To Epp Is Human

Eric Swalwell, Al Franken, And That Poor Schnook With The Boobies

It’s become a trump that whatever Donald Truism accuses – wait, let’s start that over. It’s become a truism that whatever Donald Trump accuses his endlessly proliferating enemies of is something he wants to do, is doing, or has done himself, most often with a vindictive brashness that puts earlier Presidential vendettas to shame. Of course he was going to “politicize” the Justice Department in his second term, as he’d claimed Joe Biden did; we all knew that. What even hardened cynics didn’t predict was that Trump’s DoJ would have no other responsibilities except grudge-bearing.

Remember, Pam Bondi – three words I hope I’ll never see sharing an elevator again, let alone a shower, because a comma isn’t enough of a condom – drew Trump’s wrath because she wasn’t batshit-rabid-cuckoo-BLAMBLAMBLAM-Tarantino enough about going St. Bartholomew’s Day on his shooting gallery of straw men and punching bags to bring the boss to orgasm. He’s not just surrounded by sycophants; he’s surrounded by fluffers. And we talk a lot about the Spanish Inquisition, but insensitive historians have given short shrift to the wretched self-esteem of the enforcers who turned out be failures at eye-gouging, getting the boiling oil French-fry hot, disembowelment and so on. Whatever happened to empathy, I ask with a libtard sob? Bondi’s post-Trump depression must leave the post-partum kind looking like Song of Norway.

However, there’s one liberal enormity Trump has never made much of. The conclusion that he’s venting a Bizarro World projection of his own behavior and yearnings would cut too close to the bone. He’s left lobbing the turd in question to the denizens of Planet MAGA, and it tells you how antique the dung is that the tale’s Villainess-in-Chief is Hillary Clinton. I refer, of course, to the belief that LibtardLand is ruled by a shadowy ring of privileged, sick-minded pedophiles.

Pizza hasn’t tasted the same since. True enough, in the Early Days of Epstein – that is, before the stink got gassy enough to win an admiring wolf whistle from the ghost of Serge Stavisky (1886-1934), the Epstein prototype whose financial hanky-panky brought down a French government in, coincidentally, 1934, when Serge himself died of natural causes (suicide, they said; yeah, yeah) at age 47 – Trump and his minions tried hard to divert attention to the all too believable alleged depredations of Bill Clinton, aka Hillary’s worse half. Sorry, the pepperoni isn’t doing it for me, thanks; can I try a slice of the vegan instead?

Dumbfounding Planet MAGA and its chief, libtards reacted to Clinton’s ensnarement in the Eppiverse with a shrug. Everybody knew that if the Lolita Express had only been a rumor, he’d have been first in line to buy an advance ticket to its debut moon flight. You know, like the lucky gazillionaires who’ve already booked theirs for some future zipalong to Mars if they live. Which they will!

Besides, impulsive as it was a mere quarter-century after Clinton left office, we’d decided we’d never really liked the guy. Second-rate President, outstanding sleazeball, next. If Bill had been the world’s only 79-year-old foundling – man, talk about chickens coming home to roost – he’d be parked in a basket outside DNC headquarters with a note reading HELP YOURSELF, SUCKER.

Yet the Democrats have their own version of Bizarro World, one much too soaked in Virtue No. 5 for Trump to have any interest in emulating it. Call it the Justice-ification of the political process. Anytime a prominent Democrat either in or running for office – or both, Rep. Eric Swalwell’s load (I’ll say) to bear as Cali’s race (they can’t hurry enough if you ask me) to replace Governor Gavin Newsom heats up – self-appointed grown-up voices call on voters not to prejudge the dumbass, wait ‘til all the evidence is in before announcing the citizenry’s Guilty or Not Guilty verdict, and all sorts of other noble guff with no relevance to the immediate situation. None.

