Ok, show of hands – who hasn’t watched the news the last few weeks with a certain malaise that you kinda expected all this. Jimmy Fallon, who spent years, making us believe he was a squeaky-clean cornfed white-boy comic may be a drunk who spent the last nine years making The Tonight Show a toxic enviroment. Then, there’s Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-Colorado), who built herself up as a Christian woman with conservative values, but was kicked off of a musical for doing lewd acts. But more on this later.
Hunter Biden, the son of President Joe Biden (who has never served in any political office), was indicted on a firearms charge. Yet the Republican Party, which has proudly talked about their support of the Second Amendment, aren’t rushing to Hunter’s side. Instead they were all about defending Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton on corruption charges, even though he was impeached by members of his own party. And maybe the reason the sexual assault allegations against comic/actor Russell Brand aren’t making much news is that it wasn’t a question of if but when.
Probably mildly surprising is the revelation that Jann Wenner, co-founder of Rolling Stone, didn’t really care for musicians if they’re black of women. While the magazine was seen as bastion of progressive music and political ideas when it started, Wenner himself has had a questionable career. There are reports he would send journalists hundreds of miles to cover stuff and then rethink leaving them with no job and having to pay their way of getting back.
I’m sure, right now, if someone unearth a film of Fred Rogers screaming the N-word or Captain Kangaroo using the Mr. Moose puppet to jerk off, it wouldn’t make much notice. We’ve gotten so use to it, it seems to no longer matter. Mainly we know nothing much will happen. That’s the way our society has gotten. And it’s creating an apathy.
Hunter is accused of lying about his drug use while filling out an application for a firearm in 2018. But isn’t Boebert guilty of the same thing if she was really vaping cannabis at the theater? Because Republicans despise the Bidens so much, this is really just an attempt to get back at them. That’s why the starting an impeachment inquiry on the President. It’s really nothing more than just to draw the attention away from the four criminal cases totally 91 indictments that Donald Trump is facing.
The irony is if the GOP was really pro-Second Amendment they would be fighting for Hunter. So, what if he lied about drug use? He wasn’t really hurting anyone but himself. He was also struggling from problems following the death of his brother, Beau. We always lie on applications because sometimes that information isn’t needed outside certain people. Hunter hasn’t been convicted of a felony nor has he been charged with as a violent offender prior to the application. There are so many loopholes in the legal system where people who have been violent with others, who have abused their spouses, partners and/or children can have amended or reduced charges and still have enough of an arsenal to take over a small country.
There’s been suggestions that the president use this as a basis for stricter background checks just to show the hypocrisy of the Republicans going against it. And you know they would strike it down any way they could. While they’re busy criticizing Hunter, they’re quick to defend Paxton on allegations he did the same thing. Even though the Texas House, which has a majority of Republicans voted to impeach Paxton, it seems most of the Senate Republicans banded together to acquit.
Even more questionable is the fact that Paxton’s wife, Angela, is a Texas state senator. She wasn’t allowed to vote, but was allowed to attend the trial. This creates a problem because if Paxton is removed, Republicans in the Senate still have to work with Angela. And Dan Patrick, lieutenant governor of Texas, is an ally of Paxton’s, who presided over the trial. This is a conflict of interest in many ways.
Paxton has been a controversial figure in the Republican Party as well as Texas and the articles of impeachment are over his abuse of power in financial matters as well as an alleged extramarital affair. He has also been a close ally and supporter of Trump. Are the Republicans who voted to acquit him really doing it to avoid any blowback from Trump, who hasn’t reported on it as of this posting? But Paxton isn’t out of the woods yet. He still faces federal charges on security fraud. But his case has created a split in the Republican Party.
This may be why Republicans on the national level want an impeachment inquiry into the President to draw attention away from the other problems. Kristi Noem, governor of South Dakota, endorsed Trump but it was revealed she had been having an affair with his aide, Corey Lewandowski. Noem has been married since 1992 and Lewandowski has been married since 2005. In 2021, he was accused of sexual harassmenmt and has been a very controversial person elsewhere, as mocking an immigrant child with Down’s Syndrome.
