Sesame Place falls short of “Sesame Street” — and after my own child’s visit, I should have known

“Racist Theme Park” is not a reputation any amusement park wants to earn, let alone one that licenses the branding of the iconically positive and inclusive children’s TV show “Sesame Street.” But this week Sesame Place, a Philadelphia-area children’s attraction, was forced to issue an apology for an event captured in a parent’s disturbing video that went viral. In the video, which the park initially sought to downplay, two little girls rocking Cookie Monster and Abby Cadabby gear appear to be deliberately snubbed by an employee, dressed as the Muppet character Rosita, who walks along a line of spectators handing out high-fives but shakes her finger “no” at the two little girls as they reach for her.

I initially came across the video on social media. It originated on Instagram, with the following caption: “THIS DISGUSTING person blatantly told our kids NO then proceeded to hug the little white girl next to us! Then when I went to complain about it, they looking at me like I’m crazy.”

On “Good Morning America” Wednesday, parent Jodi Brown expanded on the Instagram post and the hurt that followed the encounter. “They were thinking they did something wrong when they did absolutely nothing wrong. And then to see other children be acknowledged when you’re not acknowledged…”

The video’s views continue to climb as others with similar stories have added their videos to the conversation. The most disturbing I’ve seen so far is a video of a performer dressed as Telly Monster, who just bopped up to a little girl with both of his arms spread out like, “What’s up!” and then knocked her on the ground. I can’t imagine how I would respond if that was my child, but a few nights in county seems appropriate.

“Sesame Street” talked to our kids about racism. Parents need to keep teaching those lessons

To make matters worse, on some level I already knew this about Sesame Place. I knew something was up with those mascot performers after my daughter had a similar experience, but foolishly, I continued to give Sesame Park the benefit of doubt.

My wife and I took our daughter to Sesame Place twice before she turned two years old. Once for a drive-by show during the height of the pandemic — with everyone instructed to stay in their cars with the windows up — and then again after the vaccines were rolled out when COVID numbers went down, out of the car but still masked.

The drive-by event was cool. The performers in character — many of whom had probably been out of work for months due to the pandemic — acted so excited to entertain my daughter on the other side of our car window. They wiggled, danced and jumped up and down, leaving her with a smile that touched both her ears. My wife was so satisfied she bought us season passes.

The second visit was special — my daughter got to meet Elmo, one of her three favorite characters. The performer dressed as Elmo engaged with her, allowed us to take unlimited pictures and overall, made our day. After that, I thought we had seen enough and were ready to go, but my wife said we would be out of our minds if we didn’t stick around for the parade. So we walked around the park, rode some more rides, and then found great positions to watch the famous Sesame Place parade. And just like in the viral video, multiple characters walked right past my child without acknowledging her.

Now I see that I should have thought, These clowns are ignoring Black kids on purpose.

Maybe they can’t engage with all of the kids. Maybe they had to hurry up to shut the park down. Maybe they didn’t see her this time, but will catch her on another visit. That’s what I told myself. Now I see that I should have thought, These clowns are ignoring Black kids on purpose.

Children go through phases. My daughter, like many her age do, was in an intense “Sesame Street” phase. She carried her Abby and Big Bird stuffed animals everywhere: sleeping with them, speaking to them, considering them. When my wife had to literally pry them from her small hands to wash them, she’d flip out. Sometimes while I’d rock her to sleep, if she needed extra help, I’d whip out my phone and pop on “Sesame Street”: It’s educational and fun. There are 50 seasons, so it isn’t repetitive, and it’s not as addictive as that damn “Cocomelon.” “Sesame Street” is the first piece of programming that belonged to her little experience in this world. And thank God she was too young to realize at “Sesame Place” that she was being denied by some of the characters she loves.

“I’m looking at all of these videos in my phone,” I tell my wife. “They did our daughter the same way.”

She agreed. What’s even more upsetting is that “Sesame Street” has such a strong history of inclusion. I remember watching the program as a child, seeing Black children on television and feeling like the Muppets were speaking to me as well.

I remember watching the program as a child, seeing Black children on television and feeling like the Muppets were speaking to me as well.

“More recently, a 2010 segment called ‘I Love My Hair’ shows a Muppet with brown skin singing about her hair and how she likes to wear it natural, as an Afro, in cornrows, braids, and so on. Many other segments throughout Sesame Street’s 50-year history have included Muppets who come in all colors,” said Professor Naomi Moland, author of “Can Big Bird Fight Terrorism? Children’s Television and Globalized Multicultural Education,” in a recent interview with American University. “Sesame’s creators have always seen this multi-hued cast of monsters as representing diversity, even when the characters do not represent particular races or ethnicities.”

The “Sesame Street” that Professor Moland speaks of, the “Sesame Street” my daughter loves, the “Sesame Street” I imagine the woman who posted the viral video felt she was bringing her daughters to, is not the Sesame Place represented in those disappointing experiences. Sesame Place is not a diverse show that fights to include everyone; it’s just a theme park that now has a reputation for poor customer service and inadequate institutional safeguards against racist behavior. But little kids who believe in “Sesame Street” and expect that inclusive, welcoming magic aren’t necessarily going to understand the difference.

Sesame Place initially released a statement on its Instagram account protecting the performer playing Rosita, claiming that the hand gestures were to a parent asking the performer to hold a child for a photo. But we can’t hear that in the video. The statement also says the “costumes our performers wear sometimes make it difficult to see at lower levels and sometimes our performers miss hug requests from guests.” But in multiple videos we see performers in character costume kneeling down to specifically reject Black children. In light of all the videos being shared, the park’s first statement felt defensive and disingenuous. The wave of angry backlash, with the help from celebrity outcry, led Sesame Place to release a second statement with an actual apology:

“We sincerely apologize to the family for their experience in our park on Saturday; we know that it’s not ok,” the company posted on Instagram. “We are taking actions to do better. We are committed to making this right. We will conduct training for our employees so they better understand, recognize and deliver an inclusive, equitable and entertaining experience to our guests.”

“For over 40 years Sesame Place has worked to uphold the values of respect, inclusion and belonging. We are committed to doing a better job making children and families feel special, seen and included when they come to our parks.”

The second apology is what the first statement should have been. But being issued under public pressure makes it sound false, too. Sesame Place now looks like just another company responding poorly to negative publicity, creating the impression that they aren’t sorry for what they did, just sorry it was caught on tape.

My daughter still loves “Sesame Street.” But I won’t be taking her to Sesame Place ever again.

stories about “Sesame Street”:

Racism, policing, politics and violence: How America in 2022 was shaped by 1964

Republican attempts to gain political support by promoting racist fear and hatred, reflexively siding with police in confrontations with African Americans and denouncing Black Lives Matter demonstrations are a prominent feature of our political landscape. But they’re also nothing new. In many ways, the battle lines of 2022 can be seen forming in 1964. A letter published 58 years ago this week in the New York Times can help explain the underlying issues, both then and now.

As President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964 into law on July 2, 1964, he called upon Americans to “close the springs of racial poison.” Two weeks later, on the same night that Sen. Barry Goldwater accepted the Republican presidential nomination with an explicit endorsement of extremism, a 15-year-old African American was shot and killed in Harlem by a New York City police officer. The incident began after the white superintendent of a group of apartments turned a hose on a group of Black kids who often sat on the steps to the buildings. According to them, the superintendent shouted at them, “Dirty n***ers, I’ll wash you clean.” They responded by throwing bottles and garbage-can lids at the super, who retreated inside one of the buildings. A boy not involved in the original incident, James Powell, pursued him, and when Powell exited the building he was shot and killed by an off-duty policeman.

WTF happened to “Defund the police”? Author Alex Vitale on Ted Cruz and his “McCarthy moment”

That led to an almost immediate confrontation between neighborhood young people and police. Over the following days, these clashes escalated into the first major urban “riot,” or “uprising,” of the 1960s. (Those two nouns were used by different sides to describe the same phenomena, the former by most white people, the latter by Black people and, as the decade went on, a growing number of whites on the left.)

By the night of July 18, thousands of Black people were in the streets of Harlem, breaking windows, looting stores and shouting at police, “Killers! Killers!” When a police officer tried to disperse one of the crowds by yelling, “Go home, go home,” people in the crowd responded, “We are home, baby.”

Over the next few weeks, northern urban uprisings spread to the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood in Brooklyn (then largely Black and low-income, today a zone of intense gentrification) to Rochester, New York; to Jersey City, Paterson and Elizabeth in New Jersey; and then to Chicago. At the end of August, immediately following the Democratic convention in Atlantic City, serious disorder erupted less than 60 miles west, in Philadelphia. As in the other cases, the underlying cause was a series of charges of police brutality, and the fraught or openly hostile relationship between cops and the African-American community. White policemen beating and killing Black people with impunity was, to be sure, nothing new in 1964. Nor was it unprecedented for such incidents to spark rebellion in the Black community, including property destruction and sometimes violence.

But street-level resistance by Black residents became much more common in 1964 and throughout the ensuing years of the ’60s. As historian Elizabeth Hinton demonstrates in her 2021 book, “America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s,” the vicious policing that remains a principal battle line today has been the cause of many outbursts of rebellion by African Americans. White police officers are almost never convicted of murdering a Black person, more than a half-century later. The 2021 murder conviction of the Minneapolis cop who killed George Floyd provides hope for change on this front, but the police killings of Black people have continued, during and after that trial.

The 1964 hopes of Republicans and fears of Democrats about the political effects of racial conflict are also strikingly familiar. President Johnson feared the riots could help Goldwater win the November election. “If we aren’t careful, we’re gonna be presiding over a country that’s so badly split up that they’ll vote for anybody who isn’t us,” White House press secretary George Reedy said to Johnson after the Harlem riot had been going on for a couple of days.

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Much as Democrats do today, Johnson felt the need to condemn the riots while simultaneously emphasizing the centrality of the pursuit of racial equality and justice. On July 20, he issued a statement on the situation in Harlem in which he declared: “In the preservation of law and order there can be no compromise — just as there can be no compromise in securing equal and exact justice for all Americans.”

The hopes of Republicans and fears of Democrats from 1964 are strikingly familiar. Lyndon Johnson feared the urban riots could elect Goldwater, and felt the need to condemn them — while calling for racial justice.

The prospect that white “backlash” might turn the nation against Johnson and to Goldwater did not materialize in 1964 and Johnson was elected in one of the biggest landslides of American political history. It was to be the much larger uprising in the Watts district of Los Angeles in August 1965 — which began five days after Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act into law — that would wind up producing the sort of dramatic political backlash that Johnson had feared in 1964.

The causes of the 1964 rioting were brilliantly explained by a Black woman in Brooklyn named Barbara Benson, who wrote a letter to the editor of the New York Times after the outbreak. Benson wrote that she wept “at the damage done to this city and the world by the Harlem riots” and was especially concerned that “this rioting may have made a Goldwater victory more likely.” But she felt the need to try to explain what leads to rioting. Her words sound all too contemporary more than a half century later:

All minorities recognizable by the color of their skin have experienced the irrational quality of the police force evident in the slaying of the 15-year-old boy. Many of us have been stopped by police and, yes, many frisked for no other reason than that a Negro in a certain neighborhood “seems suspicious.”

If there is no “irrational” fear of the black man operating within many on the police force, why is it that intelligent, college‐educated Negroes like myself simultaneously fear any possible involvement with the police, even for our own protection?

Let no one be deceived. Many Harlem police are sadistic in their administration of the law, insatiable in their beatings, unable to discern men from children, and irrational in their fear of the black man, as well as incapable of telling one black man from another.