As much as it pains me to implicitly question the American public’s seemingly fathomless intelligence by resorting to this particular Jeopardy! category, voters aren’t jurors. The culprit-if-that’s-what-he-is faces no risk of being arrested, standing trial, or doing hard time in Trump’s dream of a refurbished Alcatraz. Not from the electorate, anyhow.

At worst, he or OK-OK she will either lose or drop out of a race and/or office it was their choice to enter to begin with. Insisting voters can and should function as cogs in America’s court system at the drop of a sex toy makes every bit as much sense as bullying Pirates of the Caribbean’s gondola riders into serving on no notice whatsoever as Disneyland’s emergency fire brigade.

If only for timetable reasons – “Wait until all the evidence is in,” are you mad? – all this froufrafra has no relation to what’s actually at stake, which is winning an upcoming primary or general election. Even Bizarro World Democrats ought to recognize the partisan outcome is the consequential one.

That’s what Al Franken promptly did when he quit the Senate in 2018, though it’s said he’s regretted it since. The year before, veteran Alabama GOP braying jackass turned Senate candidate Roy Moore had gotten caught chippying around with high=school girls. The Pussy-Grabber in Chief was getting bombed to the teeth on Diet Coke in the White House. Zero tolerance had to be the Dems’ – provisional, anyway -- response.

Distinguished from his Justice-ification boosters by his impressive ability to read an electoral map, Franken looked at his beloved Democratic Party’s prospects and channeled Johnny Cash: “Because I’m yours, I’ll walk the plank.” Swalwell should do the same. Cali’s electorate may be bluer than Gavotte Newsom’s vegan substitute for balls, but the state’s jungle-primary laws make it totally possible that two Republicans could end up vying for the governorship in November.

Me, I liked Franken a lot. Swalwell’s bid to turn himself into an anti-Trump lightning rod without being able to produce proof he’s ever bought a flashlight endeared me a good deal less. I’m picky.

Swalwell is contesting murky (so far) charges that could land him in court for real someday. Franken, who never disputed he’d behaved like a sophomoric asshole occasionally, sometimes when that wasn’t even a thinking man’s sensible reaction to life -- nobody’s ever claimed those dumb photos were doctored – was accused of puerile behavior his worst and/or stupidest enemies couldn’t claim with a straight face rose to the level of criminality. What Swalwell and he have in common is/was being damaged goods and a liability to their shared party.

But what of capital-F Fairness, you ask. What of the American way’s presumptions of innocence? I do not care. True, I bid Al goodbye with some regret. Swalwell’s possibly imminent arrest for impersonating an unlicensed zookeeper at Graceland will move me not a bit. Adios. Next.

It’s also a cinch that, even setting the scurrilous chimpanzee and ferret gossip None Of Us Believe aside, he’ll never resurrect his reputation as amiably as Franken has. On his worst day, after all, Al is reliably both brainy and funny. Swalwell’s comedy career has thus far been confined to a failed audition tape showcasing how truculently he can deploy his prognathous gun-slit piehole when his only genuine emotion is rage at his gubernatorial ambitions being sideswiped by unspecified stuff he obviously – yeah, obviously, say his neck veins – Didn’t Do.

Adios. Next. Meanwhile, lost in the shuffle – oh, how he wishes – is the poor schnook now best and forever known as Kristi Roem’s Crossdressing Husband. The WashPost’s Monica Hesse wrote an admirably humane column last week about how, looking at those ridiculous photographs, all she could see was a lonely man who’d done nothing whatever to deserve such agonizing public humiliation, and good for her. She’s right, and it’s my lookout that I was born a fink.

You see, now that I’ve confessed to myself in my old age that I sometimes think ultra-feminine trans women can be smokin’ sexy, I’ve only got one question. Aren’t there any attractive Republican husbands into getting girly with it? No doubt that cockamamie gal Mamie Eisenhower had her sterling qualities, but there’s a reason “The Look” wasn’t her Secret Service code name. The hell with human decency, people. What I want is quality control.