Dingus of the Week: *takes drag of cigarette* fine, it’s Ezra Klein
I saw Goody Proctor getting health care!
Last week, Ezra Klein was runner-up for Dingus of the Week for surgically removing his own spine and tossing it in the garbage disposal of punditry. As I wrote then:
…no one was working harder to aid and abet the cause of fascism than Ezra Klein, the New York Times columnist and podcaster, who rushed to defend Charlie Kirk’s legacy from Kirk’s own words. Literally no one was asking him to do this, but he was like, “Oh, we need a reasonable centrist to provide a veneer to hate? I VOLUNTEER AS TRIBUTE!”
It’s the stupidest Hunger Games of all time.1
And I thought I was done writing about Klein and his backbone of soggy toilet paper. But he was back this week with a new proposal: Democrats, stop running on abortion rights.
My view is that a lot of people who embrace alarm don’t embrace what I think obviously follows from that alarm, which is the willingness to make strategic and political decisions you find personally discomfiting, even though they are obviously more likely to help you win.
Taking political positions that’ll make it more likely to win Senate seats in Kansas and Ohio and Missouri. Trying to open your coalition to people you didn’t want it open to before. Running pro-life Democrats.
That’s right, you little weasels: A white guy with a beard is here to tell you how to win an election. So put down your matcha lattes or whatever bisexual beverages you drink and LISTEN UP. Here is the plan: To stop authoritarianism, you must give up all your rights. And by “you” Ezra Klein means anyone not him.
Oh you don’t get it? Let me explain again, because I think there was vegan cheese in your ears. In a country where people’s rights are being stripped away and an authoritarian president is actively silencing voices of dissent, Klein’s brilliant idea (derogatory) is to toss even more rights overboard.
Some of you may die, but that is a sacrifice he’s willing to make!
Klein is arguing that Democrats must run candidates who oppose a policy that is so popular even Republicans showed up in red states to pass measures protecting the right to an abortion.
A Pew study this year found 85 percent of Democrats and 41 percent of Republicans believe that abortion should be legal in all or most cases. Abortion rights are one of the few things Americans agree on, alongside hamburgers are good and Mitch McConnell is bad.
As you can see, Klein — who is so much smarter than you, with your little pea brain — has made a compelling case: We must simply toss your rights off this boat, as though sacrificing Jonah to the whale, to calm the storms of fascism in America.
What a choice to look at the vast hellscape of American democracy and think, “Okay, the solution is depriving half these people of even more of their rights.”
Ezra Klein is so quick to yeet people’s rights out the window you have to wonder how much he actually believes in them. If Ezra Klein had to make Sophie’s Choice he’d be like “fuck all dem kids.”
If Klein were King Solomon and two women each claimed the same baby was theirs, his solution would be to take away their right to health care and tell them Charlie Kirk was a hero.
Faced with the Gordian Knot, Ezra Klein would interview three pro-knot pundits and write a 700-word op-ed arguing that dialogue with the knot is the only way to fix America.2
Ezra Klein in the French Revolution would spend the entire time chiding the sans-culottes for not wearing pants.
Ezra Klein during the Salem Witch Trials would be like, “I saw Goody Proctor getting health care!”
With Democrats like these, we don’t need Trump and his supporters to take our rights away. We’ll do it ourselves.
Dingus Runner-Up: Jeremy Carl
A Trump State Department nominee has been busy cleaning up his past on social media, where he promoted the racist “Great Replacement” conspiracy, said Nancy Pelosi should be prosecuted, and accused all Democrats of being evil fascists.
In any other era of American history these tweets would get him sent off to run the Heritage Foundation. But it’s Trump’s America, so really the dingusry here is that he tried to delete them and did a crap job at it. Also, if he’d doubled down on them and gotten some lip filler, he could be running the Department of Homeland Security.
Where are those dinguses now?
