Category: politics

Locker Room Talk

Pavowski2 Comments

There’s been a lot of talk about “locker room talk” the past couple of days. But I don’t think any of the people talking about this so-called “locker room talk” actually know how people talk in locker rooms. (For the most part, guys don’t talk in locker rooms — they’re trying too hard not to catch an eyeful of old man scrotum.)

So to clarify what actual locker room talk might sound like, I reimagined a certain prominent recent conversation as it might more conceivably play out.

Please to enjoy.

 

Two men, on opposite ends of “middle aged”, meet in a locker room. A TV in the corner plays entertainment news.

Tronald: Hey.

Billiam: Hi.

Tronald: (gesturing towards the TV) You see her?

Billiam: Hmm? Oh. Yeah. Who’s that? She looks familiar.

Tronald: Ancy O’Dale. Pretty hot, right?

Billiam: Sure.

Tronald: I put a move on her, once.

Billiam: Who, the girl on TV?

Tronald: That’s right. Bought her some furniture.

Billiam: You — what? I thought you said you put a move on her.

Tronald: Yup.

Billiam: So … you bought her furniture? That was the move?

Tronald: I have a lot of money.

Billiam: I see.

Tronald: She was married, though.

Billiam: Wait. She was married when you put the move — when you bought her furniture?

Tronald: Sure. I was, too. I tried to bang her. Came up short.

Billiam: That’s … not cool. Why would you hit on a married woman? Especially when you were married yourself?

Tronald: Well, I had just gotten married.

Billiam: That’s even worse!

Tronald: Eh. It was only my third marriage.

Billiam: Jesus.

Tronald: Hey, do you have any mints? I could really go for a Tic-Tac.

Billiam: Um, I might, let me check.

Tronald: I get that bad breath, you know what I mean? I’m doing this interview in a few minutes, and you never know what might happen.

Billiam: I really don’t need to know. (Finds mints, offers them.) Here.

Tronald: Thanks, guy. (He tilts most of the pack into his mouth, crunches them loudly.) I might try to kiss this one, I don’t know.

Billiam: Huh? I thought you said you were doing an interview?

Tronald: Sure, but I just love women, you know? If she’s beautiful, I might just try to kiss her. I can’t help myself.

Billiam: Whoa. Stop. You’re just meeting this woman for the first time, and you think you might try to kiss her?

Tronald: I meet beautiful women all the time. As often as I can. I run beauty pageants, you know. Part of the deal. Sometimes I try to kiss them, sometimes I don’t. Just depends how I feel.

Billiam: What about how they feel?

Tronald: What do you mean?

Billiam: The women. You just kiss them? I mean, the ones you feel chemistry with, or … I really don’t understand.

Tronald: No, no chemistry. I just see a beautiful woman, I try to kiss her.

Billiam: That’s … a little rapey, isn’t it?

Tronald: It’s all right. They don’t mind. I’m a star. I can do whatever I want. Grab them by the pussy, whatever.*

Billiam: The — WHAT?

Tronald: What?

Billiam: Dude, that’s actual sexual assault. You know that, right?

Tronald: You want to come with me? I can get you one, too.

Billiam: No. NO. Who the hell even are you, anyway?

Tronald: I’m running for president.

(Billiam just stares, dumbfounded.)

Tronald: Can I count on your vote?

Billiam, now dressed, scurries out to tell all his friends not to vote for serial abusers, as though such a thing had to be said.

 

**I just want to tell you how uncomfortable it makes me to use the word, even when quoting somebody who, I feel, is a totally reprehensible excuse for a human. But we can’t go mincing words, and we can’t go pretending total jerks didn’t say the things they actually said, live, on video.

Heads Against Walls

Pavowski2 Comments

Why am I still watching news about Donald Trump?

Why did I stay up late — on my vacation, even — to watch Monday’s debate?

Why do I know what’s been said on both sides about this latest scandal, the beauty queen and what he said about her?

Why do I keep reading like an intern trying to break the big story, clicking every damn headline that has the word “Trump” in it?

He looked into building in Cuba during the embargo. His foundation doesn’t have the proper paperwork. He might have drunk the blood of puppies to get that lovely orange glow. (This isn’t verified, but he would deny it, which basically makes it true.)

Unless you’re new around here, you probably know that I basically made up my mind in this election months ago, when it became clear that Trump would win the Republican nomination. Notice I said when it became clear he would win, not before the primaries ever took place. I tend toward the liberal side of the spectrum, but I might have — and possibly even probably would have — voted for a Marco Rubio or a Jeb Bush over Clinton, who, whether it’s justified or not, does not have a reputation for trustworthiness.