There was really no need for the various commissions set up from 1964 through the end of the decade — most notably the National Advisory Committee on Civil Disorders, popularly called the “Kerner Commission,” set up by Johnson in 1967 — to earnestly search for the underlying causes of urban uprisings. Benson’s letter, then as now, pretty much said it all.

about policing and violence

Judge strikes down Bannon’s “political circus”

U.S. District Court Judge Carl Nichols, who was appointed by Donald Trump, ruled against Steve Bannon, an ex-adviser to the former president, on Wednesday and cautioned him not to turn his trial into a “political circus.”

Prosecutor Amanda Vaughn told Nichols that Bannon’s attorneys appeared to be trying to inject politics into his trial for contempt of Congress. She said Bannon’s lawyers have been suggesting that it is a “politically motivated prosecution.”

“At the end of the back and forth between her and Bannon’s team over what extent his attorney’s questioning can suggest bias, US District Judge Carl Nichols stated a commitment to not allow the trial to become ‘a political circus, a forum for partisan politics,'” CNN reported.

“After hearing more from Vaughn, Nichols set limits on questions about political bias: The defense may ask questions that may go to how a particular witness is biased, but not ask questions about how someone else was biased in action they took outside the courtroom,” the report said.

For his part, Bannon has used press conferences on each day of the trial to rail against the House Jan. 6 Select Committee.

House Select Committee hearing to include “damning video evidence” of Trump

New video evidence of Donald Trump will be played at Thursday’s primetime hearing by the House Select Committee Investigating the Jan. 6 Attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“One day after the last rioter had left the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, Donald Trump’s advisers urged him to give an address to the nation to condemn the violence, demand accountability for those who had stormed the halls of Congress and declare the 2020 election to be decided,” The Washington Post reported Thursday. “He struggled to do it. Over the course of an hour of trying to tape the message, Trump resisted holding the rioters to account, trying to call them patriots, and refused to say the election was over, according to individuals familiar with the committee’s work.”

The hearing will occur despite the select committee only now getting documents from the Secret Service, which deleted text messages.

“The public could get its first glimpse of outtakes from that recording Thursday night, when the Jan. 6 committee plans to offer a bold conclusion in its eighth hearing: Not only did Trump do nothing despite repeated entreaties by senior aides to help end the violence, but he sat back and enjoyed watching it,” the newspaper reported. “He reluctantly condemned it — in a three-minute speech the evening of Jan. 7 — only after the efforts to overturn the 2020 election had failed and after aides told him that members of his own Cabinet were discussing invoking the 25th Amendment to remove him from office.”

J6 aides are calling Thursday’s hearing the “187-minute hearing.”

“The hearing is also expected to tie together details from prior hearings, including the inflammatory presidential rhetoric that drew thousands to Washington that day, Trump’s willingness to grant audiences to fringe figures peddling fabulist and unconstitutional theories on how he could keep hold of the presidency and the many times he was urged to intervene during the violence but refused to do so,” the newspaper reported. “All of it points to one conclusion, which the committee plans to argue Thursday: Trump wanted the violence, he is responsible for it and his unwillingness to help end it amounts to a dereliction of duty and a violation of his oath of office.”

Toobin says Trump’s continued reinstatement efforts are that of a “tinfoil hat crazy person”

During a segment of CNN’s “New Day” on Wednesday, CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin spoke of Trump’s difficulty with the reality of his presidential loss to Biden in the 2020 election and his efforts to reverse the results of that election as recently as last week.

Speaking to “New Day” anchor Kaitlan Collins, Toobin referenced an interview that speaker of the Wisconsin Assembly, Robin Vos gave to WISN Channel 12 Milwaukee in which it was revealed that Trump reached out to Vos asking him to “decertify the 2020 election results in his state.”

“You know if someone had come up to you on the street and someone said, in July of 2022, that they were trying to overturn the election held almost two years ago, you would say this is like a tinfoil hat crazy person,” Toobin said on CNN. “The idea that the former president thinks this could be overturned is so bizarre. I don’t know if it counts for criminal intent. It’s almost hard to wrap your mind around, but it just shows that the former president is obsessed with this issue and is not letting it go.”

Trump pressured top Wisconsin Republican to decertify 2020 results, then threatened him

“As Vos said publicly, he’s nothing if not consistent,” Toobin said. “Donald Trump has gotten away with this kind of behavior his entire career. All he’s doing, with regard to the election, is the same thing he did with contractors when he was building his buildings, with business partners that he broke with. This bluster, this anger, this lying, he’s gotten away with it. He got elected President of the United States, for all I know he can get elected President of the United States again in two years. This is who he is.”

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Watch Toobin’s “New Day” segment below:

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Mike Pence gets the thumbs-up from Republican lawmakers to run for President in 2024

During a private meeting held near the U.S. Capitol in Washington on Wednesday, former Vice President Mike Pence was thanked by members of the Republican Study Committee and encouraged to run for President in 2024.

“People said they hope he’s going to be a big voice in 2024. … He was being encouraged: we need more of you in 2024,” Nebraska Republican Rep. Don Bacon said in a quote reported on by CNN. “And I would agree.”

In response to being told this during the meeting, Pence is said to have reacted favorably, but gave no indication as to his future plans for office one way or the other.

Jan. 6 bombshell: Author of plot to have Mike Pence overturn the election sought pardon from Trump

In CNN’s coverage of the private meeting on Wednesday they highlight that Rep. Dan Newhouse, a Washington Republican, confirmed the talk of Pence running in 2024, and the encouragement of the meeting’s attendees for him to do so, but that Pence said, for now, he’s focusing on “helping the House GOP win the 2022 midterms.”

The New York Times, points out ways in which Pence seems to be distancing himself from his Trump years, such as his choice to endorse Karrin Taylor Robson in the Arizona governor’s race while Trump is championing her rival, Kari Lake, a former local television anchor.

Former Pence adviser Olivia Troye tells CNN’s Ana Cabrera that although Pence is remaining quiet about his plans currently, his desire to run for office in 2024 is a “known thing” amongst his inner circle.

“It’s quite the dichotomy right, within the Republican party where you have the growing rift between those who support Trump and continue to back him and remain loyal to him, and then you have the rest of the Republicans who are trying to navigate around him and, in many cases, wanting to support someone like Mike Pence,” Troye says.

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Why is everyone so horny for kitchen slang?

In 2014 or so, a dear friend of mine, who for the sake of anonymity we’ll just call Lisa, was dating a chef at a local trendy brewpub. He was shockingly unlike her recent ex, the clean-cut corporate accountant who had been Lisa’s first “real boyfriend.”

The Chef, as Lisa would call him in our group chats, had a smattering of food-themed tattoos — a cartoonish bone-in ham on his shoulder blade, a nakiri knife on his shinbone, a teeny-tiny anchovy on his ring finger — and smelled like Parliament cigarettes and duck fat.

The Chef wasn’t particularly reliable. He’d left Lisa hanging more than once, blaming it on his crazy kitchen schedule, only to buy his way back into her affections by fixing her early-morning pasta and speaking some of the French he’d learned in his slow southern drawl.

One day, he suddenly stopped calling. Lisa still places the blame on a certain interaction.

“We were sexting, and I thought I’d be cute and respond ‘yes, chef,’ to something he said,” Lisa told me with a laugh in a recent phone call. “He literally responded with ‘WTF?’ and things got weird after that.”

The real star of FX’s “The Bear”? San Marzano tomatoes

She continued: “That’s why it’s hilarious to me everyone is making all these sex jokes about kitchen speak right now. It’s maybe not as hot as you think in real life, though your mileage may vary.”

Like Lisa, I noticed a couple of weeks ago that my social media feeds had suddenly become packed with professional kitchen slang. Phrases like “Behind” (translation: “Look where you’re f**king going”), “Hot behind” (“Look where you’re f**king going if you don’t want to get burned”), “Hands!” (“I need a server to bring plates to the tables”) and “Yes, chef” had migrated out of the kitchen and onto Twitter.

To be honest, there’s no great mystery as to why.

FX’s “The Bear” debuted on June 23. As I’ve written before, it’s a beautiful, frank story about life and loss in professional kitchens. The lead, Jeremy Allen White, also just happens to be really attractive in a dirtbag chef kind of way.

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To be clear, “dirtbag chef” is mostly a term of endearment here. After all, who among us hasn’t at least briefly lusted after someone with not-so-great arm tattoos, a copy of the “Noma” cookbook and emotional baggage? Sure, they’ll cancel more than one date night because of a no call-no show, but they’re also sexually competent and can wax poetic about the simplicity of roast chicken.

White’s character, Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto, isn’t the first dirtbag chef depicted in pop culture. There’s Bradley Cooper in “Burnt,” Aaron Eckhart in “No Reservations,” as well as almost the entire cast of the Scandinavian series “Restaurant.” But as Salon senior writer Mary Elizabeth put it in a recent Slack conversation, it was Anthony Bourdain who “really made ‘dirtbag chef’ a kink.”

When Bourdain’s book “Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly” came out in 2000, that was the first time that many people realized how implicitly sexed up certain sides of a professional kitchen can be. In fact, Bourdain himself wrote an essay for Salon, simply titled “Kitchen god,” in which he described the “sexy, voyeuristic moment he decided to become a chef.”

It was Anthony Bourdain who “really made ‘dirtbag chef’ a kink.”

As Bourdain tells it, he was working for a chef named Bobby. Bobby’s crew, including Bourdain, had been hired to cook for a wedding party. The bride, dressed in virginal white, approached Bobby and whispered something in his ear that caused him to briefly abandon his station. You can read about the . . . well, the climax of the story here.

Anecdotes like this, as well as Bourdain’s unflinching details about misbehavior and drug use in the kitchen, helped propel the narrative that chefs are rockstars, which has been something of a double-edged sword. On one hand, it has occasionally allowed actual abuses to be shrugged off in the same way people react to news of a famous musician trashing a hotel room. On the other, it has helped cement food — and those who make it — as something that should be interrogated in a broader cultural context.

In any event, it has also cemented the bad (or sad) boy-turned-chef as a something of an American sex symbol, a point which was yet again reinforced as viewers watched Carmy shout, “Heard!” between braising beef and smoke breaks. To be frank, kitchen slang is definitely ripe for double entendre, though as Lisa pointed out, mileage may vary.

I polled some friends and online acquaintances — all of whom are using first names only or pseudonyms for privacy — who are either chefs themselves or have dated chefs about the phenomenon.

“My boyfriend says, ‘Oui, chef’ to me constantly,” a friend named Taylor said. “We are both ex-fine dining . . . He was part of a couple super fancy restaurants in the mid-aughts that had the very intense kitchen culture that would encourage this, I think; I was in more laid back places where we did that to be respectful.”

According to Taylor, in the context of her relationship, the “oui, chef” thing is meant to be cute rather than sexual. For instance, she was recently showing her boyfriend how to make laminated dough by-the-book, to which he responded with “oui, chef.”

“Neither of us watch TV much at all, but I suddenly started hearing it,” she said. “After that TV show came out, he’s like, ‘Now this feels weird.’ But we also say corner, behind, hot coffee, sharp, etcetera, and use restaurant terms for common kitchen things pretty often.”

For a woman named Mariah, the “oui, chef” thing is also present in her relationship.

“On occasion, in the bedroom, I do respond to his requests with ‘oui, chef,'” she wrote in a direct message via Twitter. “And he often calls our activities ‘getting saucy‘ ahhahaha.”

Lisa, who went on to date and eventually marry another ex-chef, said that her now-husband has watched the flurry of people getting hot over kitchen speak with some degree of amusement. They’ve never incorporated it into their personal relationship, but he’s apparently open to it for fun.

“Let’s just say that he’s not going to ghost me for responding to his sexts with ‘yes, chef,'” she said.

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“Only Murders in the Building”: Inside Oliver’s deadly game night

A friend once joked that if there was a psychopath in any room, she’d be able to pick him out: he’d be the only man in the room she was attracted to.

