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For over a year, the Planned Parenthood clinic in my city has been closed. At first, it was closed for renovations, the doors and windows covered with wood panels. Now, it’s closed permanently. A casualty of Iowa’s extreme abortion ban, cuts to Medicaid, Title IX funding, the attacks on Planned Parenthood, and, of course, Planned Parenthood’s own dysfunction.

Iowans are getting abortions, but they are going out of state or self-managing them at home. And anecdotally, I hear a growing number of young women are choosing to sterilize, using Reddit to find sympathetic doctors and clinics.

Iowa has some of the most restrictive abortion laws in the nation.

And yet, once a week, as I drive by the clinic on my way to kid pick-ups or the grocery store, I see a group of older white men and women standing in front of the clinic, praying and holding signs demanding an end to abortion. Their stoic Midwestern faces are grim as if they alone are waging a holy war — and the whole world is against them.

On Monday, Donald Trump announced he was calling in the National Guard to patrol the streets of Washington, DC. The claim from the White House was that the country’s capital city is mired in crime and “total lawlessness.” In reality, despite some high-profile incidents, crime in DC is on the decline. Trump’s act of martial law and abuse of power, reporting suggests, was sparked by the attempted carjacking of a former DOGE staffer, Edward Coristine, best known for going by the nickname “Big Balls” online. Coristine is also the nepo baby son of the snack brand Lesser Evil. Everyone has to suffer; the rights of the poor to exist are curtailed, all because a rich man felt victimized once.

These are the fantasy problems of a fictional world. One where the billionaire's fears of being taxed are more terrifying than people going hungry. Where affordable housing is more terrifying than a sexual predator in office. Where 10 trans people competing in women’s sports is scarier than thousands of women dying in childbirth. And one where not getting a date or never marrying is far, far worse somehow than dying septic in a hospital parking lot.

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In the middle of the press conference about the made-up problem Trump claims to be solving, he went on a rant about people being transgender. At first he was talking about tax cuts; then he nonsensically went on, “That's why they want men playing in women's sports, that's why they want transgender for everybody. Everybody, transgender. And they just got walloped in an election, in a landslide and they haven't changed one thing. I saw the other day, a certain gentleman who is a very well-known politician, Democrat, was fighting like hell that men should be allowed to play in women's sports. They just don't get it.”

Of course, none of this makes any sense. It was just another moment of free association from an addled brain. But it’s also another moment when a person in power claimed to be the victim of a made-up problem. There are maybe 10 trans athletes in women’s sports in the NCAA. And trans people are more likely to face discrimination and violence than any white man walking to his car in Washington, DC.

It’s an invented narrative to keep the winners claiming grievance, while others lose their rights.

In the pages of the Washington Post, Shadi Hamid wrote once again that men are lonely. He blamed politics and #MeToo. He claimed there is “data” to back this up, but the reality is that men are not lonelier than women. There is no male loneliness crisis. And while we’re at it, the educational crisis among boys is severely overblown.

And while highly male opinion columnists like Hamid, David Brooks and Ross Douthat — and even prominent Democrats like Gavin Newsom — claim men are in crisis, the maternal mortality rate is soaring; Black women are being forced out of the workforce; and women and LGBTQ people are losing their rights to healthcare. Young girls are experiencing a huge mental health crisis.

But so much more ink is spilled over how sad men think they are. It’s a make-believe problem that ignores life-and-death crises for women in favor of the perceived victimhood of men.

These are the fantasy problems of a fictional world. One where the billionaire's fears of being taxed are more terrifying than people going hungry. Where affordable housing is more terrifying than a sexual predator in office. Where 10 trans people competing in women’s sports is scarier than thousands of women dying in childbirth. And one where not getting a date or never marrying is far, far worse somehow than dying septic in a hospital parking lot.

An entire cultural and political movement has been predicated on a mythical narrative of victimhood, loneliness, and disenfranchisement. And we are buying into it even as it kills us.

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• Spencer Ackerman wrote about the cultural hysteria around Mamdani’s candidacy.

• And, in case you missed it, this weekend, I wrote about yet another piece of pro-marriage drivel from Brad Wilcox.

• And in this newsletter, a few years ago, I wrote about why we seem to be trapped in the same discourse cycles.

Last week, Brad Wilcox wrote in The Atlantic that marriage in America is back, baby! By which of course he means heterosexual marriage.

He points to trends that indicate that marriage rates are up, or at least divorce rates are down. This has been true for years. It was a pattern I pointed out in my book This American Ex-Wife. And I noted that the moral panic over divorce was highly exaggerated.

Studies continue to show that societies that pay women and have liberal divorce laws actually have higher rates of marital longevity and birth rates. Because, when women are given economic independence and not coerced into marriage or coerced into staying, they have fewer reasons to leave. It would make sense then that American millennials, who waited longer to marry and who entered the workforce with more gender parity than past generations, would have lower divorce rates.

