city councilor and stood up for Christianity by doxxing the guy and his wife and hosting a discussion where someone threatened to cut him, and this guy . . . I’ll save this for another day. He’s also running. So that’s where we are now, democracy-wise.
 
In 2020, a number of signs on both sides were defaced by the opposition. Someone took a bite out of a Trump sign; someone spray painted all over a Biden sign. Someone went around painting “RACIST,” and sometimes “RAPIST,” over other Trump signs. But this year, we had this much more restrained exchange of ideas:
 
 
possibly because the local police reminded folks that no matter how noble your cause, it is still illegal to go in someone’s yard and set their signs on fire. We are just coming out of a drought, so we have that going for us.
 
I always read the little rebuttal sign in a squeaky “kangaroo in her pouch” voice, and it helps a little bit. 
 
I’ll tell you what doesn’t help: Running late to pick up a kid at one school, getting to the other school to find that everybody’s already left and the one kid you did manage to get is HUNGRY and the only car cookies left are Nutter Butters, and so over the sound of her howls, you voice text the only  kid with a phone and ask her to find the others and meet you at the library instead, and when you’re on your way there you suddenly realize you’re supposed to be at a third school watching a third kid at soccer practice, and then you see this:
 
 
With God as my witness, the man is 52 years old and I thought he could arrange for his own ride. 
 
Speaking of rides, a few local citizens are signaling in their own way that the candidates this election are somewhat wanting, and maybe it’s time to write in someone who actually represents who we are as a people today. Someone like, um, Larry Dickman, or *sigh* Bertha Butt. 
 
 
We are not okay, guys. 
 
Not sure whether it’s better or worse that the next sign is from a real candidate:
 
 
These ones tend to show up in clusters, which is disconcerting because of the eyes. I did go to the website, and I did not get any clarity on any of it, not “I Want To Rule You,” not the cat eyes, and definitely not the chameleon. I find it alarming that this dude raised enough money to buy more than one or two signs. He also has this version, same guy:
 
 
“Death is not the worst of evils” is not a campaign slogan I have seen before. I agree with it in principle, but he’s a 2022 libertarian, so there is a 10,000% chance he would finish the sentence “death is not the worst of evils” with “but age of consent laws are!” 
But, he notes ON THE SIGN, “I’m serious.” 
My only question is, what the hell. 
 
Next we have another new sign that it grieves me to admit I understand:
 
 
Aria DiMezzo is [gathers strength] a local trans anarchist libertarian recently convicted of laundering bitcoin through a fake church of Satan . . . look, just stab your finger into a random page in the Big Book of Stupid Ideas, and you’ll get the gist. 
 
That’s not rain on the window, it’s tears of exhaustion. 
 
But wait! It’s not just the far right and the moronic middle who are terrible! Everyone is terrible! This is a sign I have to pass by at least twice a day, sometimes four times, and each time, my desire to punch someone increases:
 
 
I don’t even disagree! I mean I’m pro-life but I’m super duper in favor of holding men accountable for making babies. But this freaking sign is so STUPID and it thinks it’s so CLEVER. Gah. Imagine lying in bed and this phrase pops into your head, and you think, “Ho ho, that’s a corker!” and then you wake up in the morning and YOU STILL THINK IT’S A GOOD IDEA, and you actually go and find two colors of paint and a paintbrush and a piece of poster board, rather than punching yourself in the head like you should. WATERMELONS, I SAY. 
 
This house has since added a sign urging people to vote because it is almost “ROEvember.” GET IT????????? You can just feel them wriggling with delight over their own exquisitely barbed wit. Gah. You know what, I have a prescription for Xanax and I never filled it.
 
As a palate cleanser, I enjoyed the forthright nature of this message I recently found stuck to a guardrail in a parking garage:
 
I don’t imagine it will change anyone’s mind, but on the other hand, if everyone already knew it, we wouldn’t have any Nazis. But we do, so. 
 
But most of all, I liked this sign.
 