In “Only Murders in the Building,” Oliver (Martin Short) professes similar powers of deduction using a card game he’s seemingly invented called “Son of Sam.” Like a homicidal Old Maid, Oliver’s game passes the time between drinking, but it also showcases what his son Will says Oliver “thinks is his greatest skill: knowing when someone is hiding a secret from him.”

What is Oliver’s murder-y game, what might it be based on — and most importantly, why can’t we play it tonight?

“Only Murders in the Building” and our primal love of secret passageways

Oliver seems like a lot of fun at parties. And oh, what parties they were. A young man in striped bell-bottoms and fringed vests in the 1970s, shaggy-haired and youthful Oliver spent a lot of time with artists, actors and free-thinkers. In the episode “The Tell,” written by co-creators Steve Martin and John Hoffman along with Matteo Borghese, Oliver brings a party game idea to his friends, a game Vulture describes as “insane (if not fake).”

“Most of you are innocent blonds.”

Named after the serial killer from the ’70s, Oliver explains with some sleight of hand and card tricks: “The object is simple. If you’re the killer, kill. And if you’re anyone else, survive. Most of you are innocent blonds.”

But one person will be dealt the playing card labeling them the Son of Sam. Everyone is to keep their card to themselves, gather in the center of the room with hands together. Then when Oliver flicks off the lights and shouts “Blackout!” the killer must secretly kill. Or, pinch someone in the circle, rending them dead (and out, eating pretzels on the couch) for the rest of the game once the lights come on.

Players guess the killer, but if they guess wrong, it’s blackout time again. Oliver, of course, is the best at guessing. This game, like all games, is an excuse for him to show off.

Oliver (Martin Short) in “Only Murders in the Building” (Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu)It also seems like a blast, except maybe for the pinching part. It’s low maintenance, requiring only a modified deck of cards. It involves interacting with guests, getting to know each other while being mindful of murder, and it includes a lot of darkness, always a good time, especially when alcohol is involved. Or, as Oliver says, introducing the game to a new generation of party-goers: “Step one: Drugs!”

His “OK, Zoomers. This shindig is flat-lining,” is the new “This is my happening and it freaks me out!”

Mabel’s new and suspicious girlfriend Alice swears she played this game back at Oxford, though they called it “Jack the Ripper” then. Oliver calls her out on the Oxford thing. What about the game?

“Son of Sam” is not an established game, at least not that I’ve been able to find, not sold by Parker Brothers (unfortunately), but it recalls several similar party games. Or, parlor games as they used to be called, harking back to Victorian times, but basically meaning: a game played indoors that doesn’t require any special tools. Think Charades.

Oliver (Martin Short) and Charles (Steve Martin) in “Only Murders in the Building” (Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu)Or think Wink Murder, a game where a killer is secretly selected from among party guests and “murders” people by winking at them. Survivors try to pick the killer out. (I feel I played this as a child and was bad at it, needing glasses.) Other names for this kind of parlor game include the inverted Murdered Wink, Murder in the Dark, Killer Killer or just plain Killer. Like childhood, the rules are expansive, ever-changing and not really rules.

Much of the fun of Oliver’s game is Oliver himself and his invocation.

In a version with a killer and a detective, one person doesn’t play, and that person selects the killer and detective roles by tapping people’s heads as they sit around a circle with their eyes closed, duck duck goose-style. Eyes open, the detective then moves to the circle’s center and must try to find the killer as the winking/murdering goes on around them. In the Deadly Handshake variation, a handshake causes death, not winking.

In a version sometimes called the Lonely Ghost, a party guest can walk up to someone they suspect of being the killer and accuse them directly, which sounds a lot like Oliver’s game. When he encourages guests to play it in the present day, it quickly devolves into just plain accusing, causing Mabel (Selena Gomez) to wonder if it’s still a game and the ever socially anxious Charles to declare: “If this is what people do at parties, I’m out.”

Charles (Steve Martin) in “Only Murders in the Building” (Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu)But the game is such a part of Oliver’s swinging past that when he introduces others to it, the show slips into the past too. The costumes change in a lovely, swirling view. The music kicks into a disco beat. He’s that powerful. Oliver is always onstage and especially so when he’s the center of attention at a fete, directing guests like one of his productions. His “OK, Zoomers. This shindig is flat-lining” is the new “This is my happening and it freaks me out!” from “Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.”

Much of the fun of Oliver’s game is Oliver himself and his invocation, how he can set the scene with just his energetic imagination, his memory untouched by the drugs he proffers party guests from an ashtray (drugs that are certainly outdated and perhaps just penicillin). Or, at least his love of a vibe is untouched.

Targeting young women with long dark hair, Mabel might have been the killer’s type.

“Prepare to travel back to gritty go-go in your face,” Oliver shouts to the bemused party. “Dancin’. Bronx on fire. Let’s go Knicks! ‘Mean Streets.’ ‘Taxi Driver.’ ‘Muppets Take Manhattan.‘ New York City of 1977. And blackout! It’s a hot, sweaty summer night, and there’s a madman on the loose.”

The “madman,” for any of the Zoomers not up on their true crime history, was David Berkowitz, also known as the .44 Caliber Killer or the Son of Sam, a serial killer who pled guilty to eight shootings. His murder spree largely took place during a hot summer in late 1970s New York City. As Patch wrote, “And in mid-July, it turned into the summer of darkness, when an epic, five-borough power outage — deemed an ‘act of God’ by Con Ed — plunged the city into two days of total blackout.”

Not everyone today may know what it’s like to exist under a very specific threat: a serial killer you know is active.

As Berkowitz wrote taunting letters published by the media, many New Yorkers stayed indoors, despite the blistering summer heat, fearing the murderer who shot at couples in parked cars like an urban legend come to life. Targeting young women with long dark hair, Mabel might have been his type. Some women cut their hair short, to try to protect themselves (Mabel got a haircut for Season 2 . . .).

Mabel (Selena Gomez) and Alice (Cara Delevingne) in “Only Murders in the Building” (Craig Blankenhorn/Hulu)For a long time, we’ve been living under a cloud of fear of mass shootings, and for what feels like forever: fear of a deadly virus. Both fears are justified. But not everyone today may know what it’s like to exist under a very specific threat: a serial killer you know is active and has not been caught. In Washington D.C. in the early 2000s, when the Beltway Snipers went on a shooting rampage, Guardian Angels pumped my gas. We were told to walk in a serpentine manner, to make ourselves a more challenging target.

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“Only Murders in the Building” has always been upfront about the dangers of romanticizing true crime. In this season, it has prioritized the victims, like Bunny: giving her the send-off and the full, rich backstory of a life lived. We know now what we’ve lost, who we’ve lost.

Oliver’s game could be seen as romanticizing crime, but it feels more like bittersweet remembering of the past (“We’re in New York in the ’70s . . . You haven’t even been born yet”), when a killer was singular (allegedly) and caught, when he confessed. And when Oliver was young, loved, had the rapt attention of room after room, and the hope of a future, wide open before him like a giant, empty stage.

“Only Murders in the Building” releases new episodes Tuesdays on Hulu.

13 ALDI products that shoppers love the most

Earlier this year, Salon Food compiled a handy list of the six best budget buys at ALDI based on the recommendations of trusty Redditors.

Now, we’re turning our attention to the grocery chain’s best overall products, which were voted on by more than 100,000 shoppers in the fourth annual ALDI Fan Favorites survey. The winning items span 13 categories and include everything from charcuterie staples to fresh produce and kid-approved snacks.

The best budget buys from ALDI, according to Reddit

“With 100 ALDI-exclusive products to choose from across this year’s Fan Favorites survey, we have first-time winners in 11 of the 13 categories,” Scott Patton, vice president national buying, said in a release. “ALDI shoppers really appreciate our selection and know that we’ve put in time and effort to offer them a wide variety of products to love.”

From peach bellinis to white cheddar puffs, here are all 13 of the 2022 ALDI Fan Favorites, arranged in order by category:

Hall of Fame: Mama Cozzi’s Pizza Kitchen Take & Bake Deli Pizza

Mama Cozzi’s Pizza Kitchen Take and Bake Sausage & Pepperoni Deli Pizza (Photo courtesy of Aldi)

The returning champion took home the top award after claiming the title of “Overall Fan Favorite” back in 2020. And it’s not hard to see why Mama Cozzi’s “Take & Bake” pizza line is adored by so many ALDI shoppers. The brand’s 16-inch pizzas are generously assembled and topped, making weeknight dinners not only easy but also craveable. Choose from an assortment of options that include a variety of cheese and meat combinations, such as five cheese, pepperoni, sausage and pepperoni, supreme and thin-crust mega meat.

Get Up & Go: Specially Selected Indulgent Greek Yogurt

Specially Selected Honey Indulgent Greek Yogurt (Photo courtesy of ALDI)

Specially Selected’s Indulgent Greek Yogurts, which come in honey and honey vanilla flavors, make for a quick breakfast or sweet snack. The yogurt, which is served in 32-ounce containers, can be enjoyed either on its own or in nutritious brunch bowls topped with cacao nibs, fresh fruit, granola, shredded coconut, plus a drizzle (or a dollop or very generous spoonful) of your favorite nut butter.

Want to DIY the latter? Here’s the absolute best way to make peanut butter, according to Food52’s Ella Quittner.

What’s for Dinner?: Specially Selected Ravioli

Specially Selected Spinach & Mozzarella Ravioli (Photo courtesy of ALDI)

The Specially Selected Ravioli, which come in classic cheese and spinach and mozzarella varieties, impressively bested seven other dinnertime options in ALDI’s survey. These egg-based pastas are generously stuffed with mozzarella, parmesan, ricotta and more Italian cheeses, making them a must-try for those who can handle their lactose. Once prepared, coat the ravioli in olive oil and serve them with oven-roasted veggies, Cipollini onions and homemade garlic bread.

Best for Boards: Emporium Selection Aged Reserve White Cheddar

Emporium Selection Aged Reserve White Cheddar (Photo courtesy of ALDI)

Wow the guests at your next charcuterie party with a block of aged reserve white cheddar. This rich and deliciously stinky cheese pairs nicely with cured meats, dried fruits, nutty crackers and a classic wine like Cabernet Sauvignon. Any leftover chunks of cheese can be used to stuff grilled cheese sandwiches, top burgers . . . or enjoyed simply as is.

Dynamic Duo: Specially Selected Indulgent Greek Yogurt + Fresh Blueberries

ALDI Blueberries (Photo courtesy of ALDI)

ALDI’s fifth category highlights two food items that shoppers love to pair together to create a “dynamic duo.” This year’s winning team is Specially Selected Indulgent Greek Yogurt (in its second appearance on the winners list) and fresh blueberries (brand not specified). Aside from the health benefits that come with pairing berries with Greek yogurt, this combo is also great for your taste buds — especially if you’re craving something sweet but not too sweet.

Kiddy Cravings: Simply Nature White Cheddar Puffs

Simply Nature White Cheddar Puffs (Photo courtesy of ALDI)

Simply Nature’s rendition of Pirate’s Booty is made from baked rice and corn and covered in white cheddar dust. These light and airy puffs, which contain no added sugar, also pride themselves on being non-GMO and certified gluten-free. Pack them in school lunches or enjoy them on the go during your next family road trip.

Clink & Drink: Giambellino Peach Bellini

Giambellino Peach Bellini (Photo courtesy of ALDI)

A classic Venetian cocktail took home this year’s drinks award after beating both the Zarita Strawberry Margarita and Belletti Prosecco. Made from frozen peaches, peach schnapps and white wine, this fruity beverage flaunts traditional summer flavors of candied lime and honeyed peaches. Per the drink’s description label, with its “sunset hue, fresh sun-ripened peach flavor and vibrant, sparkling finish,” Giambellino Peach Bellini is a guaranteed show-stopper at any brunch or similar social gathering.

