Dingus of the Week: The “Liberal” Who Is Forced To Be Conservative

You did this to me.

Hello and welcome to the Weekly Dingus. If you are new here, this is the Friday newsletter where I make fun of something or someone in the news that is especially dingusy. Then, I share some good things as a palate cleanser and a drink recipe. More and more people are relying on the dingus as their last grasp on sanity as they observe the decline of mankind one tweet at a time.

This week, the dingus is the man who used to be so liberal until you chuds forced him to spend the rest of his life angry about an M&M changing it’s footwear. Let’s hear from him now.

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Listen up nerds, it’s me a man who was definitely liberal. I was so liberal I work for a Libertarian think tank and think that yeah, feminism totally went a little too far. And maybe all those protestors should shout a little less, smile a smidge more, and make their signs a little nicer. Perhaps when you write, “We want reproductive rights!” You could add little flowers? Or when you write, “You are legislating us out of existence” you could draw a little heart. It makes me want to oppress you more when you sound so sad and desperate. And that’s on you.

Rebecca Solnit @RebeccaSolnit

What is clear to me in so many of these frameworks is that progressives/liberals/Democrats are imagined as the wife whose job it is to keep the Republicans/the right/the husband in line by being nice and calm and not upsetting him. Otherwise "she made him do it."

A.J. Bauer @ajbauer

OPINION | If DeSantis wins, the libs are to blame https://t.co/5h13tmnHLt

And I was so liberal until you all cancel cultured me into being conservative. That’s right. One time someone told me to perhaps not say a slightly racist thing and I flew into a blind rage and was forced to vote for Donald John Trump.  And it’s your fault. You did this. How did that work out for us? All our American norms stomped on harder than a New York City curb. A few Federal laws were casually forgotten. Some rights were repealed. But not mine.

I was such a good liberal once. I did very liberal things like give the poor people my expired caviar and dabbled in some light tax fraud. That is, I was liberal, until someone said, “it’s not nice to kick puppies, please stop.” So much for the idea of “liberal tolerance.” Libs really show their hypocrisy when they say things like, “Stop knocking ice cream cones out of the hands of small children. What is wrong with you?” After those experiences, I’ve had no choice but to spend the rest of my life angry about “trigger warnings”, and kissing my poster of Ronald Regan every night before bed.

So, I’m here to warn you. If you don’t stop talking about how these candidates are doing bad things like banning books, defunding public schools, and making it legal to bully trans kids, I might be forced to vote for one of them. And is that what you want? Is it?

Can’t we just have a simple friendly conversation without you saying “Sir, my name isn’t broad, it’s Samantha”?

Listen, every time you tell me not to stare at your boobs when I talk to you, you push me one step further to reanimating the corpse of Jefferson Davis and personally installing him into the Oval Office. Is that what you want?

And Now For Something Good:

• This week, I wrote about the bills across the country that harm children under the guise of helping them. It got a lot of strong reactions. And I do want to point out, that if that essay left you feeling sad, please go support the people who are part of the solution. You can donate to the Iowa Trans Mutual Aid and One Iowa. Also, on March 1, students across the state organized walkouts to protest those very same laws.

• Also, Dave Grohl is just casually out here feeding people BBQ.

GoodNewsCorrespondent @GoodNewsCorres1

The Foo Fighters lead quietly showed up Feb 22 with his own massive smoker & trucks worth of food to Hope the Mission— ready to help those in need by barbecuing for 24 hrs (with nap breaks) to feed homeless people in LA. He & friends prepared over 500 meals for three shelters.

• Lizzo is just out here casually singing Rammstein’s “Du Hast.”

• This guy is just casually out here putting mullets on all the presidents.

Cam Harless @hamcarless

Alright, dudes. I made a poster for all who have mentioned or asked for one. You can grab one on my etsy here: etsy.com/listing/142890… Feel free to look around and see if there's anything else that pops out at you. Let me know if you want a shirt and I will put one together.

• Erin Somers is just CASUALLY out here creating a wonderful magazine called Still Alive and its about people and things that are, that’s right, still alive. Read this essay about Joan Baez.

• David Grann is just out here casually writing books about mutiny and cannibalism.

• Canada just casually out here being awesome.

What I Am Drinking:

On Wednesday night, I was woken up to the sound of a small child puking on my floor. And that set the tone for my Thursday, which was mostly spend scrubbing the floors of both bathrooms and two bedrooms, where the vomit landed.

I need you to know about the splash range a 9 year old' can get when he pukes off the side of his lofted bed. I was scrubbing lamp cords. Washing curtains. Wiping down the inside of the closet door. The police are now using me as a vomit-splatter analyst.

You can imagine how I feel about liquids at this moment.

Tomorrow, I will be driving to Chicago to go visit the Aviary with my sister. In 2019, I was going through my cookbook era — reading about flavor and texture but not actually cooking. Cookbooks have such delightful gems in them. I love Ruth Reichl’s The Gourmet Cookbook for its explainers on the different kinds of rice and how to cut whole foie gras. I personally have never cut foie gras and perhaps never will. But there is beauty in reading about how to hold the knife just so. And the Au Pied De Cochon cookbook has a lovely passage about “happy pigs” that I think about a lot.

That year, a friend loaned me the Aviary cocktail book. With its large, glossy photos and absolutely off-the-wall drinks, that use ingredients like clarified banana liqueur and red curry tincture, it felt more like a fever dream than an actual cookbook. And so, I wanted to go. As you can imagine, a lot in America happened between the fall of 2019 and now. 

 But it is time.

This is a live picture of me at the Aviary.

Have a lovely weekend!