 
“JESUS CHRIST IS THE ANSWER.” In this photo, the man who stands there with the sign is just setting up for the day, and you can see the giant wooden cross he is about to put up next to it. He just stands there with the cross and the sign. What else is there to say? 
 
He’s set up in the same spot as the Trump Thumber used to be, and for a while, I tried to convince myself it was the same dude, and that he had massively upgraded his hero. But I’m pretty sure it’s a different guy. No matter. I wave and beep whenever I see him, because I’ve had a lot of questions in my life, and let me tell you, this man is correct. Between him and the watermelons, that’s a whole-ass political theory right there. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

I’m Medieval peasanting my way to Eucharistic Coherence

When I heard that the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops planned to speak out on eucharistic coherence, my eyes bugged out. They were going to talk about something American Catholics cared about, that is pertinent to our life and world today, that is inherently important? Our U.S.C.C.B.? There are a handful of individual bishops I admire, but as a whole, the U.S.C.C.B. can be depended on to put out documents called things like “De dispositione sellarum navalium” (loosely: “On Rearranging Deck Chairs”). But a statement about eucharistic coherence sounded like they got hold of something real, something we could really use right now. I decided to pay attention.

But I have been busy, and every time I opened Twitter, I realized that more of the “Biden-Communion-U.S.C.C.B.-will they-won’t-they” discourse had gone on without me. There had been another podcast, another bit of analysis, another impassioned personal essay and countless other hot takes, and I wasn’t keeping up. I feel a sickening tug of guilt, like when you didn’t do the homework and you thought you could skate by, but the teacher just announced that the thing you didn’t read is definitely going to be on the test.

If this is you, I am here to tell you: This will not be on the test.

I am not saying that the issues of who can and cannot, should and should not receive the Eucharist aren’t important or relevant. They’re important because the Eucharist is the source and summit of our faith, and if questions about it are not relevant to us, then what possibly could be?

And it’s relevant because so many people do take their moral cues from public figures, for better or worse. Some Catholics took their cues from Donald J. Trump, and now some are taking their cues from President Joe Biden. It’s relevant because non-Catholics are learning about what the church considers important. It’s relevant because many of us are still raw after having peeled ourselves painfully away from what has become of conservatism. Many of us care fervently about protecting the lives of the unborn but also about protecting the lives of immigrants and people of color and prisoners and gay people, and we are tired of being told we have to choose one side or the other if we want to be on the side of Christ. Many of us care about the Real Presence, and because we love the Lord, we do not want to see his precious body and blood treated like a weapon or a bribe or a talking point.

Coherence is what we need, eucharistic and otherwise. This is not a coherent age. Retweets and ratios and podcasts and hot takes, yes. Banging gongs and clashing cymbals, yes. Coherence, no.

But coherence generally comes from simplicity. And simplicity comes when you cut away everything that doesn’t absolutely need to be there, even if it is interesting or titillating or gets you lots of clicks. So simplicity is what I’m going for. It is what I call “Medieval Peasanting.” Read the rest of my latest at America Magazine. 

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Image: Detail of a bas-de-page showing Dunstan healing injured peasants. Image taken from f. 197 of Decretals of Gregory IX 

Stop telling me Biden’s not so bad.

A little over twenty years ago, I got hired to do some grunt work renovating an old Kmart. This job was nobody’s dream, but I was pretty desperate. I was pregnant and trying hard to move out of town, and I needed to make as much money as I could before I got really unwieldy; and I needed to get hired somewhere before I started to show. 

The job was awful. Just awful. Nine hours under fluorescent lights on my feet in a windowless cavern, and I had two chief duties: shoving metal shelves over tile, inch after screeching inch, and scrubbing gummy residue off walls where the signs used to be. The smell of the solvent made me sick and dizzy, and I worried constantly that the fumes, and strain of pushing those metal shelves, would kill my baby. 

And there was something else. On the day I was hired, the manager’s computer kept freezing up, and he struggled to enter my information in his files. “I’ll have to enter her manually,” he said. My supervisor laughed and said, “I’d like to enter her manually.”