Hydration Station: PurAqua Sparkling Flavored Water

PurAqua Strawberry Sparkling Water (Photo courtesy of ALDI)

Quench your thirst with PurAqua’s selection of sparkling flavored water. Choose from an array of colorful flavors, including black cherry, juicy peach, key lime and strawberry. The individual drinks can be enjoyed straight from the bottle or mixed with fruit juices or sparkling wine to create summery mocktails or bubbly, boozy punches.

Pantry Staple: Simply Nature Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil

Simply Nature Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil (Photo courtesy of ALDI)

Extra virgin olive oil comes in handy on a variety of occasions, whether you’re whipping up a basic vinaigrette, sautéing vegetables or baking Martha Stewart’s no-knead tomato focaccia. Thus, it’s no surprise that EVOO is revered as a pantry staple by so many shoppers. Pick up the bottle that shoppers love the most during your next ALDI run: Simply Nature’s Organic Extra Virgin Olive Oil, which is 100% pure EVOO certified by the North American Olive Oil Association (NAOOA).

Produce Pick: Fresh strawberries

ALDI Fresh Strawberries (Photo courtesy of ALDI)

You can never go wrong with a pack of fresh strawberries — and ALDI shoppers agree! Enjoy these seasonal fruits on their own, as a starring ingredient in desserts or ice cream, as a supporting player in fruit salads with some of the aforementioned blueberries or as toppers for brunch bowls made with Specially Selected Indulgent Greek Yogurt. Extra strawberries can be stashed in the freezer to use for smoothies or transformed into delicious compotes, jams and jellies.

Catch of the Day: Fresh Atlantic Salmon

ALDI Fresh Atlantic Salmon (Photo courtesy of ALDI)

“Sustainability is our priority when it comes to the products we offer,” ALDI says of its fresh Atlantic Salmon, “and that includes our seafood. Our simply made ALDI Atlantic Salmon pairs well with just about anything, and is a great choice for your next meal.”

If you’re looking to enjoy salmon for lunch or dinner, check out these recipes from our archives for a dill and citrus sheet pan fish or Nicoise-inspired salmon salad.

Meating Your Needs: Kirkwood Fresh Chicken Tenderloins

Kirkwood Fresh Chicken Tenderloins (Photo courtesy of ALDI)

A great source of lean protein, Kirkwood’s fresh chicken tenderloins are all natural and contain no artificial ingredients or other funky surprises. Dress them up with a beer and brown sugar marinade and enjoy them with creamy mushrooms, a fresh salad or rice pilaf. These tenderloins can be eaten grilled, fried or pan seared . . . the options are endless!

Pet Pick: Heart to Tail Dog Treats

Heart to Tail Beef Sticks Dog Treats (Photo courtesy of ALDI)

ALDI’s final Fan Favorites category celebrates Heart to Tail Bacon Curlz and Beef Sticks dog treats. Made with real beef and bacon, both snacks are good sources of protein and contain no artificial colors or flavors. Surely, they’ll keep your pooch not only energized but also satisfied.

about your favorite supermarkets

Weed vapes probably sending a toxic gas to your lungs, study finds

Ever since vaping overtook traditional smoking as the culturally preferred method of inhaling nicotine and marijuana, vaping proponents have vigorously challenged the claims of various health risks associated with e-cigarettes. In particular, critics have noted — and advocates have struggled to defend — the rising victim tally for EVALI, a disease with an acronym that speaks for itself: “e-cigarette or vaping product use-associated lung injury.” The challenge, for health experts, has been acquiring precise biochemical information about the effect of vaping on the body.

Now, a new study by Portland State University’s Robert Strongin, doctoral student Kaelas Munger, and Robert Jensen reveals that when cannabinoid acetates in marijuana vaping products are heated under vaping conditions, they create a toxic gas called ketene.

Study suggests e-cigarettes can cause brain inflammation — with flavors affecting severity

In their study, the researchers studied how much ketene was produced from a single puff of vaping products. They focused on certain cannabinoid acetates like the Delta 8 THC acetate, which is not regulated by the FDA and is believed to make the high from vaping more potent. They discovered that ketene is formed at lower temperature settings than previously believed — and that it accumulated at levels dangerous to individual health.

And as Munger explained in a university press statement, people who use these products likely smoke them for more than a single puff.

“The thing we’re most concerned about is prolonged exposure — we don’t know what that is,” Munger explained. “That’s why papers like ours are needed. Otherwise people would be exposed to this really toxic substance and it’s really impossible to look for the evidence.”

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The American Chemical Society describes ketene as “a colorless, toxic gas with a ‘penetrating’ odor,” and a 2020 study from the scientific journal “Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America” found that ketene “has been reported to cause severe, acute lung damage” when studied in animals. That study laid the groundwork for this one by establishing that vitamin E acetate “reacts when aerosolized with an e-cigarette to produce the highly toxic gas ketene,” although the researchers added that “confirmation that [vitamin E acetate]-derived ketene is a causative agent of EVALI must await rigorous clinical investigation.”

Although ketene is known to be toxic, it is so dangerous that it is difficult to directly study its effect on the human body.

“There is a current trend towards the chemical modification of legal cannabis products to create semi-synthetic cannabinoids with enhanced properties,” Strongin explained to Salon by email. He pointed out that this is not inherently dangerous; some of the resulting products may not actually have elevated health risks.

“However, it would be obvious to any responsible chemist that the modification of cannabinoids to their corresponding acetates for vaping will create molecules with a substructure highly similar to that found in vitamin E acetate,” Strongin pointed out. “Vitamin E acetate still remains the strongest suspect causative agent in the EVALI outbreak. Moreover, evidence was reported in 2020 that showed that vitamin E acetate released ketene emissions from a commercial e-cigarette.”

Strongin concluded, “Regulators, consumers, and those in the industry interested in harm reduction, need to be made aware, unfortunately, that there are people creating predictably risky products and making them readily available.”

on vaping

The James Webb telescope has “uncorrectable” damage from a micrometeoroid

When the James Webb Space Telescope released five breathtaking images of the universe earlier this month, it brought decades of precise engineering and astronomical work to a head. When those images were revealed last week, the build up was so intense that NASA Administrator Bill Nelson compared the scene to a pep rally rather than a supposedly staid scientific gathering.

Yet that pep may have dissipated since last week in light of the recent news that the telescope, despite its immense technological sophistication, has suffered uncorrectable damage due to a micrometeoroid.

According to a report posted in the pre-print database arXiv.org, a small rock collided with one of the telescope’s 18 gold-plated mirrors, causing significant damage in the process. More specifically, the C3 mirror has a bright white dent where there should be gold at the location where the micrometeoroid made impact. Although NASA describes the damage as “uncorrectable,” they added that it has not impaired the telescope’s overall performance.

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“The micrometeoroid which hit segment C3 in the period 22—24 May 2022 UT caused significant uncorrectable change in the overall figure of that segment,” the report explains. “However, the effect was small at the full telescope level because only a small portion of the telescope area was affected.” The report explains that “two subsequent realignment steps” helped to correct the problem.

Dr. Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator at NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, foreshadowed the agency’s ability to move beyond this setback when he tweeted in June about early reports regarding micrometeoroid impacts on the telescope.

“Micrometeoroid strikes are an unavoidable aspect of operating in space,” Zurbuchen wrote. “Recently, Webb [telescope] sustained an impact to one primary mirror segment. After initial assessments, the team found the telescope is still performing at a level that exceeds all mission requirements.”

The new arXiv.org report goes on to explain that the tiny pebble which hit the C3 mirror was actually just one of 19 that slammed into the James Webb Space Telescope between February and May 2022.

The James Webb Space Telescope is particularly vulnerable to micrometeroid strikes because the telescope’s mirrors are open and exposed to the vacuum of space. The Hubble Space Telescope, for all intents and purposes the technological predecessor to Webb, had a cylindrical housing inside which the observational technology sat. In contrast, the Webb telescope is functionally a giant reflector open to space with no protective sheath.

Yet aside from being smaller overall, the other reason Hubble has been remarkably free of damage over the years is because of its location in space. Hubble orbits comfortably just above Earth, close enough that astronauts from the Space Shuttle could approach and perform maintenance; whereas the Webb telescope is far away in a stable point in space where the sun and the Earth’s gravity perfectly counterbalance each other, such that the telescope effectively stays still relative to Earth. However, because there have been few spacecraft sent to this point in space — known as the L₂ point, short for LaGrange Point — astronomers have less knowledge of the micrometeoroid risk in the region. In contrast, low-to-medium Earth orbit, where Hubble lives, is saturated with human spacecraft and thus its risks are well-studied.

Space news website Space.com had a downbeat view on the otherwise optimistic tone of NASA’s new report.

“Micrometeroids are a known danger of space operations, and facing them is by no means new to scientists; the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope are among long-running programs that are still operational despite occasional space rock strikes,” Space.com wrote. “However, Webb’s orbit at Lagrange Point 2 about 1 million miles (1.5 million kilometers) away from the Earth may change the risk profile considerably.”

Despite the setback with the C3 mirror, the James Webb Space Telescope has still been an undeniable success so far. In one of its recently-released images, the telescope ascertained the composition of the atmosphere of a distant planet called WASP-96b (which contained water). Other released images showed a planetary nebula called the Southern Ring Nebula; five nearly adjacent galaxies appropriately dubbed “Stephan’s Quintet”; the Carina Nebula, which looks for all the world like a horsehair blanket pulled over a bright and colorful sky full of stars; and the blandly named SMACS 0723 — which is the most clear and full infrared image ever produced of the distant universe.

on astronomy:

Experts still torn on whether you should swab your throat when taking COVID tests

In January 2022, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) cautioned the public against a peculiar method for testing oneself COVID-19 tests.

“FACT: When it comes to at-home rapid antigen #COVID19 tests, those swabs are for your nose and not your throat,” the agency said Friday.

The anti-throat-swabbing warning came amid the first omicron surge in the United States. The reason? Anecdotal reports surfaced about people who were testing positive for COVID-19 only after they swabbed their throats. (A typical COVID-19 at-home test involves swabbing one’s nose exclusively.)

Nearly seven months later, as the country faces yet another surge due to omicron subvariant BA.5, the FDA warning has yet to put an end to this off-label collection method. Anecdotal reports continue to surface on social media regarding symptomatic people who received negative results on an at-home test with nasal swabs, followed by a positive test only after they poked the back of their throat with the long swab instead.

Other countries’ health agencies do call for testing one’s throat for viral residue. Canadian provinces, including Ontario and Nova Scotia, have updated their recommendations for at-home testing to include swabs of both throat and nose.

No, “stealth omicron” isn’t evading PCR tests. Here’s what’s really going on

“To collect a sample for a rapid antigen test (RATs), users should follow the instructions described in the kit insert,” Ontario Health, a government health agency, advises in an information sheet updated in February 2022. “In addition to the collection method option approved by Health Canada (as described in the kit insert), users may choose to perform combined oral and nasal sampling as it may increase test sensitivity.” The health agency proceeds to instruct people how to properly collect a sample from one’s throat.

The collection method of throat swabbing remains a divisive issue among experts in infectious disease.

Despite the FDA’s warning, many Americans are apt to wonder who to believe. Is this a collection method that does indeed “increase test sensitivity,” as Ontario Health claims?

The answer depends on who’s asked — as the collection method of throat swabbing remains a divisive issue among experts in infectious disease.

Nathaniel Hafer, an assistant professor in molecular medicine at University of Massachusetts’ Chan Medical School who has researched both at-home antigen tests and polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests, told Salon he believes it is best for people to follow the instructions of their specific test. In other words, if the test calls for throat swabbing, do it; if not, avoid it.

“I come down on the side that people should really do what’s indicated in the test kit itself, which for all kits that are authorized in the U.S., the collection should be from the nose only,” Hafer. “I think people should be following the instructions in the kits.”

