Even Fox News Wouldn't Put Up With Rick Scott's Sh*t This Sunday
It's your Sunday show rundown!
The Sunday shows had a lot of discussions about Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson's Supreme Court confirmation hearings and the ongoing invasion of Ukraine this week.
A few really stood out for how especially stupid they were. Here they are:
GOP Sen. Rick Scott on 'Fox News Sunday'
On the Chris Wallace-less version of Fox News's main Sunday show, everything seemed to be going as planned. Voldemort animatronic Rick Scott expressed optimism for the GOP's chances to flip Congress in the midterms and criticized President Joe Biden's handling of Russia's war against Ukraine.
But the mood of the interview changed faster than the Dolby Theater after a Will Smith slap when fill-in host John Roberts (not the Chief Justice), who's still vying to take the host slot of "Fox News Sunday," confronted Scott about his widely derided proposed GOP platform:
ROBERTS: You recently put out an 11-point plan to rescue America. Two of the big points are, quote: All Americans should pay some income tax to have skin in the game, even if a small amount. Currently, over half of Americans pay no income tax.
It also says: All federal legislation sunsets in five years. If a law is worth keeping, Congress can pass it again.
So, that would raise taxes on half of Americans and potentially sunset programs like Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security.
Why would you propose something like that in an election year?
That was a very good question, which sounded less like opposition to us, and more like "don't ruin our chances, dummy."
So how did Scott answer this question? Well, he tried a little gaslighting, which Roberts was having none of:
SCOTT: Sure. John, that's, of course, the Democrat talking points. It's --
ROBERTS: No, it's in the plan. It's in the plan.
SCOTT: Well, but here's -- but here's this thing about reality for a second.
ROBERTS: But, Senator, Senator, hang on, it's not Democratic talking points. It's in the plan.
SCOTT: Also in the plan, it says we ought to, every year, talk about exactly how we're going to fix Medicare and Social Security. [...] I think we ought to figure out how we preserve those programs. Every program that we care about, we ought to stop and take the time to preserve those programs.
How dare John Roberts point out the literal words in Rick Scott's plan! Also, Rick Scott wants to save Medicare the same way Donald Trump wanted to save universities and charities.
Of course, GOP Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell wants nothing to do with Scott's plan. Scott wrote an op-ed defending a few weeks back, and when Roberts asked him about all these things, he responded by dodging the question entirely:
ROBERTS: Now, a few days after he said that, you penned a "Wall Street Journal" op-ed about your plan titled "Why I'm defying beltway cowardice".
Are you calling Mitch McConnell a coward?
SCOTT: What I'm saying is -- what I've -- I've been in D.C. for three years, right? I want to get something done. I went to D.C. to change this country.
Sure you did, Rick.
Rob Portman on 'Meet The Press'
On "Meet The Press," GOP Senator Rob Portman was asked about Ginni Thomas's January 6 texts and her husband Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas's obvious conflicts of interest with any cases involving January 6. His answer made zero sense:
PORTMAN: Well, I would respect his opinion on that. I don't know that he'll have the specific issue come before him about, you know, those records. That might be one where he would consider that. But, look, he's a jurist who has a lot of integrity. And I think he will make that decision.
"If?" He already has, senator. Not to mention that it's always been a problem that Supreme Court Justices are exempt from basic ethics rules.
Also when has Clarence Thomas been a paragon of integrity or a wise decision maker? Please.
Rachel Campos-Duffy on 'Fox & Friends Weekend'
Former "The Real World" star Rachel Campos-Duffy, who's married to former "The Real World" star turned former congressman Sean Duffy — MTV owes America an apology for this, BTW — was trying to make a point about Hispanics "fleeing the Democratic Party." That's when she asked GOP congressional candidate Amanda Adkins to explain, as a Hispanic, why that was happening. Shockingly it did not go well. For one thing, Adkins isn't Hispanic.