The problem is that Wilcox, who is conservative and part of an organization whose stated goal is reversing same-sex marriage, doesn’t see these advancements as pro-marriage and pro-family. He blithely ignores that a lot of the stabilization of marriage rates is happening because of women’s improved economic empowerment and most states’ relatively liberal divorce laws.

Also, the increase in same-sex marriages and the number of individuals identifying as LGBTQ points to partnership trends that affirm people’s identities, rather than shoving them into miserable heteronormative boxes. Of course, “married homes” seem statistically better for children; that’s because they tend to have more financial resources. But instead of arguing for giving families health care, child care, and a social safety net, Wilcox continuously pushes the line that marriage is good for the kids.

I am beginning to think that people who argue for marriage as the solution to our social ills don’t really care about our social ills all that much. They just care about enforcing regressive gender roles.

Marriage and society as Wilcox think of them — shaped by a more regressive view of gender and with a focus on male economic empowerment — are actually detrimental the actual rates of marriage. You want higher marriage rates? Let women have choices. But no, that’s never the answer.

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This week, that sentient Froot by the Foot, the man who looks like roadkill got turned into beef jerky with a voice that sounds like a haunted wooden gate, RFK Jr., defunded mRNA vaccine research.

This is really good news if you are longing for the sweet release of death. But for everyone else, including those of us who are a little ambivalent, this is bad.

You know it’s bad when the people who are actually experts in the field are screaming, crying and throwing up. Which is my translation of this NPR headline, “Public health experts dismayed by RFK Jr.'s defunding of mRNA vaccine research.”

NPR is not sensationalist. Twenty rabid toddlers armed with knives could take over a daycare in the San Fernando Valley and the headline would be, “Daycare troubles have some California parents concerned.”

NPR is so responsible.1 They will not worry you at all. They’re like the journalistic equivalent of your Midwestern mom breaking bad news to you.

“Oh yeah, no, your aunt won’t be on vacation with us. Oh, why? Well, she died in a car accident last week. No, I was going to tell you, but the authorities were still picking up pieces of her off Highway 151. Make sure you pack sunscreen, sweetie.”

In fact, let’s just do a quick NPR headline translator:

Headline: Federal records contradict what FEMA leader told Congress about Texas flood response

Translation: FEMA is more dysfunctional than your uncle’s third marriage and everyone in charge is gaslighting you and we have the receipts!

Headline: Trump's broad tariffs go into effect, just as economic pain is surfacing

Translation: The economy is sinking faster than your son Aiden's chances of making the major leagues. Hope you like being poor, you dumb sluts.

Headline: Trump cuts threaten access to birth control for millions of women

Translation: THE ONLY BIRTH CONTROL JD VANCE WANTS YOU TO HAVE IS THE HOLY SPIRIT. BETTER START STANDING IN FRONT OF SOME MICROWAVES .

But honestly, sex with a straight man? IN THIS ECONOMY? Who can afford it?

Now, back to RFK, that termite-eaten human fence post who clearly wants us all to die. Because why else would he defund life-saving technology?

That worm-addled Habsburgian prince of the collapsing American empire is out here canceling vital scientific research because he thinks it’s dangerous. Which is the equivalent of getting rid of all the elevators because of that one scene in Final Destination. You are trying to solve a fictional problem.

I’ll never forgive that brain worm for not finishing the job.

The Las Vegas strip is being unionized.

You can’t have health care but you can have golden sriracha Doritos.

I love that Texas lawmakers literally fled the state rather than be part of the GOP’s extremely corrupt redistricting scheme.

*puts finger to ear* Sir, I’m hearing that Fox News actually told the truth.

Elizabeth Warren continues to be right.

And funny.

A couple of weeks ago, my friend Megan sent me some Trail Mixers – THC-infused dissolvable powder that can go inside any beverage. They are single-serve, low-dose, and really tiny; they fit inside my purse, which is now small because my kids don’t need diapers anymore and carry their own snacks or just beg me to buy them some Starbies.

Megan has been my internet friend for years and she and her husband are the brains behind Trail Mixers. This week, as I continue to do a lot of work with the Iowa Abortion Access Fund, start working on my next book, plan for the school year, get kids to their various camps, and somehow feed them and myself, I had a very small meltdown.

The meltdown looked something like me sobbing on my bed in the middle of a pile of printed-out school calendars, my laptop, and a phone with 27,000 school apps all buzzing at me.

Which led to me taking part of Wednesday off and going paddleboarding. I started paddleboarding in 2021 as a thing to do on weekend mornings when my kids were with their dad. It’s an easy way for me to put my phone away and get out on the water and just stare placidly at the trees and water, and angrily at the McMansions that line the lake shore.