Yet Dr. Amesh Adalja, a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center, disagreed. He told Salon via email he’s been “recommending this for months” — as in, swabbing one’s throat when using an at-home tests — “especially when sore throat is a prominent symptom.”

As for lab-based PCR tests, Dr. Adalja said he doesn’t recommend that physicians swab throats unless the instructions call for that method, which some do. For example, the Rheonix COVID-19 test does involve throat swabs. In other parts of the world, it is more common for PCR tests to be performed using throat swabs.

Going off-instructions could lead to some weird gray areas that raise new questions. For instance, say an individual swabs one’s throat when doing an at-home test that doesn’t call for throat swabbing — and then tests positive. Does that imply the result would be inaccurate?

Hafer said there is some “anecdotal evidence” that the location of the tropisms of SARS-CoV-2 have changed over time with different variants.

“People are speculating that there’s just more virus in the throat. I mean, that might be true, but the kits have not been tested for that kind of collection method, and so people might be getting actually true results,” Hafer said. “But when people don’t use the kids according to the instructions, they’re opening the door to not get accurate results— and that’s both in the positive direction and the negative direction.”

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William Schaffner, a professor of infectious diseases at the Vanderbilt University Medical Center, told Salon he believes when a person swabs their throat with an at-home antigen test and they’re positive, that means definitively that they are indeed positive — no question.

“They’ve been infected with the virus,” Schaffner said. He noted that he thinks people should be following the test’s instructions, but he’s not surprised that people are swabbing their throats and getting positive test results.

“If you swab the throat, which is way in the back — and you can consider that the back of the nose also, we call that the nasopharynx, way back there in the throat — this is a virus that does cause sore throats, and indeed it gets down into your chest.”

Indeed, as Schaffner pointed out, if the virus is lingering in the cavity where the nose and throat meet that is likely why positive results are appearing after throat swabs.

Notably, most of this advice is based anecdotal reports. There have not been any scientific papers with peer-reviewed evidence that confirm or deny the efficacy of throat swabbing with at-home tests that don’t call for it. One study, published on medRxiv by researchers in Cape Town, South Africa, concluded that saliva swabs were the preferred sample-collection method for detecting omicron infections.

In the meantime, everyday people may take it upon themselves to swab their throats when self-testing. If that yields a positive result, it’s time to contact a doctor and isolate from people.

In that scenario, “they should obviously contact their healthcare provider, particularly if they’re in a high risk group,” Schaffner said.

on COVID-19:

GOP candidate complains abortion activists play “the rape card”

Minnesota’s Republican candidate for lieutenant governor, Former NFL center-turned-GOP politician Matt Birk, complained that Democrats are always trying to play the “rape card” when it comes to conversations surrounding abortion.

Birk, a former Minnesota Viking player, has prompted outrage over a released video of his speech to the National Right to Life Conference in Georgia on June 24th, the day Roe v. Wade was overturned by a conservative Supreme Court.

“Rape is obviously a horrible thing. But an abortion is not going to heal the wounds of that, two wrongs is not going to make a right,” Birk said in the speech. “One of the arguments that I saw probably 20 times online today was about rape. And you know, obviously, they always want to go to the rape card.”

The so-called “rape card” that Birk is referring to is the argument made by the overwhelming majority of citizens who believe that abortion should be legal if a pregnancy is the result of rape. The debate over abortion rights for rape victims came to a head last week over the story of a 10-year-old girl from Ohio who had to travel to Indiana to receive an abortion after being raped by a 27-year-old man. Republicans were quick to cast doubt on the child rape victim.

Conservatives tried — and failed — to cast doubt on tale of Ohio child rape victim

Yet, somehow, Birk found a way to take the abortion conversation to a whole new level. Birk’s comments make it clear that for him abortion is about redefining an American culture in which women have less autonomy overall.

“It’s not over. Our culture loudly but also stealthily, promotes abortion. Telling women they should look a certain way, have careers, all these things,” Birk said.

On the day Roe was overturned, GOP candidate for MN Lt. Gov. Matt Birk spoke at an anti-abortion convention where he said culture promotes abortion by "tell[ing] women they should have careers," and people "always want to play the rape card." He also compared abortion to slavery. pic.twitter.com/3uvN7ua4Lt

— Heartland Signal (@HeartlandSignal) July 19, 2022

In linking a culture that “promotes abortion” to women having careers, Birk not so subtly makes clear that he hopes banning abortion would change women’s perceptions on participating in the workforce.

Later in the speech, Birk makes a joke about women having the right to drive. “Now we let ’em drive. I mean, I have three teenage daughters that drive, I don’t know if that’s a good law or not,” he said before quickly adding, “just kidding.”

Birk also tried the seemingly offbeat tactic of comparing abortion to slavery.

“A lot of things have been legal before that we’ve changed, right? I mean…slavery used to be legal, right?” he said. “Which is an interesting comparison to make, because, really, the way that the other side treats an unborn child is the unborn child is the property of the mother.”

The video, which has gained a lot of traction on social media, was released by Gov. Tim Walz, the incumbent Democratic candidate, and his running mate Lieutenant Gov. Peggy Flanagan. The two have been vocal about their support of protecting abortion rights, especially in the case of rape. Their position actually is not highly controversial. A recent poll from the MinnPost shows that two-thirds of Republicans in the state oppose a total ban on abortion.

On Tuesday, Flanagan attended a news conference with sexual assault survivors to challenge Birk’s rhetoric as incredibly disrespectful, and potentially dangerous.

“I may be a broken record on this for the next several months, but it is what is required of me as a mother and as someone who is responsible for protecting the health and safety of Minnesotans,” Flanagan said in reference to protecting abortion.

In response to the video and Flanagan’s remarks, Birk’s campaign released a statement.

“The Walz/Flanagan campaign continues to freeze and deflect on the important issues, but they’re relentless in their pursuit to champion tax-payer-funded abortion throughout a pregnancy,” the statement read.

10 least-cleaned spots in your home — and how to tackle them

Clean Like You Mean It shows you how to tackle the trickiest spots in your home — whether they’re just plain gross or need some elbow grease. You’ll get the cleaning secrets we’ve learned from grandma, a guide to our handiest tools and helpers, and so much more. Pull on those rubber gloves and queue up the tunes: It’s scour hour!

You know those corners of your home that get overlooked time and time again? The ones that remain dusty and sticky for months on end in favor of performing more obvious cleaning tasks like vacuuming the rug or wiping down the counters? They’re the ones that you put off because you’re not faced with them on the daily, so you kick the can down the road a bit and turn a blind eye.

I know them well. My shower tiles are in need of a good scrubbing, my windows are filthy, and my dishwasher? Well, I don’t think I’ve cleaned it once in five months (but am shocked when it doesn’t perform). I’ve got a secret though: These are actually the most satisfying cleaning tasks to check off your to-do list, because it means you’ve truly accomplished something outside of daily chores like after-dinner dishes and wiping down the sink.

If you’re ready to handle some of the more neglected cleaning tasks around your house, here’s a list of the most commonly overlooked ones in our homes, too.

1. Dryer vents

You’re probably cleaning out the lint trap after every load finishes drying (or we hope so, at least!) but the vent and ducts of the dryer also need to be cleared out from time to time. You’ll know they’re in need of a cleaning if your laundry is taking longer to dry than usual, or if your clothes are especially hot when they come out. You’ll need to pull the dryer away from the wall, remove the duct, and give it a really thorough vacuuming with a hose attachment. Then, reach in with a long-handled duster to pick up any errant lint your vacuum couldn’t reach.

2. Garbage disposal

Given that the garbage disposal is supposed to get rid of yucky stuff instead of accumulating it, you might not remember to give it some tender love and care from time to time. No worries, though, as there are a couple tricks to clean and freshen this guy up, such as tossing a couple ice cubes down the drain to be crushed (which will dislodge lots of gunk in the process), flushing the area with baking soda and vinegar, and giving it a few citrus peels to gobble and improve any lingering odor.

3. Garbage can

I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like my home is clean unless the garbage can is clean. I’m reminded of a dirty garbage can every time I throw trash out, only to find a pile of crumbs or some unidentified gloop, so I try to be on top of wiping down the rim, inside, and outside of the can as much as possible. Sometimes, though, it needs a deep clean, in which case I give it a thorough scrubbing with hot soapy water and follow up with a disinfectant.

4. Window screens

Spring is right around the corner, which of course, means windows flung wide open to let the breeze roll in. Before you do that, though, you might want to give your screens a wash. Not only do they collect dirt and debris from the outside world, but after winter weather, they can accumulate mold and bacteria from sitting in moisture for too long. Once removed from the windows, you can either take the screens outside or plop them in the bathtub for a good scrubbing and rinsing. Just be sure to let them fully dry before reinstalling.

5. Grout

Let’s face it: Grout is nasty. While other parts of the floor (like smooth tile or hardwood) can be easily wiped clean, grout has a tendency to cling to any dirt or liquid it comes in contact with, because it’s highly porous and textured. We did the dirty work (ha!) for you, though, and identified four ways to clean your grout, all of which require a little wait time for the product to soak, a good scrub with a stiff-bristled brush, and a wipe clean with warm water.

6. Coffee maker / Keurig

Something you use every day should certainly be getting a bit of attention in the form of cleaning, so much so that our writer Morgan suggests coming to terms with cleaning your coffee maker . . . every single day. What this really means is just washing each of the removable parts you use daily, like the coffee pot, filter cup, and portafilter on an espresso machine — which you might do each time anyway. The monthly deep clean is merely a white vinegar bath, which you’ll pour into the reservoir to let sit for 30 to 60 minutes, then run through a few cycles until you’re satisfied.

7. Walls

If your walls show no signs of scuffs, dirt, or dust then you can honestly skip this one. But if your walls have seen better days, you actually can wash them, and it’s easy to do. A few drops of dish detergent or Castile soap in a bucket of warm water, a microfiber cloth, and a free afternoon are all it takes to restore your walls to their former glory. Bonus points for a Magic Eraser on stubborn scuffs.

8. Washing machine filter

Yep, your washing machine has a filter. And yep, it’s probably pretty gross. Similar to the dryer vent (whose lint you can easily pull out each time you throw a load in), the washing machine filter collects lint, stray hairs, crumbs, and rogue clothing threads. Once you find where your filter is located (likely in the front of the machine behind a small latch, at the very bottom of the drainage hose, or under the cover of the agitator, but check the manual to be sure), give it a good soak and scrub in hot soapy water, then return it to do its important job.

9. Dishwasher

Unfortunately, dishwashers don’t clean themselves. We’re partial to thinking this is totally silly, given that their entire job is to clean dishes (and what’s a dishwasher if not one big pot of soapy water?), but alas, they need some TLC. The sides of the dishwasher (you know, the crevices where the gunk builds up) and the filter are really the yuckiest things to tackle, then all that’s needed is a white vinegar cycle and a wipe down of the outside.

10. Baseboards

Ever crouched down on the floor to pick something up and noticed just how dusty your baseboards are? Me too, and it’s always shocking to see how much has piled up, especially when we usually don’t give this part of our home much attention. Luckily, this is among the easier tasks to tackle, just requiring a quick dusting with your vacuum’s wand attachment, followed by a wipe down of soapy water with a microfiber cloth.

