This Newsletter Isn't All About Pete Hegseth

Some of it is, but some of it is about Texas Dildo Cops and 'Wicked.'

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Now let’s talk about Pete Hegseth, but also Texas Dildo cops and weirdos who are upset about Wicked.

Pete Hegseth, talkin’ Guy Stuff, with Ben Shapiro!

I cannot, will not, write four full newsletters in a row about Pete Hegseth. That Man is still the nominee for Defense secretary, and he still doesn’t have the votes, but nope, this week, he doesn’t get the whole newsletter.

He gets the top third or so.

Here’s the latest: that grunting pig is now disavowing and memory-holing whiny, bigoted, dumbass comments he’s made a number of times over the last decade about being against gays in the military, just as he is now trying to pretend he didn’t say he wants women out of combat roles in the military.

He was asked point blank yesterday if he supports gays in the military. “Yes,” he said, which is more than Senator Joni Ernst will say about his confirmation prospects.

This year, though, he said to Ben Shapiro that gays serving openly in the military is when they started to do social justice “tinkering” to the military, and that he knows this one gay soldier (who totally exists) who’s now against the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell, because that gay soldier doesn’t love himself or possess self-respect? it brought a “trans agenda” into the military.

He whined to Ben Shapiro — you know, because the alpha males are BACK! — about a military recruitment commercial featuring a soldier with two lesbian moms that, he says, promoted, a “Marxist agenda,” because ignorant MAGA shit-for-brains don’t know what “Marxist” means, and instead use the term as a catch-all for everything they don’t understand, or that makes them feel anxious and insecure, about the world.

Hegseth wrote in one of his whiny boy books, The War On Warriors, that he used to support gays in the military, but then he stopped, because he realized that the repeal of DADT was a “breach in the wire” and a slippery slope and oh my God, just read this fucking gibberish. He starts at the repeal of DADT:

“Our commander briefed the unit, peppered with a few jokes,” he wrote. “You know, infantry stuff. We mostly laughed it off and moved on. America was at war. Gays and lesbians were already serving in the military. I had seen the enemy with my own eyes. We needed everybody.”

Hegseth says he now regrets that view, “Not because I have a newfound ax to grind with gay Americans,” he wrote. “But because I naïvely believed that’s what ending Don’t Ask Don’t Tell was all about. Once again, our good faith was used against us,” he added. “The Left never gives an inch, and always takes a mile.”

Christ, he’s so weird. Sure, baby boy, ending DADT was a conspiracy to make the military “woke,” and the beginning of eroding the standards of the military for that purpose. Why, without it, our military would be all dudes like Pete Hegseth, probably! Can you imagine what a meatheaded premature ejaculation episode of “Hee Haw” that would be?

It strikes me that to take seriously all the bitching and moaning from Hegseth — and from allies like the stupidest Republican senator in American history, Tommy Tuberville — about “wokeness” in the military and the lowering of standards that one must first accept the ludicrous notion that guys like Pete Hegseth are the cream of the military crop.

You betcha.

As CNN’s KFile notes, Hegseth doesn’t bother to try to prove in his book that gays serving openly has eroded the quality of the military, because he can’t. .

Anyway, fuck that guy, let’s talk about some other stuff.

‘TIS THE SEASON FOR TEXAS DILDO RANGERS!

That’s more like it! Let’s talk about some good old conservative Christian shut-ins being creepy and weird!

It’s still very important and squarely within the remit of this newsletter, because these are the types of people who totally respect guys like Pete Hegseth and agree that the true enemies of the American people are woke liberals, LGBTQ people and people being free to exercise full bodily autonomy including the decision to have an abortion.

And sometimes they just get really mad at dildos.

Texas has long had a thing with conservative Christian moral scolds trying to pry people’s dildos out of their hands.

For instance, did you know it’s illegal to own more than six of them in Texas? I know what you’re thinking: But if having more than six dildos is outlawed, only outlaws will have more than six dildos …

Do you know the tale of that time Ted Cruz tried to steal all the dildos?

It’s true! When Ted Cruz was solicitor general of the state, he defended a Texas dildo ban that prohibited the sale of dildos and vibrators and such, but not the private use of them. In other words, you could use dildos, but you’d better have smuggled them across state lines from some slut state like Oklahoma or something. A brief he filed claimed there was a “government” interest in "discouraging ... autonomous sex." Yes, really. Moreover, that “[t]here is no substantive-due-process right to stimulate one's genitals for non-medical purposes unrelated to procreation or outside of an interpersonal relationship.”

Ted Cruz, everyone! Diddling your business isn’t in the Constitution! The government should try to make you stop masturbating!

When the appeals court told Ted to shove his anti-dildo crusade up his ass, he took it to the full appeals court, where his filings drew a moral equivalency between dildos and things like bigamy and incest.

He lost. He lost so hard that anti-dildo laws got struck down in Louisiana and Mississippi too. So if you’re in one of those states and you happen to name your dildos “Ted Cruz’s Cancun Loveboat,” then that would be historically appropriate.