This week, it was made all the more chill with the Trail Mixers. I just mixed a little into my water bottle. Paddled around for an hour and then came home and took a little nap.

So, if you want to support an Iowa-based company and bring some THC into the next Kesha concert, I highly recommend them.

And also paddleboarding.

And also, I recommend a little meltdown, as a treat.

Fund public media, you dinguses!

This week, I learned that I need to wrap my face in shapewear. I already need to be taping my mouth shut; eating more protein; taking more supplements; wearing a weighted vest on my walks; lifting more; doing Pilates; running less; putting spring water on my face in the mornings, running faster; using lasers on my face; getting Botox, lip filler, chemical peels, hydrafacials and wellness shots. And my dentist thinks I need braces. Every woman on my Instagram is trying to sell me on lymphatic drainage and hip bones. They tell me that to look like them, I need to give up booze, give up THC, give up carbs, give up cheese. The Washington Post says I’m peeing incorrectly, so I need to fix that.

According to the internet, everyone seems to be self-optimizing, looksmaxxing, doing thought work, getting into therapy, doing self-help, journaling, taking up needlework or gardening, churning butter, and making candles.

It’s enough to make a woman want to start smoking cigarettes.

It’s not that I don’t engage in self-improvement or beauty standards. I get a little Botox, I buy mascara, and I love a new face cream that promises to change my life. It’s not perfect. It’s a system I see and grapple with every day, but one that still crushes me with ageism and the expectation of the performance of femininity.

This capitalistic deluge of tools and products to help women look hotter and more desirable is occurring as our government is taking away the right to abortion, birth control, SNAP benefits, Medicaid, and the free expression of our gender and sexuality. All the things that would actually keep us healthy. But instead, we have uncompounded GLP-1s and TikTok influencers endorsing protein matcha powder.

According to one 2019 study, “American women spend an average of 45 minutes grooming each day and make up 80-90% of the $115 billion industry for beauty products, affecting both their time and financial resources.”

This gendered issue is getting more expensive and impacting younger people. The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery reported in 2022 that nearly 75% of facial plastic surgeons had seen an increase in the number of patients under 30 requesting cosmetic surgery or injectables. The American Med Spa Association made a similar observation in 2024, adding that Gen Z and millennials are the generations most interested in injectables. And comparatively, “...adults 55+ are the least interested in non-surgical cosmetic treatments.”

Right now, beauty is marketed as “wellness,” and “wellness” is marketed as morality. The Venn diagram between the three feels like one big circle. And this is because these are things marketed to women.

We are not a society that trusts women. This is evidenced by the fact that our health care rights are being stripped away, along with our right to fully participate in society. Our country is run by men and women who are telling women to stay out of the workforce and replacing our autonomy with policing our bathrooms, which no one was asking for. Even the hang-wringing discourse over Gen Z’s Botox or asking how Nicole Kidman could do that to her face is implicitly assigning moral value to women’s choices. Expecting any one woman to perfectly navigate the cultures of consumption, beauty, and wellness while still having a career shows again that women cannot win in this system.

And we deserve empathy, not concern-trolling for how imperfectly we navigate this world. It feels like every day, our culture is unearthing some past crime of criticism committed against a woman in the public eye, with no thought about the crimes being committed now.

Anyway, I certainly don’t remember any moral panics about men taking creatine and testosterone.

Also, our cultural criticism always seems to focus on the individuals, rather than the companies and individuals who profit from our lack of healthcare and childcare. And no, childcare isn’t a different issue, because I would have fewer bags under my eyes if I had childcare during the summer and wasn’t working on this newsletter at 9 p.m.

There is no amount of hot you can be that will protect you from misogyny. Taking supplements will not prevent you from getting cancer or dying alone.

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We’ve been here before. Products for women soared in the post-WWII era, as women were forced out of work and back into the home. Looking beautiful and feminine and running a household became not just a full-time job, but a kind of science. Sociologists like Willard Waller believed women had gotten out of hand during the war, and society needed to reset. Waller claimed it was a woman's new patriotic duty to be "blissfully domestic" in her new office, the home.

These arguments sound like they could have come out of the mouth of the current vice president or any trad wife with blond children and a couple thousand followers on Instagram.

Products that promise to constrain, restrict, refine, contort, and shape us into more desirable versions of ourselves are not self-care — they’re promising us beauty and with that beauty an easier and healthier life. They’re also draining time and financial resources. And I am not here to argue that the time and resources should go to something better. I’m saying it's our time and our resources, and we should be allowed to be frivolous and waste them in irresponsible ways. Not all of our choices should have to carry the moral weight of the world.

Also, these products don’t work. Because there is no amount of hot you can be that will protect you from misogyny. Taking supplements will not prevent you from getting cancer or dying alone.

And yet, we persist, slathering in creams, wrapping our faces like ninjas, covering ourselves in red lights, like evil Christmas trees, just for a chance to hold on to beauty and life and a little longer, in a world determined to take both away.