I was sitting right there, three feet away. Ten of my co-workers were sitting right there. All the men laughed. And then we went to work for the day. It did not occur to me to ask any of those men for lighter work, to accommodate me and my unborn child. I was 22 years old. It did not occur to me. 

This memory came back to me today, for the first time in years. The question of Biden’s fitness for the presidency came up, and a vocally anti-Trump man told me that, if it comes down to it, I should “choose wisely” and support Biden. He admonished me to remember those who do not share my privilege. Biden, you see, may feel free to put his hands on women, to smell their necks and hair, to come up behind them like a snake, to use his power and wealth and fame and security as a free pass to the body of any women or girl who whets his appetite.

But he’s nowhere near as bad as Trump. And so women like me need to remember our duty and once again roll over for the man who thinks we’re here for his entertainment. Because we are desperate. 

The truth is, I am privileged. When I got out of work at Kmart, I would scour the want ads, and pretty soon I found something better: a job making sandwiches at Subway. It was a pay cut, but I leaped at the chance, because I had to get out of that place where I never felt safe. There was another pregnant young woman working on the renovation, and I doubt she even realized she had another choice. She had no one on her side. The father of her child was long gone. Her face was blank and bewildered as she worked, and she didn’t even flinch when the men talked about her and her belly. 

When I gave my notice at Kmart and mentioned my fears about the fumes, someone said, “Oh, she just doesn’t want to work.” That was not true. I did want to work. But at my new job, my boss was a woman who expected us to do our jobs . . . and that was all. And it felt like pure, intoxicating freedom to be able to simply put on my apron, wash my hands, and begin my routine without that constant prickle of terror and shame that comes with being vulnerable for nine straight hours every day. 

How many anti-Trumpers spent a delicious season thrashing around in the warm, shallow waters of the #metoo movement, preening themselves on their righteous indignation in defense of the vulnerable? But when it comes down to it, if Biden raises enough money and grins his way into enough votes, they’ll give him the nomination and they’ll tell women it’s their duty to be quiet, it’s their duty to be docile, it’s their duty to be forgiving, it’s their duty to take one for the team. 

I talked about shame. That’s part of the power of the sexual predator: He knows his victim will feel shame, and that will make her less able to fight. Less willing to fight. More likely to tell herself, “It’s not so bad. I can put up with this. Why am I making a fuss? It could be so much worse . . . ”

Biden is just an old school perv who refuses to take responsibility for his perviness. Is he as bad as Trump? Of course not — not by magnitudes of awfulness. But the real question is, are democrats as bad as republicans?

I long ago abandoned the idea that the political party of family values actually cares for either family or values. The republicans have made it clear, over (Trump) and over (Roy Moore) and over (Kavanaugh) again, that women and their suffering and their alarm and their shame do not matter. What matters is power; and women are expected not only not to fuss, but to take part in their own degradation for the good of the party. 

But what about the DNC? Are they any different? Here we are, still months away from the nomination, and democrats are already clearing their throats to make exactly the same point as the GOP made: It’s power that matters, not the vulnerable. Biden isn’t so bad. You can put up with this. Why are you making a fuss? It could be so much worse . . .

Now stay still while we enter you manually. 

Pay close attention, women: The democratic party is not your friend. They do not care about your dignity as a person. They care about power, and if the fates invest an old school perv with that power, then that’s who they will nominate. Brace yourself, because another election bus is bearing down on us, and your friends in the DNC will throw you under. 

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Image by Ancho. via Flickr (public domain)

Between Brock Turner and Brett Kavanaugh, when do girls matter?

Did Brett Kavanaugh try to rape a 15-year-old girl when he was seventeen? Did he drag her into a bedroom, hold her down on a bed, grind on her, try to tear off her clothes, and hold his hand over her mouth when she tried to scream? I don’t know. I sure hope we find out.  We should delay the vote on his appointment while we investigate, because the stakes are pretty high, and we all agree we don’t want an attempted rapist on the Supreme Court. Right?