Ryan Walters, a two-time dingus winner whom you may know as that perpetually damp-looking man from Oklahoma who thinks the Bible belongs in classrooms and porn belongs on his work computer, has resigned his role leading Oklahoma’s schools. That must have been some serious (alleged) porn, my guy.
Cancel culture has gone too far when men simply cannot (allegedly) watch porn on their work computers during meetings. But Walters, unlike Carl, parlayed his right-wing extremism into a job with a conservative nonprofit. And I am sure he will be back.
And now for something good
Global philanthropies are working together to make a promising HIV treatment more widely available.
While not a cure, researchers have been able to treat Huntington’s for the first time, offering a glimmer of hope for people who suffer from the disease and their families.
MacKenzie Scott literally cannot give all her money away. But she’s trying, bless her. This week she donated $70 million to HBCUs.
Chicago gets an all-women’s sports bar!
There is some great news for rabies vaccines!
And the worst person we know, past dingus winner Ted Cruz, actually made some good points.
Fat Bear week continues! Fat Bear week is sponsored by the National Park Service and is like a March Madness bracket where bears go compete for the fattest among them right before hibernation kicks in. This year there is a bear named Flotato, because he naps and floats. Here are some pictures of Flotato, our bear king. If Flotato doesn’t win, I’m going to make January 6 look like a 5-year-old’s birthday party, I swear to god.
Just a reminder that while politicians and pundits continue to let us down, we are the hope here in America. Shout out to all the people protesting ICE. Are you all chiropractors? Because you are out here showing us what a spine looks like.
Shout out to all the people protesting ICE. Are you all chiropractors? Because you are out here showing us what a spine looks like.
Something I am enjoying
This summer, I finally got my backyard landscaped to handle some lingering derecho damage to the retaining wall and fence. And while I was at it, I had the back patio redone, and, I am ashamed to admit, a water feature put in. (It runs off recycled rainwater!)
I spend at least 80 percent of my time at home on my back porch. Even when it’s cold and snowy, I’ve been known to wrap up in a robe, stuff chips in my pocket, grab a heated blanket and have some whiskey out there. The porch was the reason I fell in love with this house. And the backyard has these two gorgeous pine trees that somehow survived the derecho, and we put up a hammock between them, where my kids play a game they call “legitment” where they spin each other around in the hammock until I’m sure someone is going to die.
Perhaps, in hindsight, I picked the best summer of my life to do this project. Road construction in front of my house, plus the backyard construction, plus being busy as hell, meant my house has been perpetually dirty and I’ve been stressed out. In my defense, usually when you ask a company to do a big project, they are like, “We will fit you in … in 18 months.” When I was trying to get renovations done on my bathroom, I had to beg the company, “Please do it before my son hits puberty!” And they did, barely.
But the backyard is done now. And the past couple of mornings I’ve spent outside in a chair, reading books, listening to the water, trying to forget about the decline of man.
And yesterday, I took some time off to plant an offensive amount of hydrangeas. It occurred to me that when the apocalypse settles in, the survivalists who camp out at my house will curse me for focusing on pretty flowers over vegetables, but I’ll be too busy being conscripted into nannying for Andrew Tate’s kids to care.
In case you missed it, I wrote my favorite set of jokes in 2025 about the stupidest Hunger Games of all time. So, you should definitely read them. What else are you going to do? Not laugh/cry at the fall of man?
Meanwhile, I am being carted away for writing that Gordian Knots don’t have mouths or brains and cannot dialogue. But JD Vance accuses of me of having anti-knot bias.
Every time I see that picture of Ezra Klein I remember when I was 22 and in Teach for America and every man I knew grew a (scraggly, embarrassing) beard to try to prove he wasn't totally out of his depth in a classroom.
First of all, one can never have too many hydrangeas. Second, Klein sounds like all of those guys who used to say abortion is only a social issue and not very important in the grand scheme of things. I am not making this up. This has been a common response of men for decades. I am old and I was there.