Dingus of the Week: Where Are They Now Edition?

Undaunted, dehydrated, and divorced. We check in on some past dinguses.

The weekly dingus has been a regular feature of this newsletter for three years now. The weekly dingus is the Friday newsletter where I make fun of someone or something in the news that is making our lives just a little bit more awful than they have to be.

And so, I decided¹ that maybe we should check in on a few former dinguses, see how they are doing and if they’ve repented of their ways? The answers will not shock or surprise you. They are deranged, divorced, dehydrated, and detained.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot: Last year, Chicago’s former mayor Lori Lightfoot was declared the dingus for her plan to close down Chicago for NASCAR. Well, the good mayor was voted out of office, but in America, you can fail up into Harvard. And the NASCAR race? Well, it is still happening. Good luck, Chicago. I’m sorry that aggro dudes in cars are gonna drive circles around your city. But to be fair, it probably won’t be that much different than normal traffic.

Milk: Milk, my absolute nemesis and eternal dingus, continues to be full of lactose and truly only for babies. Milk did make a comeback when I had an amazing boozy milkshake in Chicago back in March. But truly, the dairy lobby has a stranglehold on our culture. This April, the USDA funded a satirical ad mocking milk substitutes and in the process, the federal agency has maybe, probably, violated federal law.

The Olympics: Two-time award-winning dingus continues with its jingoistic-flag-humping-lightly-racist-rules agenda and is now going to let AI be the cops. In advance of the 2024 Paris Olympics, the French National Assembly approved of a plan for artificial intelligence-driven video surveillance to detect suspicious activity. And I, for one, am not excited about this futuristic Minority Report/Olympics mashup.

Andrew Tate: Andrew Tate remains the most imprisoned dingus of them all. He’s under house arrest and being investigated for human trafficking and rape. And this week, a fourth woman joined a civil case against him.

Kyrsten Sinema: America’s manic-pixie-nightmare obstructionist is currently being out-fundraised by her primary challenger, and abandoned by reproductive rights groups. And desperately trying to rehab her image from a frustrating elected official who held up key reforms, to a quirky independent who hates political labels and wears polka-dots. You know, lol, just someone out here making it all about her, as if politics is all an episode of a funny little sitcom, instead of what it actually is, the process of building coalitions and working with people to keep America running and not running over our rights.

Nate Silver: Laid off.

Lauren Bobert: Now trailing Elon Musk as the second-most divorced dingus in America.

George Santos: The untalented Mr. Ripley got charged with fraud and some other stuff. And is facing the find-out portion of all his fucking around.

In sum, the dinguses of America continue to soldier on.

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As you read this, I and 10 other people will be running a relay across the state of Iowa to raise money for Trans Mutual Aid and One Iowa. Our team is named High Fructose Corn Sweat and if you want to support us, you can donate to One Iowa or the Trans Mutual Aid fund. Chuck Grassley might do a 99-county tour, but we are running 339 miles from Sioux City to Dubuque for trans rights!

You can also track our progress here! And I will be posting updates on my Instagram account. And if your life needs more awkward selfies of me and dog pics, please follow along over there.

An earnest moment here: So many of the people on this team are people from this newsletter community. And yes, running a 339-mile relay across the state of Iowa might be a technically unhinged thing to do, but I’m so excited about this newsletter we built and the community we created. And it’s a reminder of how hungry people are for hope and community and doing good things for our friends and neighbors. So many people on our team are LGBTQ people who live in this red state. And running with them matters and running for them matters.

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And Now For Something Good:

• More indictments for the former President! What a week!

• The Supreme Court actually did something good for once and ruled that heavily gerrymandered maps in Alabama were unconstitutional. The ruling upheld a lower court ruling that the redistricted maps denied Black people in Alabama another congressional representative. The ruling comes as a surprise, because John Roberts and Brett Kavanaugh joined the liberal justices in making this decision. Clarence Thomas is big mad though.

• Not me, checkin in on James Dobson. How you feelin’, big guy?

• Louisiana State Senator Fred Mills, a Republican, helped kill a bill that would ban transgender affirming care for minors. And he continues to remain unfazed by the backlash from his own party, noting, ”All the testimony I heard by the proponents that children are getting mutilated, I didn’t see it in the statistics.” 

• It’s easier to get married at the age of 12 in most states than it is to get a divorce. So, thank you Connecticut to becoming only the EIGTH state in America to outright ban child marriage, no exceptions.

What I Am Drinking:

This week, I didn’t drink much because of race training and trying to stay hydrated and healthy. But I did meet the owner of Dundee Books in Omaha, who told me she’s mixing elderflower liqueur with tequila, which sounds like a delightful choice. And please let me know what you are drinking, because I’ll need to celebrate when this race is over.

1. This was not my idea at all. That sentence is a lie. This idea was the brain child of newsletter friend Beau Anderson.