Ah, we don’t agree.  Well, dammit.

A large contingent of Americans on social media are openly saying they don’t care if he’s guilty. They are saying things like:

At seventeen, his brain was still developing, so his culpability is reduced.

Hey, he was drunk when he did it. We all do stupid things when we’re drunk. 

This is normal hetero hijinx. Boys will be boys. It’s not admirable, but it sure is common — shows the guy is normal, in fact. Heck, high five, Brett. Studly guys like us all have some notches on our belts, wink wink. 

And most of all:

But it happened so long ago. There’s no indication he’s still like that. We’re really going to hold him responsible for something that happened so long ago?

There is no sober, cautious examination of the facts, here, from his supporters. All of these arguments rush to the conclusion that he did do exactly what Christine Blasey Ford accuses him of doing. And they are okay with that. They’re willing to wave away the violent attempted rape of a 15-year-old girls as inconsequential. Why?

Because  . . . she was just a girl, and that’s what girls are for.

That’s the only answer I keep coming back to. Part of me wants to say that the GOP is so bristling with misogyny and the desperate need to appear macho that they’re always willing to throw women under the bus when power is at stake. Look how readily they nominated and elected a confessed abuser, and (to pick one example at random) look how quickly they toggled from “Stormy Daniels is a dirty liar” to “Hey, now, bribing a hooker isn’t an impeachable offense.”

But if that answered it, then the dems would be different, and they’re not. Handsy Uncle Joe Biden, anyone? You know he’s going to run next election. Bill Clinton, anyone? You know that man is a rapist. And yet he’s never once stopped being the progressives’ darling, because he’s also their sugar daddy and he gets them what they want. And if you have to wink at a few rapes, well, they’re just women. That’s what women are for.

Right now, it happens to be the GOP who wants to give a lifetime supreme court appointment to someone credibly accused of a serious sexual crime. Next time, or the time after that, it will be a progressive again, because some people — Al Franken springs to mind — are just too useful to be shucked away for a little thing like sexually abusing a little thing like a woman.

They’re just girls, and girls are here for men to use. Just like it was just a girl that Brock Turner violently raped behind a dumpster while she was unconscious. It was just a girl when those guys from Steubenville gang raped her and posted the video online. And they got a slap on the wrist and were allowed to get on with their lives, while their young victim is still used as shorthand, in Steubenville circles, for “lying whore.” Because she’s just a girl.

When a young man gets drunk and tries to rape a girl, there will always be someone to say he shouldn’t be punished too severely — shouldn’t lose his place on the team, shouldn’t be kicked out of school, certainly shouldn’t serve any jail time — because don’t you see, he has so much promise? This might damage his future!

And what about her future? What about her? Who is thinking about the actual human girl in Blasey’s account, who wept and screamed and fought back, while those normal, healthy, hetero boys turned up the music and pushed her back onto the bed?

It was so long ago. Well, If Blasey had gone to someone with her story that very night, what do you suppose they would have told her?

Now, Christine. Brett is a very bright young man with a promising future. Why, I bet he could be on the Supreme Court someday. 

Brock Turner got six months (a longer sentence would have had “a severe impact” on him) and served three, because he had so much promise.  Austin Wilkerson raped an unconscious girl (after pretending to help her, to throw off the scent of onlookers) and was punished by having to sleep in jail, but went to school and work as normal during the day. David Becker got two years probation after raping two unconscious girls. Because those boys had such a bright future ahead of them. They’re just being boys! This is what happens! This is what boys do! But the girls? Well . . . this is what girls get. This is what they are for.

This is what you are saying, when you want to give men a pass for something they did long ago. This is what you are conveying to millions of women who have been raped and abused, when you allow yourself to say “yes, yes, sure, sure, of course rape is bad, but this is the supreme court we’re talking about, here! This isn’t just the rape of a girl we’re talking about, this is serious!”