Fox host this morning to GOP Congress candidate (KS) Amanda Adkins: \u201cAmanda, you are Hispanic. No surprise from these polls, Hispanics are fleeing the Democrat Party. Tell me, why do you think Hispanics are so dissatisfied?\n\nAdkins: \u201cWell, I\u2019m not Hispanic.\u201dpic.twitter.com/If45Qrj4XX— Ron Filipkowski \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6 (@Ron Filipkowski \ud83c\uddfa\ud83c\udde6) 1648394391
So that happened.
Have a week!
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Ben Shapiro Gonna Make His Own Razors, And His Own Disney, And, And, And ... Other Stuff Too
Yeah, other stuff!
Ben Shapiro has been very upset, for some time now, over corporations going "woke" — or, in other words, keeping up with the times and not alienating valued customers. Lately, he's been particularly mad at Disney CEO Bob Chapek for not being horrible enough as it concerns Florida's "Don't Say Gay" bill, which should come as a surprise to pretty much anyone who has been paying attention to Chapek's various responses to said bill. Disney employees have been staging walkouts, customers have been issuing complaints, and the best he's been able to do is "pause" donations to all politicians in Florida (belatedly) and make vague promises about supporting the LGBTQ community and being a better ally in the future.
But even that is too much for Ben Shapiro. As far as he is concerned, any acknowledgement that gay or trans people exist is a "slap in the face" to people who would prefer that they did not, whether it be from teachers or from corporations. So he plans to stick it to Disney and other "woke" corporations by "competing" with them.
On an episode of The Ben Shapiro Show this week, Shapiro announced that the Daily Wire would soon be creating "content" for children, so that parents who really, really, really hate LGBTQ people will have someplace safe to park their darlings. Shapiro said, "if you want entertainment that’s going to cater to your children, we’re going to start making kids' content over here at Daily Wire. Specifically so you don’t have to be catered to by companies who hate your guts and cater to the people who despise your values.”
Oh boy. That should be exciting. I for one am looking forward to a Cinderella in which the real hero stops the Fairy Godmother from giving Cinderella any "handouts" and a Beauty and the Beast where the Beast has to stay a beast forever because it's just impossible for a person to be one thing on the outside and another on the inside.
During another part of the show, Shapiro explained that this was also why the Daily Wire has gotten into trying to "produce" movies and whatnot.
We’ve been doing this on the entertainment side. Our entire premise was ‘the left is slapping you in the face with entertainment. They’re constantly making movies that are messaged at how horrible you are, and then they are making money off of you at the same time and using that money to funnel into these little art house projects that are designed to undermine your relationship with your kids.
One thing I will give to Shapiro here is that he is at least honest about what his issues are with this shit. He doesn't pretend that he's concerned that teachers will be showing explicit pornography in the classroom. He admits that he just doesn't want them to tell kids that LGBTQ people exists. He also admits that much of this is about parents not wanting their kids to figure out that they are bigots, which is what many of us have been saying for some time now.
All of this was in context, by the way, of his boss starting a razor company.
Last year, razor subscription company Harry's Razors pulled $80,000 worth of advertisements from the Daily Wire after being informed that Michael Knowles of The Michael Knowles Show is a transphobic douchebag. It seems that the aptly named Daily Wire CEO Jeremy Boreing has been harboring a grudge about that since then. In order to get them back, he has started his own razor company and went on Shapiro's show to have a hilarious discussion about how "Corporate America" is meant to be a glorious bulwark against government overreach, but is failing in that regard because they care more about not getting bad publicity than they do about protecting the feelings of bigots.
It's almost as if these folks think the purpose of advertising is to encourage people to buy things rather than discouraging them from doing so by financially supporting bigots. They also seem to understand that it's better for business to be ahead of the times rather than behind the times on issues of social justice, and have probably noticed that although Shapiro and his ilk like to claim that their views represent the majority of the country, that is not actually true anywhere outside of their own heads. No, really. Polls show that US Americans overwhelmingly oppose bans on gender affirmative care, oppose bans on trans student athletes, and support the 2021 Equality Act.