• Tressie McMillan Cottom on the modern temperance movement.

• answers the question about “giving up” vs. accepting your face.

• writes that the Disney story about love and marriage that the internet is selling is a hell that women fought for generations to escape.

• And reminds us that beauty standards won’t save us.

When I moved to Cedar Rapids in 2005, I got a job in marketing at a website called NewspaperArchives.com, which used to be owned by a company called Heritage Microfilm and was headquartered in Cedar Rapids. The site was like the Hotel California: It was easy to sign up, but impossible to leave. As a result, the company was eventually the target of a federal investigation.

I worked there for a few months. My job was to write a marketing blog about the great things people could find in the archives. In “other duties as assigned,” I sometimes had to pretend to be the customer service manager (there was none), when people called screaming about their cards being billed for a service they thought they had canceled. We had one customer service representative, Natalie, who was a temp. And everyone in the office had to take turns pretending to be the manager. My co-worker was three years older than I was and thought that there was definitely a JFK cover-up, and when I teased her about it, she cried. We were both married to engineers and bought homes at the same time, but when I moved, I went dumpster diving for boxes. When she moved, she packed all her belongings in plastic totes because she believed her things were too precious to risk in cardboard.

When people called yelling because they were legitimately being conned by bad business practices, our real boss was completely unavailable, sitting in his office across the hall, occasionally having meetings where he’d tell us to “think big and bold!” But it was a website that archived newspapers in Cedar Rapids. The only thing they seemed to be innovating was how to dodge angry customers.

I’ve been writing the Dingus of the Week newsletter and crowning a Dingus of the Year for nearly five years. Which means roughly 240 dingii (probably more because there are some double-headers). But the point is, this is a veritable cornucopia of chucklefucks, a smorgasbord of smarm, a congress of chuds.

So many of these dinguses have made it into the Cabinet of this administration that you’d think the president himself was combing through the newsletter, thinking, “Who sucks the most? I need that guy to run the Department of Defense. A drunk and he’s not qualified? I MUST HAVE HIM!”

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And sometimes it’s a her! Because Trump is very inclusive about handing power to all evil people. And if 2025 has proven anything, it’s that women can be just as despicable as men. You go, girls! And by “go” I mean “straight to hell.”

This week, I thought I’d do a “Where Are They Now?” roundup of the people so inept, so craven, so supremely unqualified that they could only be the ones in charge.

The school superintendent in Oklahoma is a bastion of Christ’s love, purity, and holiness. He’s fought hard to protect kids from such vicious evils as “reading books” and “gay people.” He has worked tirelessly to ensure that aspects of the Constitution, like the separation of church and state, are flagrantly violated.

Given his history, how dare you accuse him of having porn on his work computer during a closed-door meeting with the Oklahoma State Board of Education? This is CLEARLY the work of Satan. Yes, Satan has gotten ahold of you and made you lie about this man, this pure innocent man, with hair that rises like the golden light of Christ’s love and a forehead that gleams like the damp dew in the Garden of Gethsemane. How can you accuse that face, that face that looks like a megachurch youth pastor just hours away from a statutory rape accusation, of anything untoward?

As I wrote last year, in Oklahoma, where carrying pretty much any sort of gun is legal, there are easier ways to shoot yourself in the foot, my guy.

Tariffs were named as a dingus in April, but wow, have they continued to dominate the headlines (derogatory).

Not since the married guy I met on Tinder in 2018 have I seen anyone so consistently afraid of commitment as Donald Trump with tariffs. My god, sir, this is dandruff levels of flake. Like corn levels of flake. Like “I’m a 52-year-old man and not sure what I want from a relationship” levels of flake.

I’ve seen pie crusts with more structural integrity.

Are we on again? Off again? Are we having a manic episode? Who can say? Certainly not the syphilitic brain behind the absolute chaos of this economic moment.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has two meth-addled hamsters instead of a functioning brain. She is the one politician with less pathos than Cruella de Vil. In fact, murdering puppies for their coats would actually be one of the more likable things this woman could do. I have seen puddles of dog diarrhea with more charisma. Given all of that, this week, Greene actually said that what is happening in Gaza is genocide.

She is right, of course. But you absolutely do not have to hand it to her. That would be like giving Hannibal Lecter an award every time he didn’t murder someone. But somehow, in this timeline, she has a little more moral courage than Sen. John Fetterman.

This week, the man perhaps most thirsty for the presidency, Pete Buttigieg, noted that “there are fairness issues” with trans people in women’s sports. Regardless of the context of his remarks, it is incredibly cowardly to stoke the fires of transphobia to try to score some political points.