I know how hard it is to see this clearly, to keep this firmly in mind when there’s a political storm swirling around. I know you want to talk about how awful Dianne Feinstein is, and how biased the media is, and how suspicious the timing of it all is. Hell, I fell for that with Anita Hill. I let them convince me that Clarence Thomas was the savior we needed to put this country to rights, and that this trashy, unhinged woman was just sniffing around him looking for glory, probably paid off by some secret politics operatives to make up a story that didn’t even sound true.

But believe it or not, politics isn’t the most important thing. A supreme court nomination isn’t the most important thing. The most important thing, when stories like this are in the news, is the victim, and how we treat them, how we speak about them. The most important thing is that we don’t lose ourselves in the ideological storm, and allow ourselves to say anything that even sounds like “but it was just attempted rape” or “but he was just a teenager when he did it.” When you say that, you are telling victims that it doesn’t matter what happened to them, because they are just girls. Boys need their bright futures, but rape is what girls are for.

If we want to argue that the poor boy’s brain is still developing and we need to take that into account, then what about her developing brain? What about her sense of self worth that’s being so violently malformed, first by her assailant, and then by the crowds of people saying he’s normal and she’s a lying, scheming, whore?

Or the argument that boys are hormonal volcanoes just boiling over with sex, and this is how they learn, you see. They learn from their mistakes, and they get to move on, don’t you see. So I wonder how many girls they get to learn on. Do they get one rape freebie, and then after that, they’re responsible for knowing that rape is bad? Or do they get one attempted rape per year, as long as they learn a little bit more each time? I have eight daughters. How many of my daughters is it okay for a seventeen-year-old boy to try to rape, as long as it’s part of their learning process, and they have a bright future?

Girls . . . are human. Girls are not there for the benefit of helping boys to turn into men. They are not there to be soiled and then tossed on the heap while boys go out and buy themselves a whole new look, a whole new life.

If you don’t want men to be dragged down by decades-old accusations of rape, then you need to crack down on minutes-old accusations of rape as they happen. But that’s not how it goes. Still, even now, that’s not how it goes.

When a woman says, “This man raped me a long time ago,” we say, “But that was in the past. He can’t change the past.” When a girl says, “This boy raped me last night,” we say, “But his future! We can’t wreck his future.” And there she stands, suspended between his past and his future, with no value of her own except for how much she’s worth to whichever political party is feeling desperate today.

There are some acts which are so abhorrent, they cannot simply be forgotten. I have sons, as well as daughters. They’re not yet seventeen, and yet they know you’re not supposed to get drunk, and if you do get drunk, you’re still not supposed to rape anybody, not even a little bit. They know this. Seventeen is not a child. If, at that age, you have a son who’s still unclear on the whole “Don’t get drunk and sexually savage girls,” thing, then he should be involuntarily committed. There’s no grey area where he gets to sacrifice a few girls while he figgers it out. Because that’s not what girls are for. Girls are human.

But when grown men tell teenage boys that a smattering of attempted rape is normal, expected, excusable behavior; that all boys do something like this because they’re still developing; and that it’s not worth worrying about because it was so long ago, then this is what they’re doing: they’re educating a whole new generation in the uses and abuses of the bodies and psyches of girls and women, for the sake of men, who alone are real.

Think. Think about what you’re implying when you are willing to wave away accusations of attempted rape. Think about what you’re telling girls about what they’re for. Think about what you’re telling boys about what they’re for. Think about what you’re telling victims about what they’re worth. Think about how you’re talking about these things. Think about who is listening.

He says he didn’t do it. I hope his party has the integrity to at least try to find out, because if they say “it’s important” but then appoint him without an investigation, they don’t really think it’s important.

But that’s out of my hands. What I’m talking about here is how we talk about boys, and how we talk about girls, and how we talk about rape. What’s in our control is to guard ourselves, to change how we respond to stories of rape. To be consistent and humane whether it’s our guy on the witness stand or not. Because if it’s not our guy this time, it will be next time, depend on it.

Hell yes, an attempted rape accusation matters. Even a very old one. Even though it was just a girl.

