Dingus of the week: Casey Means

Thank you, Malort, for these memes we are about to receive

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This week was incredible. We did it. We finally did it. We found a Trump nominee so awful that Republicans finally drew the line. Ed Martin, a right-wing activist who loves to hang out with avowed antisemites — people so antisemitic even the NYT was like, we can put it in the paper of record, this man consorts with antisemites — was floated as a nominee to lead the US Attorney’s Office in D.C. Currently, Martin is serving in the role on an interim basis.

So, congratulations, we found the bottom. And the bottom is a semiliterate, X-posting, Nazi-adjacent Trump lackey whose only regret is that he did not personally menace Mike Pence on January 6, who is deeply unqualified and who couldn’t shut up for the requisite 48 hours it takes to reset the goldfish memory of the political class.

That’s okay, they’ll probably confirm Casey Means, who has been nominated to be surgeon general. Means became the nominee after Trump pulled the nomination of Dr. Janette Nesheiwat after concerns were raised about her medical credentials. To be clear, the problem wasn’t that she wasn’t qualified; it was that she’d misrepresented her qualifications, and also, far-right activist Laura Loomer didn’t like her.

The lesson here isn’t that you can’t be unqualified; it’s that you have to be proud of how unqualified you are. Medical training is for betas and chodes. What are you gonna be, board-certified? More like board-DEIed, amirite? The only real wellness is what you can sell online for $65.99 plus tax, and the wellness you feel in your spirit when you walk through the woods appropriating Native American culture.

Remember when doctors didn’t have to do all that troubling stuff like go to college and then train and then pass tests and get held accountable when people die under their care? Remember a simpler time, an easier time when medicine was just regular guys putting leeches on you and selling snake oil?

Well, good news. The new nominee is Casey Means. Means has a medical degree from Stanford, but dropped out of her residency program to pursue the more lucrative career of online wellness grifter. Means is the head of a company that sells glucose monitors, and she and her brother also sell dietary supplements and creams through their company TrueMed.

Means believes that most of the problems afflicting modern bodies are due to bad energy. That’s right, it’s not heart disease or cancer, that’s killing you; it’s just the vibes.

Did you blow your hand off at your cousin’s Fourth of July BBQ because you had one too many John Deere-themed Bud Lights and decided to light a Roman candle? You don’t need a doctor; you just need to change your energy.

Some far-right activists, including Loomer, don’t like Means because she isn’t anti-vaccine enough. Recently, Loomer tweeted screenshots of a newsletter that Means wrote about finding love after 35, which is a huge medical crisis facing women today. No disease is more malignant than being single, ladies.

Means cured her case of the singles by building a meditation shrine, using mushrooms, working with a guide to visualize success, and doing something called Quantum Neuro Reset Therapy (QNRT). Women will do anything to get off the apps. But the craziest thing Means did was, and I quote, committing to “temporarily decline social events that are just about connecting with girlfriends.”

Ma'am, never abandon your friends! When you abandon your friends you end up talking to trees, because there was no one named Jennifer in the group chat to be like, “Hey, Case, you are losing the plot.”

“What do you mean you are connecting to spirit guides with mediums, Case? Should we call your sister?”

I once told my group chat I was doing Dry January and they called in a wellness check.

And now, in a clear sign of how wild everything has become, I must write the sentence they will read at the Pearly Gates before booting my ass down to Hell: Laura Loomer is right. We are so doomed, aren’t we?

The deep-dish pope

Listen, I was raised Baptist. Whole-ass wars were fought over my right not to care about the pope. Martin Luther didn’t nail 95 theses to a door so I could start fawning over the leader of the Catholic Church. I will not let the Defenestration of Prague happen in vain!

That said, the world has a new pope, and he is a Peruvian American from Chicago, Robert Prevost, who will be known as Pope Leo VIX. The wafer is now deep-dish. The wine is Malort.

People are rightfully excited that this new pope will follow in the footsteps of the previous Woke Pope, but it’s important to understand that he has not embraced a full-throated defense of LGBTQ rights, he’s anti-abortion, and he is leading one of the most powerful and regressive institutions in the world.

That said, he possesses an important characteristic, one that shines above all the others. And no, it’s not that as a guy from Chicago, he can drive on Lower Wacker. It’s that he seems to hate JD Vance.

The two most recent apparent tweets from the Holy Father are aimed at getting the ass of the American vice president. One directly calls out Vance, quoting the headline of a National Catholic Reporter article that argues, “JD Vance is wrong: Jesus doesn't ask us to rank our love for others.“

As you can imagine, the insanely alt-right and online reactionaries immediately declared Prevost to be a “WOKE MARXIST POPE!” and it’s like damn, are you trying to convert me to Catholicism? Don’t threaten me with a good time.

And tonight, when you fall asleep, remind yourself that our chronically online vice president is going to see every single joke that everyone is making about the pope hating him. Also, it seems as if this pope is a little online, so odds are good that the new pope has also seen the memes about JD Vance killing the pope and fucking a couch.

So, bless us, our Lord, with these memes we are about to receive. Amen.

And now for something good

Salt Lake City and Boise made Pride flags their official city emblems so they can keep flying them after Utah and Idaho passed a law banning them at schools and government buildings.

A North Carolina judge finally conceded in an election where he tried to get thousands of votes against him tossed out.

Jaya Saxena won a James Beard award for this marvelous essay about gay food.

Honestly, I thought it was obvious that all raccoons are on meth.

All of you for donating and supporting Team High Fructose Corn Sweat as we run across Iowa this June and raise money for Trans Mutual Aid and the Iowa Abortion Access Fund.

Something I am enjoying

As an old person, I don’t often go to live music on a weeknight. But this week, I went with some friends to listen to a metal band in Iowa City. It was very fun, actually, to be out and meet people and drink beer and listen to music so loud I couldn’t hear my own thoughts.

The room was small, the crowd even smaller, but still people moshed and got too close. It was hot and sweaty and smelled of yeasty beer and eager bodies. And it felt like such a deeply human experience. As a kid going to church, I convinced myself that there were moments when the congregation was singing hymns that angels would join in, because the effect of our voices all together as the music faded felt divine. I believed that I wasn’t one individual, but one of many, joined together through our voices. I thought it was God, until, as an adult, I started going to concerts.

It’s called collective effervescence — that feeling when your sense of self merges with the people around you as you engage in a collective event. It’s an experience that fills the human need for belonging and connection. And I had it, at Gabe’s on a Tuesday night in Iowa City. And in a world where our last lingering human connections are being replaced by AI, it was very wonderful and I am still tired.