That being said, we should fully encourage Shapiro and friends to try their hands at making their own shit instead of constantly whining about everyone else "slapping them in the face" by not capitulating to their worldview. If these ventures are half as hilarious as the time he very seriously answered a letter asking him if he would steal a loaf of bread to feed his family by singing "Stars" from Les Mis, a song about spending one's life hunting down a man who stole a loaf of bread because "those who falter and those who fall must pay the price!" — it will certainly be worth it.
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Tucker Carlson On A Whole Thing Again, 'Woman' And 'Maternity' And 'Breastfeeding' And 'Flight Suits' Edition
Why won't Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson say what Tucker Carlson wants her to say?
During his show last night, Tucker Carlson went on a rant about how very joyful he would have been had Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson answered Sen. Marsha Blackburn's "What is a woman?" question with an impassioned and extremely transphobic speech about how "men can't breastfeed." He delivered this imagined monologue himself, replete with diagrams of the female reproductive system, a childlike explanation of chromosomes, and a bizarre insistence that one can learn everything there is to know about human biology in sixth grade.
"Imagine if she said that! What an answer that would have been!" Carlson exclaimed. "Do you know a single person who wouldn't have cheered? We would have. Honesty is a wonderful thing to watch no matter where it comes from."
Alas, he was disappointed, because KBJ did not give this imaginary Tucker Carlson monologue, but rather said, "I don't know, I'm not a biologist."
It wasn't a perfect answer — there is a whole lot more to gender than biology. But in case Tucker Carlson hasn't noticed, there are not exactly teeming masses of biologists out there railing against the existence of transgender people. Why might that be? Perhaps they are too busy explaining that even "biological sex" is a hell of lot more complicated than one learns in middle school.
From this, Carlson went off on a tangent in which he claimed that in 2019, during Brett Kavanaugh's Supreme Court nomination hearings, Democrats "commanded" people to "believe that all women must be believed, regardless of whether or not they were telling the truth," adding, "in 2019, it was a sham and a disgrace to doubt a woman’s word because by the virtue of their biology, women did not lie. That’s what it was to be a woman — utterly truthful all the time."
This would be quite the own if anyone did actually say that, which no one did. As much as I personally was not a fan of the #BelieveWomen hashtagging (because I knew people would run with it like this and also because it was a little too reminiscent of the "Believe The Children" Satanic Panic nonsense for me), it was made clear by literally everyone promoting it that it did not mean "Women don't lie under any circumstances." It was more about simply not automatically believing the man in instances of sexual assault and harassment, which had been the norm for decades.
Jumping off from that point, Carlson then claimed that by saying that men should not hit women during one of the Democratic primary debates, Joe Biden was admitting that women were different from men. Carlson then brought it on home with one of his latest obsessions — maternity flight suits. He appears to be just as confused about maternity flight suits as he is about everything else.
"A man's best instinct is to protect women. That's nothing to be ashamed of. It makes a civilization civilized. That's why we don't send expectant mothers into battle," Carlson explained. "Got that, you degraded freaks? Pregnant flight suits are an attempt to make us deny our most basic instinct, an instinct that we should not be ashamed of."
Yeah that's not what maternity flight suits are for. As military leaders helpfully explained when Carlson — who has never served in the military — was on about this last year, pregnant people are not serving in combat and flight suits are part of the standard military uniform worn by aviators and air crew whether or not they are in combat. Just like any other service member's uniform.
“It’s just such a lack of understanding of how wars are fought, how deployments are managed, how women contribute in the military,” Martina Chenosis, spokeswoman for the Service Women’s Action Network, told Military Times last year. “And what’s unfortunate is that he has that platform. And so for people who don’t understand what is real, they can walk away from that thinking, ‘Oh my God, we’re sending our pregnant women into battle. This is ridiculous.’"
I'm sure, if so inclined, we could all write a very impassioned speech for Tucker Carlson in which he explains how — through the wondrous magic of Google — he discovered that literally every single thing he said in this monologue was factually absurd, and then even imagine ourselves giving a slow clap at the end, because "honesty is a wonderful thing to watch no matter where it comes from." But really — why bother?
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UT Gov Spencer Cox Takes Radical Position That Trans Kids Are Human And Adults Shouldn't Bash Them
God bless.