But as soon as Trump became the Republican running man, the Democrats could have put up a trained chimp, for all I care.

Fine and good. I, like most, have made up my mind, and at this point, that opinion might as well be cast in stone.

And yet, like a suburbanite to a Starbucks, I keep coming back. I don’t know why. And that kind of scares me.

Because, in my heart of hearts, I still believe that Trump might not actually want to win this thing. I still suspect, as I have from the beginning, that his campaign is about increasing his own visibility and putting his name in people’s mouths. The “no such thing as bad publicity” principle.

Which means that anything we say to one another only helps this man to get what he wants. And I am not okay with that. Which is why I’ve been relatively silent on the matter for a while.

But dammit, this sharknado is coming to a head, now. It looks very much like the news cycle will consist of Donald Trump first and everything else happening in the world second from now until the election, even though by all accounts, the two sides in this election are fixed in amber. Clinton supporters aren’t going to switch and go for Trump. Trump supporters aren’t going to switch and go for Clinton. All that’s left is the (somehow) undecided people in the middle.

But here’s the problem with that. (For non-Trump supporters.)

With a normal candidate, any strike, any ding on their record, any scandal can do serious damage to their image and their perception. But not Trump. There are so many scandals, so many scars, so many warts all over him already — what harm can another scandal possibly do? How much difference does a single grain of sand make when added to the Gobi desert?

I know the irony is rich here, but I just want to draw attention to the fact that I think any attention drawn to Donald Trump is a mistake. Which is why I won’t be doing it again.

I hope.

Rush Limbaugh is a Terrorist

Pavowski3 Comments

Things are bad enough, aren’t they?

We have a police culture that is maybe a little trigger-happy right now. We have a black population that is feeling victimized and angry. We have politicians and talking heads fumbling at the ragged edges of this issue. We have social media activism and god almighty my Facebook feed is choked like a propeller in a weed swamp with sanctimonious links saying “THIS” and “SO MUCH THIS” and I just can’t take anymore.

Everybody’s a poet, everybody has something profound to say, and that’s great and that’s fine, but unfortunately, social media activism is just about as effective as prayer: we think about these things for a little while until the media firestorm dies down, and then we move on to the next thing. This is fine, and it’s probably not going to change anytime soon, because the posts and the shares and the virals are generally the province of people who have relatively small spheres of influence. Pockets of activism spring up, get loud for a little while, and then peter out. This is the way of things.

But not everybody has a small sphere.

Some spheres are rather large.

In fact, some spheres are so bloated they defy belief. So massive they develop their own gravity, which spreads and expands and pulls people in.

Rush Limbaugh is one such sphere. (And in a curious twist, he’s roughly spherical in shape himself.)

If you’re an American, you know Rush. If you’re not, in short, he’s a fat, angry, sweaty ball of grease and hatred with an audience of millions who listen to his radio program daily. He’s a bloated, vindictive, hateful sack of phlegm and poison who vents his spleen to otherwise intelligent people on the “right” side of our political spectrum.

And on his program Friday, he said that the Black Lives Matter movement are terrorists.

Now, I get it. He’s an “entertainer,” it’s his job to get ratings and to get people tuning in. It’s his job to be provocative.

But the problem with being provocative? The root of that word is “provoke.” Which means inciting action. Which means stirring people to do things.

Everybody’s on edge in this country right now. Everybody’s touchy. Everybody’s overly sensitive. You can’t say “black lives matter” because that means you’re anti-cop, and by the way, ALL LIVES MATTER. You can’t say “all lives matter” because you idiot, there’s a pattern of violence and prejudice in law enforcement against people of color, and you’re totally missing the point.

Look around the country at all the protests and the rampant social media activism, and you’ll see that we’re approaching a boiling point. People are angry. Upset. Scared.

Discourse must be had. We have to talk these things out. We have to share uncomfortable ideas, we have to communicate our fears, but more importantly, we have to LISTEN to each other if we want to make it through this.

And here comes Rush, throwing into this volatile mix of mistrust and fear the word “terrorism.”

Don’t forget, too, that Rush’s audience is primarily folks on the “right”. People who feel their country is being taken from them. Rush tells these people that this group of people over here? This group of people that look different from you, that act different from you, that you probably don’t understand very well?