There are so many better ways to handle this question, like, for example, pointing out that this is a non-issue and involves maybe five people in all of America, and there are better ways to handle it than passing laws that unfairly target trans people. People keep talking about how media-trained he is and how savvy. Seems like this time he couldn’t be bothered. At this point, it’s becoming exhausting to say, “Stop throwing trans people under the bus to win over some bigots who were never going to vote for you anyway, you knobheads.” But let me just say it again.

Anyway, this week, Pete wins the Rahm Emanuel award for politicians with heads of hair and hearts of craven ambition.

As if we weren’t miserable enough, the presidential fitness test is back to traumatize your kids. Just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse in America, now your kids have to do pull-ups in front of their friends and most devastating bullies, learning not how to be healthy, but how to be traumatized.

Every generation has a blond actress that no one can be normal about. That said, I’d rather walk across a wasteland strewn with LEGO pieces or step in dog shit at 2 AM on my way to the bathroom than write about Sydney Sweeney’s ad or explain it. To quote Sam Sanders, “Everything I have learned about Sydney Sweeney, I learned against my will.”

• I just love it when I get to see dingus on dingus violence. In this case, it’s Trump vs. Hawley. And also, it’s Joe Rogan vs. Trump. It’s like that old Irish proverb: Live by the conspiratorial brain worms, die by the conspiratorial brain worms.

• RSS is back, you beautiful nerds!

• WHAT CAN’T WOMEN HOLD?

• Some Celsius cans were accidentally mislabeled as High Noon. And as someone who has had Celsius, I have to say, I probably wouldn’t notice if it made me a little drunk. Also, a little free booze? In this economy? THANK YOU.

• And the AP won its lawsuit against the White House.

• Violent crime rates have fallen! But my own personal thought crimes are up, so good luck to the Minority Report team as they try to catch me.

This week, I snuck away to Galena, Illinois, for a quick overnight. I ate at Fritz and Frites, which is a wonderful German and French fusion restaurant, then got high and watched The Firm.

And while there, I got to tell the incredible story about the time I went to Galena with a former politician (who shall remain nameless) and we heard a ghost say BACON.

Also, Open Mike Eagle has a new album out. And in this house we love Open Mike Eagle!

This week, lawyers for convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell, sometime girlfriend and former associate of Jeffrey Epstein, asked the Supreme Court to hear an appeal of Maxwell’s conviction. In a statement, Maxwell’s lawyer David Oscar Markus also asked President Donald Trump to pardon Maxwell, writing, "We are appealing not only to the Supreme Court but to the President himself to recognize how profoundly unjust it is to scapegoat Ghislaine Maxwell for Epstein’s crimes, especially when the government promised she would not be prosecuted."

“Scapegoat.”

Fox News interviewed a January 6 rioter who was in prison with Maxwell. That former inmate told Fox that Maxwell was a model prisoner who was kind and helpful, and who only mentioned her own case once: to state that prosecutors were not interested in her until “Jeffrey died.”

Maxwell is currently serving a 20-year sentence for her role in Epstein’s scheme to exploit and abuse minors. According to the Justice Department, Maxwell was a key part of Epstein’s plan, identifying vulnerable young girls, befriending them, putting them up in her home, and making them feel grateful. And even, in some cases, participating in the sexual abuse.

Former Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg called Maxwell “the devil’s accomplice.”

I’m fascinated by the way Maxwell is talked about in these stories and the ways in which her legal team is leaning on sexist tropes to clear her name. In her role aiding a monster of the #MeToo Era, Maxwell embodied a particular kind of woman who uses her gender and status to become a body shield for bad men. But she’s also playing the victim now. Claiming to be nothing but a scapegoat, the Eve taking the fall for the sins of man. During her sentencing in 2022, her lawyers implied just that, stating, “Ms. Maxwell cannot and should not bear all the punishment for which Epstein should have been held responsible.”

It’s interesting to compare people’s reactions to Maxwell to the way they respond to Melania Trump. The first lady has not been convicted of any heinous crimes, but she’s also aligned herself to her husband and the work of the White House. Her entire memoir revealed nothing but pride in her husband and his work, but the cultural impulse to see her as a victim of evil men is a relentless and exhausting cultural trope. Even liberals want to whitewash Melania.

Meanwhile, Maxwell has protested her innocence and is playing the victim but has not yet attained any similar level of plausible deniability. Again, she very much was convicted, but the sort of chivalry that takes up the cause of women playing innocent has never been much concerned with a court of law.

There are a million ways of seeing Ghislaine Maxwell. Is she a scapegoat for the crimes of an evil man? An innocent model prisoner, or the devil’s accomplice? A wily criminal desperately clawing for any chance at freedom?

Maxwell is anticipated to testify under oath on Aug. 11 at or near the federal prison where she is currently serving her sentence. And yesterday, when questioned, President Trump seemed open to giving Maxwell a pardon. In an interview on the Daily Beast podcast, former Daily Beast editor Tina Brown said what a lot of political commentators are thinking: that Maxwell could be pardoned if she helps to clear Donald Trump’s name.

