Another Race To The Bottom

« August 2011 »

Memo to Phil Hinkle, Mitt Romney, and the Alamoron: YOU ARE STILL DUMB.

Updates! Get your updates here! Stuff I talked about recently has had minor new developments, and I'm shoving them all into the Friday column because it's easy! Get 'em while they're warmed over! It's SPASTIC RETREAD MONKEY FRIDAY!

On Wednesday, I mentioned the curious case of Phil Hinkle, the Indiana state representative (and anti-gay Republican, natch) caught with his pants down at a Craigslist encounter with an 18-year-old. As of Wednesday, all Hinkle had said was that he'd made some mistakes but wouldn't be resigning. Well, there's more spin where that came from, and I'm going to give you a few paragraphs from the Indianapolis Star, because they are CHOCK FULL OF AWESOME.

"'I say that emphatically,' he said. 'I'm not gay.'...

Hinkle acknowledged he picked up Kameryn Gibson and drove him to the hotel, giving him $80 in the car. But when they arrived, Hinkle said, they simply made small talk about baseball and the view from the hotel -- nothing further.


Hinkle then went to the bathroom, he said. When he came back out, he said Kameryn Gibson was gone -- and so were his money clip, his business card holder, his BlackBerry and his iPad.

Hinkle still says he wants to get professional help to understand why he did what he did. Now, I'm just an amateur, but if he wants to give me 80 bucks and an iPad, I'll be a professional for a day. I hear he likes that.

Phil Hinkle, you did what you did because you wanted to have gay sex with a man over 40 years younger than you, and the only way a closeted Republican in his sixties to do that is to pay for it. It's really very logical, when you think about it. If you want to know why you wanted that, well, that's a little more complicated. See, here's the deal. You're at least a little bit gay. I can't, over the Internet, determine exactly how gay you are - not for just 80 bucks and a used iPad*, anyway. But it's at least a little bit. I hope your professional gets you to realize how much, and that you stop hating all over gay people because of your inner shame.

And speaking of inner shame, and pretending to be something that you're not, how about that Mitt Romney, huh? He sits pretty for months as the moderate frontrunner, then the Alamoron pulls out a DOUBLE-DIGIT LEAD** in a poll, and Romney tacks to the right. And how do you tack to the right in 2011? By being stupid.

"Do I think the world's getting hotter? Yeah, I don't know that but I think that it is. I don't know if it's mostly caused by humans. What I'm not willing to do is spend trillions of dollars on something I don't know the answer to."

Look. I understand this dance. Really, I do. But this dance is going to kill us all, so you'll pardon me if I'm not willing to put up with it. You don't know that, but you think it is? Motherfucker, it's 2011. There are ways of finding out for sure. Look it up. There are people who actually go out with thermometers, measure this shit, and write it down in easy-to-digest chart form.

You see that line? You see it going up? Then guess what, dipshit. Now you know that the world's getting hotter. The "are we causing it" thing is a little tougher, but only a little. You're running for President. You can afford to pay someone to explain it to you, slowly. There are differences between "don't know the answer", "don't want to know the answer", and "can't know the answer because nobody knows".

Mitt Romney trying to compete with the Alamoron on ignorance is like me trying to compete with Michael Jordan in either basketball, underwear-selling, or little Hitler mustaches. You don't go up against the master, because he will dunk on you, leave you with a trunk full of boxer briefs, and annex your moustache's Poland. Here's an exchange with Laura "Better Not Call Her A Slut" Ingraham, as reported by TPM:

"Laura Ingraham asks Rick Perry to pledge not to vacation on Martha's Vineyard if elected President. 'I'm not even sure where it is,' Perry responds. 'That's good enough for me,' Ingraham laughs."

Did you see that? Perry killed Romney so fast you'd think Romney was an innocent on Texas' Death Row. Romney doesn't know if the Earth is warming? Amateur hour. The Alamoron doesn't know where one of the most famous towns in America is - a town that's a playground for rich people like Rick Perry and his donors, a town that's been in the news for an entire WEEK, non-stop, because Obama is hanging out there.

Even Phil Hinkle can't race to the bottom that fast.

*Though I bet the browser history on that used iPad would sure help me hone in on a percentage.

**Did I mention we're fucked? Because we're fucked.