Those people are terrorists.

Rush is telling people who are angry about the state of their country that these people — their own countrymen, other citizens and civilians like them — are terrorists.

Somebody in his audience is going to believe him. Maybe several somebodies.

And somebody in his audience is going to act on those beliefs. Maybe several somebodies.

There will be more blood shed. There will be more protests, more violence, more arrests, and on and on and on.

Demonizing the other side doesn’t help. Sowing the hate and the fear and the distrust even deeper is not a solution.

It’s not like this happens in a vacuum — Rush is always squeezing off tidbits like this, designed to enrage and incite — but this one is particularly bad, because he’s going to get people killed. Blood will be on his hands.

This is how you incite a race war.

Rush Limbaugh is the terrorist. And he has an audience of millions.

This Is Not The Time to Vote Third Party (Unless It Is)

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Election stuff. As prolific as fecal bacteria at a Gulf Shore beach and just as shitty.

Both parties have managed to put up candidates who could, tomorrow, rip off their human skins to reveal reptilian scales beneath, and not a single person in the world would be surprised.

The Republicans have had their Battle Royale and will (unless crazier things are yet in store, and apparently there are people in the party working for exactly that) officially name a radioactive potato as their candidate in just a few short weeks. A xenophobic, racist, sexist, dollar- and self-worshipping bag of elephant assholes, who literally cannot stop the feces fountain that erupts from his mouth without warning, day or night.

It was the best thing Democrats could hope for. What country could ever elect this “man”?

But then the Democrats held their own coronation festival for perhaps the most disliked figure in recent political history, a woman who … well, it’s hard to say exactly what the Republicans dislike about her so much. They say she’s dishonest, but … she’s a politician. There’s that Benghazi thing, but again … she’s a politician, and she’s just one thread in a massive tapestry. Nonetheless, they hate her, and they’ve convinced a lot of innocent bystanders to hate her, and the Democrats will be putting her into the ring with Agent Orange come November.

It was the best thing Republicans could hope for.

So now we’ve got a real race to the bottom, a true battle of “which terrible, horrible, very bad, no-good candidate will be less awful for our country”.

It would be a perfect time, come to think of it, to vote third party.

Why not, right? The two-party system has belched up this rotten buffet of a living, breathing cheesesteak versus what is probably a pod-person, and it all sucks. It sucks bad. Like, moving to Canada bad. I hear they have healthcare figured out up there. Never has a third party candidate looked more appealing!

But the problem with a third party is the same problem it’s always been, which is that the two parties, as hell-fargoed as they are, have enough entrenched followers that they will never lose to a third party. And it’s a damn shame. Because the libertarians put forth ideology that, I would wager, sits right with the vast majority of Americans. Real laissez-faire stuff, not that Republican brand of get off my lawn (which quickly turns into HEY TRIM YOUR LAWN ACCORDING TO THE STANDARDS WE’VE SET DOWN when they decide you’re not Jesusing hard enough). And they don’t go crazy with the entitlements and the social aid like the Democrats do either. Not ruthlessly pandering to any base. Not shamelessly lobbying for votes. Just decent, commonsense, middle-of-the-road approaches to politics.

This is the perfect time to vote third party, to send a message to the two parties that we’re fed up with their Hatfield-and-McCoy-ing.

But.

If you’re a Republican, you hate Hillary like the son of the man who killed your father. And you know that if you vote for a third party (who won’t win in November), much as it’d be nice to stand on principle and send a message to your own party, you know that one less vote for Trump is essentially one more vote for Hillary. So you clearly can’t do that.

And if you’re a Democrat, you fear Trump like the Boogeyman that probably already got his soul. And you know that if you vote for a third party (who won’t win in November), much as you’d love to chastise your party for putting up such a flawed candidate, you know that one less vote for Hillary is essentially one more vote for Trump. So you clearly can’t do that.

Never get involved with a Sicilian when death is on the line.

Both cups are poisoned. There’s a third cup, but if you drink from it, you lose by default, even if you win in principle.

This is the perfect time to vote third party, because the other candidates suck. They really suck.

But this is the absolute wrong time to vote third party, because … what if the other guy wins?

Unless you’re a Republican who can’t bring yourself to vote for Trump. In that case, by all means, vote third party. Because while the Democrats may be a circle-jerking ring of hippie love and pot-legalizing granola crunchies, the Republicans are that nasty patch of grass that somehow keeps growing in the shadow of the melted-down nuclear plant.