These savory and sweet Korean-style barbecue short ribs are so easy to prepare

Want to hear more about Korean-American food? On our new podcast Counterjam — a show that explores culture through food and music — host Peter J. Kim talks instant ramyeun hacks, kimchi-jjigae, cheonggukjang, and more with chef Roy Choi and comedian Margaret Cho — check out the episode here. — Irene Yoo

Watch this recipe

Mom’s LA Galbi

Serves

2-4

Prep Time

12 hours

Cook Time

10 minutes

Ingredients

2 pounds cross-cut, LA-style short ribs
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup water
2 cloves garlic
1/2 teaspoon sesame seeds
1/2 teaspoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 small onion
1/2 small Asian pear
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1 to 2 tablespoons rice wine, for tang (optional)

Directions

Soak short ribs in cold water for 10 minutes (this will remove some of the blood from the meat, a common Korean technique).
While the short ribs are soaking, make your marinade by combining all other ingredients in food processor and pureeing until slightly chunky.
Rinse the ribs, especially the cut bones to get rid of any bone shards/fragments.
Massage the marinade into the ribs.
Cover and refrigerate for at least 12 hours (no more than 2 days). Flip ribs once to ensure marinade permeates both sides.
Grill ribs on low to medium heat, flipping often to prevent sugars from burning.
Ribs are done once the meat is a dark brown and some black edges have developed from the sugars caramelizing.

Supreme Court ruling sparks alarm over Missouri law banning pregnant women from getting divorced

Under an old Missouri law from 1973, a woman cannot get a divorce finalized if she is pregnant; she can file for divorce, but it won’t be finalized as long as she is pregnant. In 2022, abortion rights defenders are worried about the law’s ramifications now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court after 49 years.

Journalist Anna Spoerre, in an article published by the Kansas City Star on July 20, explains, “In Missouri, divorce cases cannot be finalized if a woman is pregnant, since a custody agreement must first be in place, multiple attorneys told The Star. That custody agreement cannot be completed until the child is born.”

Before the High Court struck down Roe v. Wade with its 6-3 ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a divorce in Missouri could be finalized after a woman had an abortion. The Roe decision, handed down by the Burger Court in 1973, established abortion as a national right. But with Roe overturned, abortion is no longer a national right, leaving the legality or illegality of abortion to be determined on a state-by-state basis. Republican-controlled Missouri is an anti-choice state.

“The state law, while old, gained renewed attention after the Supreme Court, on June 24, overturned Roe v. Wade, repealing the constitutional right to abortion,” Spoerre reports. “The decision immediately made abortion illegal in Missouri. While many call the restriction outdated, none of those interviewed, including advocates, survivors and attorneys, know of any efforts to change the law.”

Jess Piper, a Democrat who is running for a seat in the Missouri House of Representatives, has been speaking out about the Missouri law and warning that post-Roe, it could encourage women to stay in abusive relationships. On May 12 on Twitter, Piper posted, “Fact: you can’t get a divorce finalized if pregnant in Missouri. Forced pregnancies can prolong abusive situations.” And the following day, on May 13, Piper tweeted, “If you do get pregnant during a divorce, the husband is the presumed father which creates all kinds of issues. Women are often treated as property and patronized in my state.”

Spoerre observes that “many people” didn’t know about Missouri’s law until they read Piper tweets.

“Many people replied with disbelief,” Spoerre reports. “Others said they knew from personal experience. She did too. At 34, Piper divorced her husband. It was not an abusive relationship. Her attorney at the time warned her not to get pregnant.”

According to Spoerre, “eight questions” are “asked of everyone filing for divorce in Missouri.”

“One of them is whether ‘the wife is pregnant,'” Spoerre explains. “If the answer is yes, the divorce proceedings can continue if the attorney chooses, but cannot be finalized until the woman is no longer pregnant. That is because, according to Missouri statute, the court must first establish paternity of a child before a divorce can be finalized, said Shannon Gordon, a family law attorney practicing in the Kansas City metro.”

Spoerre adds, “Due to a statutory presumption that a baby born during a marriage is the child of the husband, a DNA test is often completed after the child is born in order to establish paternity in court. Then, divorce proceedings can continue. The reason for all this, ultimately, is child support considerations, Gordon said.”

According to Gordon, the Missouri law makes no exception for survivors of domestic violence.

“We oftentimes see an abused spouse not have the financial means to establish a home,” Gordon told the Star. “Being legally entitled to things like money — and actually having the money — are two very different things, particularly when a case is ongoing.”

Judge orders Rudy Giuliani to testify before Georgia grand jury after he “failed to appear”

Former Trump lawyer Rudy Giuliani has now been ordered to testify before a special grand jury in Fulton County, Georgia that is investigating former President Donald Trump’s efforts to overturn the 2020 presidential election.

Via NPR’s Stephen Fowler, Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis sent out an order compelling Giuliani’s appearance as a witness in the grand jury’s investigation.

The order notes that Giuliani “failed to appear at a show cause hearing” that was supposed to take place earlier this month, and thus has left Willis no choice but to order his testimony on August 9th, 2022.

According to Fowler, the hearing could have provided Giuliani with an opportunity to fight the grand jury’s request for his testimony, but he never bothered showing up.

This development comes after Willis’s office informed the fake “alternate” Trump electors in Georgia that they are now targets of a criminal investigation, which significantly raises the odds that they will face criminal charges.

Giuliani, along with Trump allies including attorney John Eastman and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., are under scrutiny for their efforts to help the twice-impeached former president overturn President Joe Biden’s narrow win in the Peach State in 2020.

Nevada GOP primary loser sues over “unfair election”: “Mathematical impossibility” that I lost

Failed far-right Nevada Republican gubernatorial candidate Joey Gilbert filed a lawsuit seeking to overturn his primary defeat, citing an “analysis” that found his loss to be a “mathematical impossibility” even after a recount he requested confirmed the results.

Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo last month defeated Gilbert, who attended former President Donald Trump’s Jan. 6 rally ahead of the Capitol riot, by double-digits, 38-27. But Gilbert, a voter fraud conspiracy theorist, refused to concede the race.

Gilbert on Friday filed a lawsuit on Friday in Carson City seeking to overturn his loss. The suit claims that Lombardo’s win is a “mathematical impossibility.” Once the results are “statistically corrected,” said a copy of the complaint obtained by The Nevada Independent, will show “with irrefutable geometric finality” that Gilbert won by more than 55,000 votes.

Nevada counties already completed a recount sought by Gilbert, which confirmed that he lost to Lombardo by more than 20,000 votes.

The suit raises questions about Gilbert’s differing vote shares among early, mail-in and Election Day ballots, which the suit argues is a “geometric impossibility” derived through an “illegal formula.”

“Absolute joke”: Republicans “disappointed” after pro-Trump Nevada GOP primary loser cries fraud

The lawsuit cites an analysis by an “expert mathematician” to claim that thousands of Gilbert votes were “drawn illegally” into Gov. Steve Sisolak’s pool of voters in the Democratic primary and, once “corrected,” would show that Gilbert defeated Lombardo by more than 50,000 votes.

The “expert mathematician” cited by Gilbert is infamous election conspiracy theorist Edward Solomon, who falsely claimed to have found evidence that the 2020 presidential election was rigged using an algorithm — a claim repeatedly debunked by expert fact-checkers, who noted that Solomon’s claims show a “basic misunderstanding of how vote counts work.”

Dominion Voting Systems, the voting tech company at the heart of one of Trumpworld’s debunked conspiracy theories, said in a lawsuit against right-wing network OAN that Solomon is a “convicted drug dealer who never graduated college and whose current job was setting up swing sets in Long Island, New York.”

Despite no tangible evidence and a reliance on a discredited “expert,” Gilbert’s supporters say the lawsuit is a “slam dunk.”

“Joey Gilbert rightfully won the primary with 100% certainty,” Robert Beadles, a cryptocurrency millionaire who funded Gilbert’s recount, wrote on his website. “It’s simple; we prove with mathematical certainty Joey Gilbert is the winner of the primary gubernatorial race and that he had over 55,000 votes taken from him. It’s a slam dunk case. We’ll post the suit, the exhibits, opinions, etc., as soon as the State publishes them.”

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Though Nevada law allows candidates to challenge election results based on alleged malfeasance, the lawsuit argues that the challenge is “not a political question, but rather a mathematical issue.”

“Let w be the candidate’s aggregate percentage,” the suit says. “Then: w = zx + (1-z)y = (x+py)/(1+p), where p is the proportion of Mail-in to Election Day ballots in the precinct.”

The lawsuit includes more than 100 pages of similar equations and graphs.

The lawsuit names seven defendants, including Lombardo, Republican Secretary of State Barbara Cegavske, and Sisolak.

“This is a dangerous attempt led by a conspiracy theorist to instill doubt on the electoral process – which has been proven to be safe, secure and fair countless times,” Sisolak spokesperson Reeves Oyster said in a statement to Salon. “It looks like Joe Lombardo’s embrace of the Big Lie has finally caught up with him – because the only thing this Gilbert-backed lawsuit will do is promote infighting and further divide the Republican base ahead of the general election.”

The Nevada Republican Party, whose executive committee endorsed Gilbert in the primary, expressed dismay at his refusal to concede and said it has not seen any evidence of fraud or irregularities.

“There’s no indication that there’s any fraud right now,” party Chairman Mike McDonald told the Las Vegas Review-Journal’s Colton Lochhead. “It’s disappointing that those comments come out of the Republican Party.”

“I don’t know what his comments alluded to. My goal is to unite the party and bring everyone together so we have a Republican red wave,” McDonald told the Las Vegas Sun.

Longtime Nevada reporter Jon Ralston, the CEO of The Nevada Independent, called out the state GOP for embracing Trump’s conspiracy theories and Gilbert’s campaign before it backfired on them.

“Can you imagine the chutzpah or stupidity or both that it takes for a guy who helped lead the voter fraud nonsense in 2020 to say something like this?” he tweeted last month. “Imagine going through life without caring about truth, without caring how you damage your own party. Absolute joke.”

about GOP’s war on votes

The press tries to grade Republicans on a curve — but the GOP still hates marriage equality

In response to the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade, the Democrat-controlled House has teed up twin bills, one to protect same-sex marriage and one to protect the right to contraception, out of concern that the conservative majority is coming for those rights next. It’s a totally justified fear. In his concurrence on the Roe overturn, Justice Clarence Thomas explicitly called previous decisions to legalize contraception and same-sex marriage “demonstrably erroneous” and called on the court to “correct” those rights like they “corrected” the right to abortion.

These two bills are almost certainly doomed to fail, because the Republican minority in Congress has a near-absolute power to kill bills through the abusing the filibuster. That’s what happened when House Democrats tried to protect abortion rights. There’s little reason to think Republicans have any more affection for the right to prevent pregnancy or allowing LGBTQ people to marry for love.

Tuesday, this was proved when a whopping 78% of Republicans in the House failed to vote for marriage equality. While the bill passed due to a Democratic majority, it’s near-certain that Republicans in the Senate will filibuster any attempt to protect same-sex marriage. And yet, if you glanced through mainstream media headlines, you’d think that Republicans have wrapped themselves in the rainbow flag and are celebrating same-sex marriage these days.

The media’s hopes and dreams for a more moderate GOP continue to outweigh the radicalized reality.

“House passes bill to codify marriage equality with large bipartisan support,” claimed a Axios headline. “House passes measure that would codify same-sex marriage into law with bipartisan support,” declared the headline at the Washington Post.

“47 House Republicans vote to write same-sex marriage into law,” Politico declared, failing both to give the 100% of Democrats who voted for it credit and ignoring the 78% of Republicans who oppose same-sex marriage rights.

The CBS headline highlighted the 47 Republicans who voted for the bill over the 164 who voted no or refused to show up. Even the BBC, which is usually better than this, played along with “Republicans help pass House gay marriage bill.”

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Despite the fact that Republicans continue to actively cover up for an ex-president who attempted a fascist coup, the media’s hopes and dreams for a more moderate GOP continue to outweigh the radicalized reality. Even some liberals on Twitter, yearning for Republicans to suck less, tried to divine reasons for optimism in numbers that actually indicate that the GOP is controlled by fundamentalist homophobes. Harvard professor Laurence Tribe was a sad example of this longing.