Going from aiding one awful man to pleading her case to another. Ghislaine Maxwell is swinging on the monkey bars of power, privilege, and patriarchy.

If you open this newsletter all the time, if you forward it to your friends and family, and if it challenges you to think in different ways, consider becoming a subscriber. I can’t make this newsletter without your support.

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The term “soft girl era” was popularized among Gen Z on TikTok and other social media platforms in 2019 as an aesthetic that embraces femininity, pastels, and a gentle, slow, flowery approach to life. Just as Gen Z began to come of age, the soft girl aesthetic was there to infantilize them.

For a generation of girls becoming women in a post-pandemic world, witnessing the collapse of any social safety net, the revocation of reproductive rights and the seething hostility of men, a retreat into girlhood makes sense.

And yet, the glorification of the soft girl life, of retreat, is also anti-feminist backlash marketed in gentle pinks and yellows. The counterweight to the trope of the angry feminist. It’s a retreat from the world of community and community-based activism to emphasize the individual need for comfort and gentleness.

A “soft girl era” is such a fragile view of femininity. It’s a femininity that is a direct result of the renewed era of toxic masculinity – men as protectors and providers.

Many online complaints about women by men involve women expecting “the princess treatment,” or having a sense of entitlement in dating. And I don’t think this is made up. I hear a lot of my cis-het friends talk about how men should open doors, or always pay, or offer to get the Uber. This expectation derives from a gendered grievance: “If I have to date men in this era, I expect to be taken care of.

I obsessively read the r/NiceGirls subreddit, where men mostly complain about the women they meet on dating apps. The majority of posts are a specific kind of complaint about women’s behavior that arises on apps or during a date, when women demand the men take them to fancy restaurants, or buy them flowers and presents. If I were a man, I would not be happy that someone approached dating me with such economic expectations. And yet, you cannot promote a view of men as protectors and providers, and expect a woman to perceive you and respect you as such, then turn around and complain when women act like widdle babies who want to be coddled.

Even in a time of anti-feminist backlash, Facebook Groups like “Are We Dating the Same Man?” where women compare notes about the violent and/or just crappy men they’ve dated still remain a powerful voice in local communities.

App developers took that need for a woman’s whisper network and made the Tea App. The app claims to have 1.6 million members and aims to create a space for women to exchange information about men in order to stay safe.

This week, the app was hacked by members of 4chan who leaked information about the app’s users online.

So, an app was created for women to safely share information about dangerous men and then that app was hacked by men and the safety of these women was put at risk. It’s a perfect microcosm of gender dynamics in America today.

• “I’ve been very vocal about the genocide of a generation of women by the cosmeceutical industrial complex,” Jamie Lee Curtis told The Guardian in a recently published interview. “I’ve used that word for a long time and I use it specifically because it’s a strong word. I believe that we have wiped out a generation or two of natural human (appearance).” (via CNN)

• The podcast has some thoughts on the recent Republican conference for women.

• Why do people accuse powerful women of secretly being men? (via The 19th)

The conspiracies around the existence and release of Epstein’s alleged client list continue to dominate the news cycle.

The tedious righteousness and the accusations of who is an abuser and who isn’t leak through every conversation about the list. But what is missing, what has always been missing from this conversation, are the voices of Epstein’s accusers.

The stories are there. They exist. The victims are speaking out.

But this conspiracy has never been about justice or about protecting women from abusive men in power. It has always been a political gotcha — another way for political parties to talk about morality without exhibiting any honor. It was politically expedient for President Donald Trump and his base. And now it has become politically expedient for Democrats.

And in the meantime, the real victims are lost in the political huffing and puffing. Everyone wants a political win, but no one wants to listen to women.

It’s 2025 and our country is run by people whose moral core is rottener than Irish potatoes in 1845. Every day there is news about the intentional and cruel starvation of Palestinians; meanwhile, access to health care for the poorest Americans has been slashed so some bald billionaire can fill a swimming pool with gold.

But don’t worry, because Jubilee Media is here to fix it all with the discourse. Jubilee Media is a company that puts out bold videos that ask hard questions like, “Have you ever thought about being more racist?” It is pioneering the media space with ideas like, “What if Reddit but on a video?” Jubilee’s video “1 Republican vs. 25 Kamala Harris Voters (Feat. Ben Shapiro)” was the fifth most-watched piece of election content on YouTube last year.

Jubilee’s founder, Jason Y. Lee, states on the company’s website that “we are all inextricably linked and want to live for something deeper. Living for empathy and human good is a resilient vision, and one that is worthy of pursuit.” Ah yes, the empathy that is engendered by watching Ben Shapiro say misogynistic and racist things about a politician. Whenever I hear Ben Shapiro speak, I do feel something very deep inside me. But previously I just described that as stomach bile.