Now a new Texas politician has come along, a Republican just elected to the state House named Hillary Hickland, and she is trying to pry all the dildos out of CVS’s and Walmart’s hands, or more accurately off their shelves.

“Our family-oriented retailers should reflect the values of the communities they serve,” said Hickland in a press release. ”Parents do not consent to their children being exposed to obscene devices while shopping for toothpaste. House Bill 1549 provides common-sense protections for families by ensuring parents can shop with their children without encountering sexually explicit items that compromise their innocence.”

Do they put the dildos next to the Crest 3D White Strips? And second question, but are kids who got dragged to Walmart with their parents really focused on the products in those aisles, or are they whining about how they want to go look at the toys? (The children’s toys.)

Surprise, Hickland, who was personally endorsed by Texas Governor Greg Abbott, is also a book-banning Christian extremist freak, because of course she is.

For more on the ins and outs of Texas dildo law, and more on Hickland, this article by Gwen Howerton is a good place to start.

Like, did you know the “no more than six dildos” law was passed in 2003? Yes, that’s what Texas Republican lawmakers were doing in 2003.

Yet again, these people are just goddamned weird.

SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES!

And it’s not a Christmas stocking full of seven “Everything’s Bigger In Texas” Lone Star Dildos!

With all the disasters going on with our American slip ‘n’ slide into fascism, I’ve hardly had time to look through the internet for conservative Christian creeps having meltdowns about Wicked. But as an avowed musical theater nerd who has seen the stage production twice in the last year — once on Broadway, once on the national tour — I am absolutely delighted to report that the movie is bothering all the right people, and can’t wait to see it.

The One Million Moms, if you are not familiar, are a group of approximately one (1) lonely woman in Tupelo, Mississippi, this Bible-beating shut-in creeper Mommy Morals type called Monica Cole, whose project is part of the American Family Association Christian hate group. Over on Wonkette, we make fun of Cole a whole lot.

Her entire thing is sending out irate letters to her mailing list, claiming to represent “moms” — a million of them! — screaming at ham companies for making boner jokes in their commercials, and screaming at Credit Karma for having lesbians in their commercials, and screaming at Zillow for having gay couples in their commercials, and so forth. Vaginal deodorant made her mad once.

She’s just an absolute zero of a person, with a completely pitiable, pointless life.

And she’s soooo mad about the Wicked movie. Oh my God.

Witchcraft AND gay stuff? Fun!

Some excerpts of Cole’s little screed:

Of course, the musical contains a tremendous amount of witchcraft and sorcery, and that content prompts most parents to avoid taking their children to see Wicked.

Remember when I called her a “shut-in”? She just typed with a straight face that “most parents” will avoid taking their kids to see a movie with witchcraft and sorcery, as if J.K. Rowling isn’t currently financing her billionaire hate-bender against transgender people on the backs of families who mainline her books and movies about witchcraft and sorcery.

Sure, Monica. Now go on:

Instead of an uplifting Broadway musical about friendship and family, talents and resources were used to create a dark movie that also pushes wokeness.

Have you seen the musical about friendship and family? No? Because it sounds fucking boring, that’s why.

Also, Wicked is not new. When I was in New York earlier this year, there were signs everywhere about how it’s the musical’s 20th year on Broadway. That’s part of what prompted me to take an afternoon to see it, even though I was going to Sweeney Todd that night.

Cole isn’t breaking any news about Wicked here, is the point.

Four of the film’s main characters are openly queer or gay in real life, or at the minimum, these actors have spoken about their queer experiences. As such, the queer representation and visibility in Wicked: Part One were important to them.

GAYS? IN SHOW BUSINESS?

Obviously, this part of the movie is a nod to inclusivity, along with a blatant attempt by Universal to normalize same-sex crushes.

Already normalized, buddy.

Universal has now decided to be politically correct instead of providing family-friendly programming. But Universal should stick to family-friendly entertainment, particularly in children’s films, rather than pushing an agenda.

Children’s films? OK.

So Monica Cole seems quite upset, and that is hilarious and cool.

Not sure if it’s as hilarious and as MAGA dipshit, Women for Trump co-chair and Real America’s Voice host Gina Loudon, who lost her abso-damn-lute mind about how Wicked was a racist attack on white people because here’s why:

“Let’s just start with the fact that they have Ariana Grande, who is obviously a Hispanic woman, playing the part of a ditzy, blonde, white really villain, when it comes right down to it, for this particular movie,” the host said. “The racism and the racial appropriation I just thought was offensive, frankly.”

She added, “All white people aren’t dumb and evil,” saying that she gets “sick of that storyline.”

Ariana Grande is Italian. The character of Glinda is quite complex, and none but a mouthbreathing barking moron would boil her down to simply “dumb and evil.”

Seems a pretty good descriptor for Gina Loudon, though.

And Monica Cole.

And Hillary Hickland.

And Ted Cruz.

And Pete Hegseth.

Which seems like a good place to end this week’s newsletter.

Your Moral High Ground agenda for the week is to go see Wicked and buy dildos at CVS in Texas, in whichever order is most convenient for you!

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-Evan