True enough, @RepAdamSchiff. But more remarkable these days is that 47 Republicans just voted FOR codifying marriage equality for LGBTQ+ and interracial couples. This glass is 23% full while it’s 77% empty. I opt to look at the (almost) 1/4 that’s full. We can go from there. https://t.co/9rTK1PeUNV

— Laurence Tribe (@tribelaw) July 20, 2022

It’s wishful thinking, assuming that 22% number is fated to grow. There used to be pro-choice Republicans in politics, after all, but they eventually got wiped out through pressure exerted by the fanatical fundamentalist base the party depends on to win elections. Right now, the same process is happening on the issue of LGBTQ rights, as the Christian nationalist base moves to turn queerphobia into a purity test for Republican politicians. All meaningful signs suggest that GOP is moving to the right on the issue of LGBTQ rights.

Well-financed activist organizations have made it their central mission to force queer people back into the closet by banning books and penalizing public sector workers like teachers and librarians who acknowledge the existence of LGBTQ people. In one town, a public library was closed due to Republican pressure to fire the LGBTQ staff and censor books with queer characters and themes. Trumpian organizations like the Proud Boys have increasingly focused their efforts on terrorizing gay and trans people for simply going about their business, by targeting gay bars and drag shows for intimidation and harassment.

Republicans know they have to use deflection and subterfuge to advance their agenda.

This has been met with widespread approval by the official Republican apparatus.

In the House, both Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy of California and Minority Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana voted against marriage equality. The official GOP platform calls for a reversal of Obergefell v. Hodges, the case that legalized same-sex marriage. As I detailed in the Standing Room Only newsletter, Republicans in the Senate have been coming out hard against same-sex marriage rights. Multiple senators, including Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas and Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri, have been making noises about how Obergefell was “wrongly decided.” Sen. John Cornyn of Texas even floated some strategies for repealing the decision during the confirmation hearings for Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson. On the state level, most famously in Florida, Republicans are passing bills to censor public acknowledgment of LGBTQ existence.

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House Republicans know that opposing same-sex marriage makes them look like bigots — which they are — but rather than reversing course, they are whining about Democrats having the gall to call them out for it.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene threw a tantrum declaring that the bill was unnecessary because “no one is taking away gay marriage.” She then admitted that she was voting against it because “I believe that marriage is a union made by God between a man and a woman.” Rep. Jim Jordon of Ohio thundered that Democrats are trying to “attempt to intimidate the United States Supreme Court,” a talking point that only makes sense if the plan is to have the court overturn same-sex marriage against the will of the people. (And only if you believe the Supreme Court’s “right” to vacate all laws Republicans don’t like is absolute.) Sen. Marco Rubio, who is up for re-election in Florida this year, said he would vote against the House bill to protect same-sex marriages, calling it a “stupid waste of time.”

No doubt about it: Same-sex marriage is popular with the public. Then again, so are abortion rights. The opposition to same-sex marriage comes from the exact same minority of people — call them Christian nationalists — who oppose abortion rights. The GOP answers to this small minority and not to the larger public. That’s why they are dismantling democracy so that the more liberal majority simply doesn’t have a say in what our laws around marriage and reproductive rights are. And, just as with the attack on abortion rights, Republicans know they have to use deflection and subterfuge to advance their agenda so that they can snatch the right to same-sex marriage away without most of the public realizing that it’s happening until it’s too late.

That 22% vote for this bill should be understood in that context. Republicans need to lull voters into thinking the party isn’t as radical as it actually is. Tossing a measly 22% vote at this bill secures the “bipartisan” headlines they need to prop up the illusion of moderation, while not risking the chance of a bill actually passing through the Senate. Once Republicans bamboozle the public into letting them control the federal government again, they can swiftly gut democracy even further, ensuring that the majority of voters can never throw them out of power again. After that, the charade of “moderation” on LGBTQ rights can be dropped, and the will of the Christian nationalists that control the party can be imposed on the nation. That’s how they’re doing it on reproductive rights. It’s the same clear path forward to destroy LGBTQ rights.

Liberals like Tribe would do well to stop hoping for a more moderate Republican party and instead focus on what actually needs to happen: Convincing more voters to walk away from the GOP entirely.

The good news is that Republican radicalism on issues like same-sex marriage and reproductive rights does more to turn potential voters away than nearly anything else. Research shows that large numbers of young white people in conservative communities are breaking with the churches of their youth over these issues. If they associate the GOP with the same fundamentalist intolerance, they will be likelier to break with the party, too.

Creating that association, however, means being honest with the public. Instead of hyping an inconsequential minority of Republicans who support — though not when it matters! — same-sex marriage, liberals should focus on the overwhelming majority that breaks with the public on this issue. The mainstream media, too, should be less concerned on spinning Republicans to make them look less bad and leveling with their audiences: Most Republicans oppose LGBTQ rights.

The party is only becoming more queerphobic, not less. There’s an ongoing campaign, blessed by Republican leadership, to force queer people back into the closet and strip away their basic rights. The loss of Roe should only underline why it’s crucial not to hide our heads in the sand about this. If we look away from what Republicans actually stand for, that makes it that much easier for them to impose their fundamentalist agenda.

Republican Senate candidate arrested for concocting false child sex trafficking accusations

A Republican candidate in the state of Maryland has been apprehended for concocting an erroneous report riddled with false child trafficking accusations.

On Friday, July 15, Ryan Dark White was taken into custody at the Harford County Detention Center after being arrested, according to a statement released by the sheriff’s office.

Per HuffPost: “The Harford County Sherriff’s Office said White, an employee at an adult bookstore in Edgewood, Maryland, falsely reported in April that a girl aged 10 to 12 was being trafficked by a man at the bookstore and forced to perform sex acts on male customers. The sheriff’s office identified both the male and the young girl, and said investigators found no evidence supporting White’s allegations.”

Harford County Sheriff Jeffrey R. Gahler weighed in with a response to White’s false report saying, “It is shameful that a candidate for public office would make up such a story and use it to further his own political agenda.”

Gahler also criticized an unnamed candidate who isn’t facing criminal charges as part of the investigation. “It is even more appalling that another individual, who is running for a law enforcement position, would embrace such an obviously false narrative in an effort to gain political traction — nothing more,” Gahler said.

White’s arrest follows multiple appearances he reportedly made with Andy Kuhl, who is a Baltimore Count Republican candidate for sheriff. Kuhl’s campaign website issued warnings about a so-called “multistate child trafficking operation,” per HuffPost.

The website says, “Jon McGreevey and I go undercover to expose these sick and heinous crimes against children. We must bring these criminals to Justice.”

White also went on record saying he took a job at a bookstore in hopes of uncovering an alleged drug distribution operation as he insisted drugs were being sold out of the location.

“They started exploiting children,” White said in a clip uploaded to Kuhl’s campaign website in June. “There’s a child trafficking ring being run through there as well.”

Gahler applauded his office and the resources exhausted to for the false reporting investigation.

“I am beyond grateful this young girl is safe, but extremely disappointed someone would attempt to discredit and disparage the work of the dedicated men and women of the Harford County Sheriff’s Office and Child Advocacy Center,” Gahler said. “Fearmongering and antagonism caused wasted time and energy by our personnel, whose time would have been better served protecting the citizens of Harford County, instead of investigating lies.”

Maryland GOP nominates “QAnon whackjob” for governor — but he’s not even the most extreme winner

Trump-backed election conspiracy theorist Maryland state Del. Dan Cox won the state’s Republican gubernatorial primary on Tuesday after leading an effort to impeach Republican Gov. Larry Hogan and speaking at a QAnon conference earlier this year.

Cox, who called former Vice President Mike Pence a “traitor” during the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, defeated Kelly Schulz, who served in Hogan’s administration.

Hogan, a prominent Trump critic who supported Schulz, repeatedly blasted Cox during the campaign over his extremist views, labeling him a “QAnon whackjob” after he spoke at a QAnon rally in April.

Cox fully embraced Trump’s repeatedly debunked conspiracy theories about the election, declaring in December that Trump was “the only president that I recognize.” He pushed conspiracy theories about widespread voter fraud and called on Trump to “seize federal vote machines in states where fraud was overwhelmingly rampant” even though Trump and his allies found no evidence of any widespread fraud.

Cox chartered three buses to bring supporters to Trump’s D.C. rally on Jan. 6, ahead of the deadly riot. He called Pence a “traitor” on Twitter as a mob of Trump’s supporters attacked Capitol police officers and hunted lawmakers through the halls of Congress. And he expressed support for Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio, who was charged with seditious conspiracy over his role in the attack along with other members.

2022 GOP primaries prove that MAGA is now bigger than Donald Trump

Cox has vowed to conduct a so-called “forensic audit” of the 2020 election in Maryland if he wins even though Trump lost the state by a whopping 33 points. He has also fully embraced the conservative culture war, vowing to outlaw all abortions in the state and ban what he described as “sexual indoctrination” in public schools.

It’s unclear whom Cox will face in November. Wes Moore, an Army veteran, author and entrepreneur endorsed by Oprah Winfrey, led former Democratic National Committee Chairman Tom Perez 36-27 on Wednesday afternoon with the race too early to call.

Democrats bet big that Cox would be the easier general election opponent. Cox, whose campaign raised little money, benefited from more than $1.1 million in ad spending by the Democratic Governors Association to boost his campaign. Hogan after Tuesday’s primary tweeted that Trump “selfishly colluded with national Democrats to cost us a Governor’s seat in Maryland where I ran 45 points ahead of him.”

Schulz predicted that Cox would lose the general election by 30 points in a state that has Democratic supermajorities in the legislature despite twice electing a moderate Republican as governor. She said last month that Democrats were attempting to “spend a million now and save $5 million by not having to face me in the general election.”

“The Maryland Republican Party got together and committed ritualized mass suicide,” top Schulz aide Doug Mayer told The New York Times. “The only thing that was missing was Jim Jones and a cup of Kool-Aid.”

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Despite Cox’s conspiracy theory mongering and far-right policy views, he is “not even the most extreme candidate who won on Tuesday,” noted Vice News’ Cameron Joseph.

Michael Peroutka, a neo-Confederate activist, won the Republican nomination for attorney general over former prosecutor Jim Shalleck. Peroutka previously took issue with being called a “neo-Confederate.”

“A neo-Confederate? That would be kind of like you’re a fake Confederate or a wannabe Confederate,” he said in 2014, after being elected to the Anne Arundel County Council. “If anything, I want to be just a true Confederate.”

Peroutka, a former board member of the neo-Confederate League of the South, which later helped organize the deadly Charlottesville white supremacist rally, has also said that he is “still angry” that Maryland was blocked from seceding during the Civil War,” Vice News reported earlier this week.

Peroutka has said he wants political leaders to “take a biblical worldview and apply it to civil law and government.” He has argued that abortion and gay marriage are illegal because they violate “God’s law.” And he has called public education a communist plot.

Though Peroutka was for years considered fringe, his ascent in Republican politics shows that there is an “increasingly overt and aggressive Christian nationalism” in the party, Peter Montgomery, who monitored Peroutka for years at Right Wing Watch, told Vice News.

It’s unclear whether even Peroutka’s Republican primary opponent will vote for him in November.

“That’s a very tough decision for me to make knowing what his history is,” Shalleck told the outlet. “His background concerns me very much.”

The two wins highlight how “radicalized and conspiracy theory-minded a significant segment of the Republican base has grown in response to COVID and Trump’s lies about the 2020 election—even in a Democratic-leaning state like Maryland,” Joseph wrote. Cox and Peroutka, he added on Twitter, “might be the most extreme pair of GOP nominees *anywhere* in the US.”

about the 2022 GOP primaries

“Not my president”: Fox News flashback features anti-Trump post from now Trump-endorsed candidate

Fox News reported on Wednesday that a candidate endorsed by Donald Trump had promoted a message claiming he was not the president in 2017.

According to the report, Arizona candidate for governor Kari Lake shared an “anti-Trump post” days before the then-president-elect’s inauguration.