I’ll say it again: I don’t know if Kavanaugh is guilty or not. I don’t know if Blasey is telling the truth or not. I’m saying it’s a big fucking deal when 17-year-old boys try to rape 15-year-old girls, whether their names are Brett and Christine or not.

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Related: If she was sexually assaulted, why didn’t she say something sooner?

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Image by bOred via Pixabay (Creative Commons)

Even dems fed up with creepy, handsy Uncle Joe Biden

Joe Biden wants the presidency so bad, he can taste it. He makes little suckling sounds in his sleep, just thinking about the seal of office. There’s a well-polished statue of Justice on his desk, and Justice’s face is permanently molded into that frozen mask of polite endurance as she waits for another intimate encounter with handsy, handsy Uncle Joe, the creepiest VP that ever veeped.

It’s so hard to know what to do with Joe Biden. It’s not possible that we’ll actually elect him in 2016, is it? Is it? We did intentionally put this sub-competent, thin-skinned, narcissistic, death-dealing clown in office, twice, on purpose, so anything could happen.  But I feel like a weary country doesn’t need to deal with a commander in chief who got elected mainly for the free pass for a four-year game of grabass.

Again.

1024px-Bill_Clinton_closeup_at_dedication_of_WWII_memorial,_May_2004

At least I was more of a boob man. The “ear, hair, and upper arms” thing is just weird, Joe.

It is encouraging that left-leaning sites like TIME and Gawker are beginning to notice that it really, truly isn’t cool for Biden the perv to get away with macking on captive women — and old women, and young women, and very young women — like a portion of meat up for his inspection, to sniff and to snuzzle, stroke and tenderize.  As Gawker says,

[A]sk yourself this: if this were any other male politician, would we be so quick to add it to the meme pile? Try this: look at all of those photos and imagine, say, Paul Ryan’s face instead of Biden’s.

Yeah, he’s a gold mine for comedy, but how the HELL are we supposed to say with a straight face that women have choices, women aren’t property, women shouldn’t have to put up with being manhandled without their permission just because the manhandler is in a position of power — and then do nothing but smile and tee-hee over Biden? Because ladies, we all know this face, right?

stephanie carter joe biden

This is the “Ugh, ugh, ugh, my nerves are going to jump right out of my skin if he doesn’t move his hands soon, but I don’t want to make a scene, so I guess I’ll just deal until he decides he’s had enough.” What was Stephanie Carter supposed to do, jab him with her hatpin? The focus was meant to be on her husband, the cameras were rolling, and so she just. had. to deal.

We women know this look because we’ve all employed it while enduring unwanted touching from a boss, a teacher, our best friend’s dad, a priest, an interviewer, a social worker, a football star — anyone who assumes we will be flattered by his attention, and who knows that everyone will blame us, not him, if we turn it into a scene.

I have teenage daughters — three of them. They need to know this kind of thing is bullshit.

As  Karol Markowicz says in TIME:

The phrase “boys will be boys” has been used historically to excuse bad behavior by men with a shrug instead of with punishment. But in 2015, things should be different. We don’t allow bosses to rub their secretaries’ shoulders, smell their hair, or look them up and down and exclaim “holy mackerel!” all things Biden has done to daughters and wives of people with much less power than he has.

And here’s the really astonishing subhead to her essay:

The only reason Joe Biden gets away with getting handsy with women is because he has a (D) after his name.

Yuh think? People are still mocking cloddish old Mitt Romney for his infelicitous“binders full of women” line, but left wing feminists on the prowl for misogynist microagressions everywhere somehow just can’t muster anything more than a weak giggle when it comes to Biden.

Well, maybe that’s starting to change. It’s not supposed to matter what your politics are: Droit du seigneur isn’t supposed to be part of 21st-century America; and it’s nice to know that even if a good portion of America doesn’t recognize Obama/Biden policies as being anti-woman, at least they can tell when the joke’s over and it’s time for creepy Uncle Joe to keep his clammy hands to himself.

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At the Register: I’m Making a List

I’m a giver of gifts today.