Despite his company’s track record of trawling the dark depths of the internet for clicks and money via rage-bait, in interviews, Lee continues to push the idea that Jubilee is all about radical empathy. Which totally explains why the videos produced by his company have such deep and thought-provoking subjects, such as “Anorexic vs Obese” and “Flat Earthers vs Scientists: Can We Trust Science?” You know, things that really elevate the discourse with nuanced perspectives like, “Earth flat!” and “I hate your body.”

This is just a craven monetization of the chum bucket of the internet masquerading as some noble quest for human understanding.

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This week, Jubilee made headlines with a viral video featuring British journalist Mehdi Hasan debating a guy who identified himself as Connor, who stated he hates being called a Nazi, because he’d rather be called a fascist and professed a fondness for Francisco Franco. Connor has since been fired from his job, but he’s been raising money on a Christian fundraising platform where people are leaving comments like “It's ok to be white” and “We need a white nation! It’s our only future! Vive le Fascisme!” You know, things that Jesus Christ would say.

This isn’t discourse, this is cheap Debate-Me-Bro culture packaged as videos exploiting our basest desires. America is not made better because you had people debate topics like how many babies can fit on the end of a sword, and do women deserve a little slap when they get mouthy?

This is just a craven monetization of the chum bucket of the internet masquerading as some noble quest for human understanding. We don’t gain anything by hearing a lineup of expired human dairy products say things like, “What if serial killers are actually good?” and “I should be able to play soccer with the heads of homeless people.” (Sorry, I think I just gave Gavin Newsom some ideas for his podcast.)

Just because you get some root-vegetable-ass looking man to say the most harmful thing he can think of doesn’t mean you are having a debate. You haven’t created any sympathy or nuance. All you’ve done is made some cash off the unfiltered ids of the next generation of shopping-mall mass shooters.

If you live in Cornado Alley, this time of year, you are basically breathing in the swamp crotch of agriculture. It’s called corn sweat and it’s the humidity created by the vast amount of corn and soy grown in the American midwest.

It’s a damp soy slurry out there and we are breathing in the armpit of big ag.

Did I mention going outside feels like being steam rollered by the wet hairy back of the Midwest?

Did I mention that going outside feels like being buried alive in hot, soggy tater tots? Drowned in boiling ranch dressing?

In sum, it’s nasty.

In America, we still don’t have universal health care or affordable child care. But we do have taxpayer-funded corn swamp ass.

Every summer we pay homage to the golden yellow phallus by roasting it, buttering it, chomping down on it at fairs, barbecues, and backyard parties, and all the while it is slowly suffocating us with its corn secretions.

The dingus runner-up is a rerun of last year’s “Corn Sweat” dingus newsletter.

When I heard the news that Hulk Hogan died, I thought, “Well that’s one less dingus I have to write about.” But even in death, know that he was a dingus.

Hey, everyone is being really mean to the commander in chief and hurting his widdle feelings over a list of alleged sexual abusers.

And now the president is suing the Wall Street Journal for putting it in the newspaper that he’s in the Epstein files. You just love to see the worst people fight it out.

God bless the Scots.

This week, Planned Parenthood won a partial victory fighting funding cuts in the courts.

And the French prime minister is suing Candace Owens.

Some weeks this is the hardest section to write. It’s not that I don’t enjoy my life; it’s just that it feels really silly to write down that I had a nice time playing games with my kids or I had a really lovely night out with friends when people are starving in Gaza and every news story about America grips me with terror.

I have been underwater these days keeping up with this newsletter and trying to hire a new executive director as part of my work with the Iowa Abortion Access Fund while I begin researching my next book. All the while, I’m trying to get kids to camps, sports practices, music lessons, marching band, sports games, driver’s ed, weight training. I’m sure I’m forgetting something. I’m always forgetting something.

But I do believe we have to squeeze every drop of fun and celebration from the miserly hand of this life whenever we can. Some of my most enjoyable moments this past week have been losing myself in Larry McMurtry’s The Streets of Laredo, which is such a wonderful book, even better than Lonesome Dove, although I do miss the narrative voice of Gus McCrae.

I ate a plate of the best carrots of my life at Cobble Hill.

Sitting on my porch with a glass of mediocre wine, listening to the rain.

I laughed harder at the Trump rally than I wanted to.

It was 90 degrees with no shade, on pavement. People were red-faced, red-hatted, and scrabbling over chairs. But still, it was kind of funny.

When a firework went off, everyone in the crowd flinched, including the president. Then he leaned into the mic. “I don’t like that sound,” he said.

The timing was perfect. It had been almost a year since Trump was shot at a rally — the bullet narrowly missing his head, scraping his ear. A lot of people in the crowd had shirts that depicted that moment: Trump, defiant, raising his fist, blood streaming from his head, surrounded by Secret Service members. We all laughed.