“Will you be protesting the inauguration? If so, which of these suggestions will you adopt? Will you boycott TV coverage? Wear black? Donate money the ACLU, NAACP or Planned Parenthood? Use the hashtag #NotMyPresident? Will you unfollow Donald Trump?” the post reportedly said.

Fox News reported that the post “disappeared” from Lake’s Facebook account after she was asked for a comment.

In recent months, Lake has wrongly suggested that Trump won the 2020 election. She has vowed to get to the bottom of alleged election fraud if she becomes governor.

Trump endorses Arizona conspiracy theorist who wants to “decertify” election after sham “audit”

GOP candidate says “back the blue” — but campaigns with felon who plotted to kill an FBI informant

No, same-sex marriage is not “settled”: The GOP base demands more anti-LGBTQ extremism

Some of the best news out of the culture war front has been the fast-growing acceptance of same-sex marriage among Americans of all political stripes. Considering the rancorous debates that have been going on for decades over reproductive rights and racial equality, this has seemed like a rare bright spot in an otherwise intractable polarization on all the issues pertaining to the evolution of our cultural norms around race, gender and sexual orientation. Just last month Gallup released a poll showing that 71% of Americans now approve of same-sex marriage, an astonishing leap forward from only a few years ago.

It’s hard to believe that it was only 18 years ago that the Republicans, including the “compassionate conservative” George W. Bush, won the 2004 election partially on the basis of nationwide ballot initiatives banning gay marriage — while Democrats were loudly blaming advocates and supporters of marriage equality for their loss. Republicans used the issue as a favorite wedge during that period to divide Democrats and some of their Christian, Hispanic and Black constituents who were not yet on board with the idea. It was all quite effective. In 2008, they even managed to get Blue California to ban same-sex marriage with a ballot proposition and state constitutional amendment known as Prop. 8. The issue tied the Democrats up in knots, with presidential candidates trying to split the baby by opposing marriage equality but supporting civil unions or making fatuous paeans to states’ rights, while Republicans characterized them as out-of-the-mainstream radicals.

In 2012, the country was evenly divided on the issue and President Barack Obama finally came out in favor of gay marriage (pushed by his vice president, Joe Biden) still insisting that states should be able to choose for themselves. Public opinion moved very quickly after that. By 2015, when Obergefell v. Hodges was decided in favor of a federal right to same-sex marriage, Gallup showed that 60% of Americans were in support. Democrats took it as a political victory, which it was, since many had lost races because of their support for the issue. (The rare Republican who ventured into the fray and voted in favor also paid a price. )

It had been a very hard-fought battle but it lasted for a relatively short period of time. The issue bubbled up very quickly in the 90s and by 2015, LGBT people had gained the right to marry. It was almost a miracle considering our endless fighting over basic human rights in this country. In fact, it was downright strange. What happened to all of the anti-gay conservatives?

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You need to take a closer look at that polling which shows that 71% of Americans now support gay marriage. Although it’s been growing generally, PRRI’s polling has Republican support at still only 51% and Gallup has it at a high water mark of 55%. That’s a majority — but it wouldn’t even be enough to pass legislation in the U.S. Senate. Republicans represent tens of millions of Americans who remain opposed to marriage equality, most of whom are Evangelical Christians and conservative Catholics, also known as the GOP base — the base that worked feverishly for decades to put six extremist justices on the Supreme Court to enact their theocratic agenda.

They will say that it is “settled law” and point to Justice Samuel Alito’s reassurance that the court will not use the same logic they used in Dobbs to overturn Roe v. Wade as if everyone who supports marriage equality just fell off a catering truck full of gay wedding cakes.

These are the most powerful bloc of voters in America and they know what they want. They do not want gay marriage and no one should fool themselves into thinking otherwise. They’re just patient.

You will hear many right-wing commentators and politicians brushing this concern off as nothing more than election year hype from the Democrats. They will say that it is “settled law” and point to Justice Samuel Alito’s reassurance that the court will not use the same logic they used in Dobbs to overturn Roe v. Wade as if everyone who supports marriage equality just fell off a catering truck full of gay wedding cakes. Please. Every justice on the court said that Roe was “settled law” in their confirmation hearing and Alito’s comment had Roberts and Kavanaugh, the two conservatives who pass for institutionalists, written all over it. It’s obvious which way the wind is blowing and everyone knows it.

As I noted a couple of days ago, canny politicians like Ron Desantis are trying to walk a fine line with the abortion issue, knowing that a large majority of the public is against taking away the right to choose. But as one of the nation’s premiere culture warriors, he needs some red meat to throw to the base and he clearly believes that LGBT issues are the ticket but he’s done it by going after easy targets — transgender kids, public school teachers. Following the strategic advice of Christopher Rufo, the latest right-wing wunderkind responsible for the contrived “CRT” controversy, and likely primed by the QAnon pedophile panic, he’s pushed the notion that gay teachers are “grooming” kids. But he’s only sidled up to the issue of gay marriage very obliquely by backing the “don’t say gay” bill that precludes teachers from even mentioning their own same-sex marriage in schools. He’s for it except when he isn’t.

There’s a reason for this.

While 70% of Florida Republicans swoon over these bigoted measures, they only get a bare majority of support overall. DeSantis is taking a risk that may not pay off. If he adds overt opposition to gay marriage, he will really have a problem.

The Republicans know the law isn’t so “settled” after all and think that codifying Obergefell is tantamount to court intimidation.

On Tuesday, the House of Representatives voted to protect marriage equality by passing the Respect for Marriage Act. 157 Republicans voted against it and only 47 supported it. If the law was so settled, you’d think it would have been unanimous. Ohio Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Oh., gave away the game:

Jordan on Marriage Equality Bill: This bill is simply the latest installment of the Democrats campaign to delegitimize and attempt to intimidate the Supreme Court pic.twitter.com/NJGYB4ycF2

— Acyn (@Acyn) July 19, 2022

Apparently, the Republicans know the law isn’t so “settled” after all and think that codifying Obergefell is tantamount to court intimidation.

Democrats have realized that these contentious culture war issues do not only go one way. In fact, these days it’s the Republicans who have a problem with their base and a divided constituency. So they are calling for votes on same-sex marriage, contraception and other issues to put Republicans on the record.

It’s 2022, and 157 House Republicans just voted against marriage equality.

That’s where they come down on this issue.

In 2022.

— Pete Buttigieg (@PeteButtigieg) July 19, 2022

Perhaps someone should ask Ron DeSantis if he believes that Florida should finally remove the same-sex marriage ban that’s still on the books in Florida? I’d imagine the voters would be interested to know. Or perhaps they should ask Florida GOP Senator Marco Rubio if he stands by his words back in 2015 when he said, “It is the current law. I don’t believe any case law is settled law. Any future Supreme Court can change it.” Even after a direct threat from a sitting Supreme Court justice, Rubio played dumb: “What’s the threat?”

Indeed it can. And a majority of the Republican Party is counting on it. It’s up to the Democrats to make sure that the rest of the country knows that.

Trump pressured top Wisconsin Republican to decertify 2020 results, then threatened him — last week

Former President Donald Trump is still waging his campaign to reverse his 2020 election loss more than 20 months later, issuing a thinly veiled threat to a top Wisconsin Republican who rebuffed his request to decertify the state’s results.

Wisconsin Assembly Speaker Robin Vos told WISN-TV that Trump pressured him on a call last week to somehow decertify the state’s results after the state Supreme Court restricted the use of ballot drop boxes. The court ruling banned the future use of most drop boxes but the case had nothing to do with the last election and left open the door for lawmakers to pass legislation codifying the use of drop boxes.

Trump falsely claimed on his Twitter knockoff Truth Social that the ruling “means I won the very closely contested (not actually!) Wisconsin Presidential race because they used these corrupt and scandal-ridden Scam Boxes.” There has been no evidence of any wrongdoing or irregularities related to drop boxes and the court did not rule on the merits of their use.

Trump then called Vos after the ruling to demand he use the ruling as a pretense to decertify the state’s 2020 election results — even though there is no legal mechanism to do so.

“It’s very consistent,” Vos told WISN. “He makes his case, which I respect. He would like us to do something different in Wisconsin. I explained it’s not allowed under the constitution. He has a different opinion, and then he put out the tweet. So that’s it.”

Assembly Speaker Robin Vos says former President Trump called him last week in another push to decertify Wisconsin’s 2020 presidential results after the WI Supreme Court ruling on absentee ballot drop boxes. Shortly after, Vos says, Trump posted on social media calling him a RINO pic.twitter.com/rLFtYtHlh6

— Matt Smith (@mattsmith_news) July 19, 2022

Trump after the call lashed out at Vos on Truth Social.

“Looks like Speaker Robin Vos, a long time professional RINO always looking to guard his flank, will be doing nothing about the amazing Wisconsin Supreme Court decision,” he wrote. “What a waste of brilliant and courageous decision by Wisconsin’s Highest Court. The Democrats would like to sincerely thank Robin, and all of his fellow RINOs, for letting them get away with ‘murder.'”

“The coup attempt is ongoing”: Ex-Trump lawyer John Eastman still trying to overturn 2020 election

Vos explained that the ruling had nothing to do with Trump’s election loss.

“The court case as you read it does not go back and say what happened in 2020 was illegal. It just says going forward it can’t happen,” he told the outlet. “I think we all know Donald Trump is Donald Trump. There’s very little we can do to control or predict what he will do,” he added.

Trump on Tuesday went further, seemingly threatening to back Vos’ Republican primary challenger Adam Steen unless he cedes to his demands.

“So what’s Speaker Robin Vos doing on the Great Wisconsin Supreme Court Ruling declaring hundreds of thousands of Drop Box votes to be illegal?” he wrote. “This is not a time for him to hide, but a time to act! I don’t know his opponent in the upcoming Primary, but feel certain he will do well if Speaker Vos doesn’t move with gusto. Robin, don’t let the voters of Wisconsin down!”

Vos has pushed debunked conspiracy theories that there was widespread fraud in the election amid pressure from far-right activists and last year ordered a taxpayer-funded investigation into the election that has turned up no evidence of widespread fraud. That clearly has not pacified Trump or his allies. Trump last year accused Vos of “working hard to cover up election corruption” because he refused to order a so-called forensic audit of the election like the failed audit in Arizona’s Maricopa County.

Vos said at the time that Trump was “misinformed.”

“When I saw the president’s statement, it surprised me because many on the left have been going after us harder than I have ever seen, because in Wisconsin, we have hired investigators, we have passed legislation and we are doing a forensic audit already,” he told the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “So I think this is one of those cases where the president was just misinformed by his staff or he didn’t see the media reports.”

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Vos’ latest comments came just two days before the House January 6 committee’s upcoming primetime hearing on Trump’s role in fueling the Capitol riot, which came after he spent months pressuring state officials to not certify and later to decertify his losses in contested states. In one case, Trump called Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger to pressure him to “find” just enough votes to reverse his loss. The call and other Trump efforts to steal the election in Georgia are now under investigation by Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis. Willis and the Justice Department are also investigating fake electors involved in Trump’s Jan. 6 strategy.

Trump legal adviser John Eastman, who crafted the former president’s strategy to block the certification of the Electoral College results on Jan. 6, has also continued to pressure Vos and Wisconsin officials to start “reclaiming the electors” and go ahead with “either a do-over or having a new slate of electors seated that would declare someone else the winner,” according to ABC News. Eastman held a similar meeting in Colorado and boasted about his involvement in lawsuits to overturn the election in Pennsylvania and Georgia. Other Trump allies like MyPillow founder Mike Lindell have also continued to pressure election officials to decertify the 2020 results, which is legally impossible.

“I still believe that the Constitution and my oath that I took as an elected official does not allow me to decertify any election whether I want to or not,” Vos told reporters in March. “That’s not going to happen.”

Wisconsin GOP’s election conspiracy push