“We care about you. We love you. It’s going to be OK."
Because we've become inured to toxic levels of hatred and demagoguery, Utah Gov. Spencer Cox treating transgender kids like human beings is almost as jarring as the fact that he just vetoed his party's anti-trans athletic bill.
This year Texas sicced Child Protective Services on parents for "abusing" their kids with medically approved care, and states are racing to allow parents to sue schools for "harming" their cisgender kids by making them play peewee soccer next to trans kids. So it's actually shocking to see a politician say out loud that we are adults and it is our job to protect all children, not score cheap political points by kicking the most vulnerable ones.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but this is a cruel fucking country.
Gov. Cox detailed his reasons for vetoing HB11 in a long, moving letter in which he pointed out that the imaginary "problem" of transgender students participating in sports is dwarfed by the reality of high rates of suicidality in children who are stigmatized and marginalized, often by the very adults who are supposed to be taking care of them.
"I always try to err on the side of kindness, mercy and compassion," Cox said, while acknowledging the limits of his understanding of the science and psychology of transgenderism.
"I am learning so much from our transgender community. They are great kids who face enormous struggles. Here are the numbers that have most impacted my decision: 75,000, 4, 1, 86 and 56," he wrote, referring to the total number of high school students playing sports in Utah; the total number of trans kids in that group; the single transgender girl participating on a girls' team; the percentage of trans kids who have reported suicidality; and the percent who have actually attempted suicide.
Four kids and only one of them playing girls sports. That’s what all of this is about. Four kids who aren’t dominating or winning trophies or taking scholarships. Four kids who are just trying to find some friends and feel like they are a part of something. Four kids trying to get through each day. Rarely has so much fear and anger been directed at so few. I don’t understand what they are going through or why they feel the way they do. But I want them to live. And all the research shows that even a little acceptance and connection can reduce suicidality significantly. For that reason, as much as any other, I have taken this action in the hope that we can continue to work together and find a better way. If a veto override occurs, I hope we can work to find ways to show these four kids that we love them and they have a place in our state.
Cox is the second governor in two days to veto such a bill. But Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb referred only to the threat of expensive litigation — he didn't say a single word about the responsibility of adults, particularly those in power, to care for all children in our community, much less point out the harm that state-sanctioned stigma does to trans kids in the name of "protecting" girls sports from an imagined takeover by boys "pretending" to be girls.
In his letter, Cox also referred to the threat of litigation, which was exacerbated by the hasty, unconsidered manner of the bill's passage. Utah legislators had been negotiating for weeks to establish a commission of experts to adjudicate cases of transgender kids looking to join sports teams which match their gender identity, allowing them to "find a sense of connection and community," and only barring participation "in the rare circumstance of an outlier who could pose a safety threat or dominate a sport in a way that would eliminate competitive opportunities for biological females."
But at the eleventh hour, Republicans ditched the agreed framework, barring transgender girls from playing on girls' teams, and only establishing the commission if the ban is struck down by a court. But because indemnifying schools and the Utah High School Athletic Association (UHSAA) would have had a budgetary impact, they didn't do it. So now, as Cox points out, Republican legislators have invited parents to sue, virtually guaranteeing that UHSAA and several school districts will be bankrupted having to defend themselves, with the likely result that they wind up with the same commission everyone agreed to in the first place. But the state will have the added "benefit" of looking like a bunch of trans-bashing bigots along the way, at a moment when it's trying to attract tech companies to relocate to Utah.
Gov. Cox knows that Republicans are going to override his veto and is already vowing to call a special session so as to mitigate the chaos by indemnifying schools and UHSAA — which explicitly did not support this policy — for the lawsuits that the Republican legislature just wished upon them. And he knows that he'll be primaried from the right on this issue in 2024, but he did it anyway, because he knew it was important to send a message to trans kids that they are loved and they belong.
And as a parent of a girl who plays high school sports, I would also like to add that they are, and they do. It's going to be shit for a minute, but it will be okay.
[NYT / Cox Letter]
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