Affairs seem to be common in the Republican Party that it’s odd that 25 years ago, they wanted to get rid of Bill Clinton as President for his relationship with Monica Lewinsky. At the same time, Newt Gingrich, Speaker of the House, was having an extra-marital affair. And while the divorce in Boebert’s marriage to her husband, a sex offender who showed his gentials to minors, isn’t finalized, her appearance at the Beetlejuice musical didn’t help.
The woman has spoken out for months after how she is a God-fearing women and how drag shows and the LGBTQIA community will destroy children. Yet, she’s at a theater wearing a dress that looks like a huge sneeze will exposes her breasts. For the most part, Boebert (who has used her body as a way to entice voters) can be forgiven on the dress, even if she may or may not have been a model/escort before she ran for Congress. But her rowdy actions of blowing vape that may have contain cannabis in a pregnant woman’s face make her a hypocrite for how she wants to talk about defending unborn children.
But it’s the footage that is irrefutable of both her and her friend, Quinn Gallagher, making it to second base in full view of everyone. He is massaging her breasts and she seems to rub his crotch. When they were asked to leave by security, she flips them off and pulls the “Do you know who I am?” schtick. Why didn’t she comply? Whether or not the Denver district attorney’s office wants to press charges is up in the air. Is disorderly conduct worth it? The groping might be harder to adjudicate even with the security footage. Bobert has a history of minor offenses.
But Gallagher is a Democrat and he operates a gay-friendly bar that hosts drag shows. And this exposes her hypocrisy more than some minor charge might. Even if the D.A. wants to go after Boebert for the public decency charges, it might not stick and seen as political assassination as Denver District Attorney Beth McCann is a Democrat. For God’s sake, Trump, himself is facing 91 indictments and he’s still out campaigning, even though anyone else would be in jail.
Of course, it didn’t take long for people to question if it wrongs to “slut shame” Boebert or Noem. This isn’t slut shaming. It’s exposing them as the hypocrites they are. Slut shaming is criticizing a woman’s dress whenever she is sexuall harassed or assaulted. That is slut shaming. Women are allowed to dress however they want as long as they aren’t being too indecent. It’s slut shaming to target women who just want access to birth control. No, the problem with Boebert and Noem is they have spent a political going after people for their own private lives, mainly same-sex couples and others of the LGBTQIA community, mainly transgender people.
There’s nothing wrong about a same-sex couple holding hands in public. There is something wrong about people groping each other in public. It’s ironic, Boebert and Gallagher did what they think the LGBTQIA community does all the time. Actually, most just want to live their lives like the rest of us. But as people call for both Boebert and Noem to resign, I think that’s highly unlikely. Noem wants to be Trump’s running mate and he’s so gullible enough he thinks a woman on the ticket might get him more votes. It didn’t work for John McCain and Sarah Palin.
Who knows how this is going to work out? The ongoing threat of a government shutdown has become the “I’m going to take my ball and go home” style of politics from Republicans in the last 30 years. And it’s merely another distraction along the right is using whenever they want people not to look at how they haven’t done anything so far this year.
In closing, I hope that Fallon gets the attention he needs if it’s true he has a drinking problem. I’ve heard the rumors for years from other comics mostly from the Saturday Night Live days that he could pound the drinks. With a wife and two kids, he needs to get it together. I don’t like him. Don’t think I ever have. However, I do hope this latest Rolling Stone article about his tenure on The Tonight Show is an eye-opener.
I also hope it’s an eye-opener for other people who work in toxic workplaces. Putting together a nightly talk show can be difficult so I’m not surprised it’s had nine showrunners, bascially one each year. But it could also mean that there are serious problems behind the scenes that need to be addressed now. We also need to look at why we consider toxic workplaces so common. Just because people have been used to it for decades doesn’t mean we need to keep continuing it.
What do you think? Please comment.
Zane Says 