Trump has his performance down pat at this point: the quippy asides, the confusion, the caricature. It’s all just a joke, until the moment it’s not.

When I was on a trip to Ireland this spring, a 50-something Irish man bought me a gin and tonic and confessed he liked to watch Trump’s speeches on television when he was bored. “I don’t like the man, but he is pretty funny.” I took a sip of my drink.

And the man added, “Well, funny for me because it’s not my country.”

There is something brutally comic about Trumpism. And something so deeply unfunny. We shouldn’t be laughing, but here we are, amusing ourselves to death.

Last week, CBS canceled The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, citing financial issues. It is hard making creativity profitable in America. Our overstimulated, exhausted electorate doesn’t have the time or attention span for anything more than quips, clips, and TikToks.

But it’s possible there were other reasons. The show was canceled just days after Colbert criticized CBS’s parent company, Paramount, for paying a $16 million settlement to Trump, who claimed a 60 Minutes interview with then-Vice President Kamala Harris was “unfairly edited.” Colbert called the settlement “a big fat bribe.”

In response to the news of The Late Show’s cancellation, Trump posted on Truth Social that he was glad of the show’s demise, calling Colbert — one of Trump’s most vocal critics — “unfunny.” The joker in chief doesn’t have such a great sense of humor when it comes to himself.

There is something brutally comic about Trumpism. And something so deeply unfunny. We shouldn’t be laughing, but here we are, amusing ourselves to death.

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Recently, a Norwegian man was denied entry into America — in his telling — because he had a meme that made fun of JD Vance on his phone. Meanwhile, the official Department of Homeland Security Instagram account recently shared a meme that declares, “My body is a machine that turns ICE funding into deportations.”

Who gets to be funny in America, and who gets to laugh? Who gets to make the jokes, and who is the butt of them? It’s all about power.

Writing in Politico in 2024 about Trump’s humor, Michael Krause noted that Trump supporters see him as an entertainer, a gadfly; his humor creates a powerful sense of in-group communication. Krause also wrote:

His critics along with experts in rhetoric and nationalist and populist movements and leaders say it helps him turn his opponents into not just enemies but jokes. They say it helps him recast his own liabilities as laughing matters and desensitizes his supporters to his most outrageous comments and proposals — the undermining of institutions, the abandonment of allies, mass deportations and all but outright invitations for Russian invasions and so on. They say the mirth masks the menace.

And the jokes lobbed at Trump become part of the message. At the Trump rally I attended, shirts declared support for “the outlaw and the hillbilly,” a rather aspirational rebranding of Trump’s many legal battles and Vance’s book Hillbilly Elegy.

In a 2024 essay for the New York Review of Books, Fintan O’Toole described Trumpian humor: “The comic mode is what creates the plausible deniability that in turn allows what used to be mainstream Republicans (and some Democrats) to remain in denial about what Trumpism really means.”

Too many people have said they didn’t take Trump seriously when he first ran for president. It was just too much of a farce. We were laughing when we should have been listening. It wasn’t a joke.

Writing this week in the Atlantic, a very funny woman, Alexandra Petri, observed of Trumpian humor:

They are so glad not to have to remember anymore that other people are in the room. What an enormous relief! Finally, they can say it! That is the project of Trumpism: becoming the only people in the room again. Becoming both the protagonists and the intended audience, the only people whose laughter counts.

Trump did not invent the genre of cruel jokes. He didn’t even invent politics as a vaudeville act, but he has made it the cornerstone of his success. He’s easy to listen to — an entertainer before he was ever a statesman. The laughter he incites among his supporters creates an us v. them mentality.

His rallies can be brutal because they’re a space for the world to turn upside down. A place where people can hear the president say what they can’t say in real life. It’s a steam valve, redirecting pent-up rage toward minorities, women, immigrants — anyone and anywhere except the place it should be directed — all with the plausible deniability of humor. What we should do is explode; what we can only do instead is laugh.

Writing in 1985, Neil Postman observed in his prescient Amusing Ourselves to Death, “Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?”

Laughter itself isn’t the problem. It’s a tool, one that can be used for good or for ill. During the last election cycle, the humor of Kamala Harris acted as a foil to the humor of Donald Trump. Liberals extolled the “joy” of Harris’s campaign, while the right saw it as an opportunity for more mockery. Seeing someone as capable of humor gives them humanity; seeing someone as the butt of a joke takes it away.

• The 19th interviewed LGBTQ comedians about being funny in this American moment.

• Fintan O’Toole’s essay for the NYRB is worth reading in full.

• And Michael Krause’s essay on how Trump uses humor was very thorough.

• Also, every week, I try to make jokes about this current moment in my dingus of the week newsletter. A lot of people like it. You should read it.

• Finally, my dear friend has a new comedy special out. If you need something good to laugh at, you should watch it.