Dingus of the week: Kari Lake

Dingus madness tournament winner and Jazzberry wine could be worse

This is the Weekly Dingus. The newsletter where I make some silly little jokes about some awful people, tell you some nice things, and talk about booze. It’s the newsletter that makes everyone except Kari Lake happy.

This week, Kari Lake, a Republican candidate for the Arizona senate and former Iowan, walked back comments she made in 2022 calling for a total abortion ban after an Arizona Supreme Court ruling enacted a total abortion ban. On Tuesday, Lake said in a statement, “I oppose today's ruling, and I am calling on [Democratic Gov.] Katie Hobbs and the state Legislature to come up with an immediate common sense solution that Arizonans can support.”

To be clear, when a politician “walks back” a comment, what they really mean is, “Remember that thing I said that I totally believe in? It turns out to be insanely unpopular so I’d like to pretend I never said it. So if you could all just not hold me accountable for it, that would be great.”

Must be a shame to have to take back the position your party endorses and believes in because of consequences. As we all know, consequences are just nonsense DEI woke ideology created to shame people for doing the things they said they'd do even though it puts other people’s lives at risk. Cause and effect was clearly cooked up in a lab in China and designed to destroy America.

Not Kari Lake and Kyrsten Sinema looking around at the state of women’s rights in Arizona and grabbing their Kohl’s pearls and asking, “How could this happen to us?!”

It happened because you wanted it to, ma’ams. It happened because everything you’ve ever done has led to this moment, where a law created by a pedophile and codified before women could vote is now being held up as legal precedent.

Speaking of legal precedent, that sure didn’t matter when the Supreme Court was taking our rights away. But yeah, sure, let’s toss out Roe and hold up the law made by a guy who impregnated a 14-year-old and was so skeezy even men in the 19th century were concerned about him. Nothing says “we love women and freedom” like clinging to laws that take away women’s freedom.

Great plan. 

But in the meantime, at least if you are a politician and have stated in the past that you want to restrict abortions, at least do us the favor of sticking to your guns (you know, guns, the things that you love more than women). Please spare us the contrived outrage when the VERY THING YOU WANTED TO HAPPEN actually happens.

And if you are a Democrat and you happen to have a hand in this, I hope your Etsy orders never arrive and your ModCloth never fits.

Dingus of the Week: Kyrsten Sinema

And now for something good

c u in hell.

Family Dollars are closing and while they’re blaming “shoplifters” (nice try, but if shoplifting put people out of business grocery stores would end self-check out — don’t ask me how I know, but I know), it turns out when you treat your employees and customers like crap no one wants to shop at you.

Authors are protesting the PEN Literary awards.

Apropos of absolutely nothing that was happening in the world today, I remembered this article about scathing book reviews that did not age well published in the New York Times. 

This Oklahoma family is raising a pod of octopi.

I am going to California in May! COME SEE ME!

This week, I got to cheer on the Iowa Hawkeyes in the NCAA Championship game against South Carolina. They didn’t win, but it was one heck of a game. And it was so fun to cheer for Iowa for a change instead of being irritated at my state for trying to take away my healthcare rights and hating trans people.

Speaking of that, Dawn Staley, the coach of the South Carolina team, said “trans rights”, then proceeded to win, completing an undefeated season.

Also, turns out, everyone loves and cheers for women’s sports.

And it’s no secret I’ve had some rough weeks, but the Sports Bra, a women’s sports bar in Portland, Oregon, sent me a care package! And when I got it, I cried and my daughter proceeded to steal half the t-shirts.

A lot of Americans got together to enjoy the moon and the sun making out and I, for one, think that’s lovely. 

Chasing the dark

The winner of the first annual Dingus Madness tournament is…

THE SUPREME COURT!

You can read my roast of it when it was Dingus of the Week in 2021.

Dingus of the Week: The Supreme Court

Thank you all for voting. Thank you Beau Anderson for organizing that. It was very fun. Also, for those of you who don’t know, Beau is the team captain of the High Fructose Corn Sweat running team that ran 339 miles across the state of Iowa and raised over $5,000 for trans mutual aid and One Iowa. And by god, we will be doing it again this year! (That’s a link to the team Instagram page, for you to follow along!)

What I am drinking

Last week, as I drove my kids to St. Louis for the eclipse, I stopped at a gas station on the Iowa/Illinois border near Dubuque and saw they were selling raspberry dessert wine made by Stone Cliff Winery. I felt like I’ve been letting you all down with this drink section, so for $20.99 I purchased the 18% alcohol Jazzberry wine. 

I want you to know it could have been worse. I was expecting to gag. To want to vomit. I was expecting that it would have the aftertaste of DayQuil. I was expecting that Mary Poppins would serve it to me on a spoon after she magically cleaned my nursery. I was expecting that the origins of this wine would be that pharmacies in the 1800s used to mix it with cocaine to cure your humors. 

It was not any of those things.

What I got instead was a flavor like an all-natural raspberry popsicle. Like just enough acidity so that you know they didn’t make it too sweet, but still sweet. 

So I think that when you keep your expectations super super low, you can be pleasantly surprised.

What my editor is drinking

In my early 20s, when I was but a broke young journalist sharing a tiny basement apartment with a Craiglist roommate, I had the very good fortune to befriend a bartender named Van, who worked at the Indian restaurant under my crummy little newsroom. Every Friday night for years, my broke early-20s friends and I would gather at the restaurant’s bar to eat piles of garlic naan and get absolutely hammered thanks to Van, who at the end of the night would solemnly present us with a check for like four bucks. Recently — a solid 15 years later — I bumped into Van on the street and he invited me out to his new bar. So last night I went there with a group of my friends and had one or five too many of a drink Van calls “The Spy Who Loved Mezcal.” He makes it with Bozal Mezcal, Cointreau, strawberry puree, lime, a touch of ginger and a cocoa rim. It’s absolutely fantastic, I strongly recommend it, and any errors in this week’s Dingus are all my own, with an assist from mezcal. Thanks, Van. —Lyz’s editor