Dingus of the week: Iowa Rep. Jeff Shipley
Plus, we have a merch store
They say local jokes get local work and I try really hard to make this newsletter accessible for all my readers and not just the Midwesterners.
Turns out most of my subscribers are actually from California. Although part of me hopes that’s just because former Iowan and congresswoman Katie Porter subscribed to this newsletter 10,000 times.
That said, I picked a hyperlocal dingus because I believe he illustrates a type of person we all deal with in every facet of our lives. You know him. He’s the unreasonable guy who demands that everyone be more reasonable. The guy who will spend his life trying to take your rights away but then chide you when you get frustrated at him for trying to take your rights away. He’s the type of guy who believes that any American man has the right to shoot someone on his property but if you give him the finger, he insists he’s the real victim here.
Friends, meet Iowa state Representative Jeff Shipley.
This week, Shipley, a Republican from Fairfield, introduced a bill that sought to strip trans Iowans of their civil rights by removing gender identity from the Iowa Civil Rights Act. Shipley has been in the Iowa House since 2019, and every year he’s introduced similar legislation. The legislation drew massive protests from Iowans this week and was not passed out of committee.
Afterward, Shipley took to the site formerly known as Twitter to complain that Iowans were not acting civilly.
That’s right. One the eve of Black History month, a White guy, unironically used the example of Martin Luther King to tell everybody to be a little nicer to him.
You see, just because Shipley wants to take your rights away and make it harder for you to live and exist doesn’t mean he should face any sort of consequences. It’s perfectly fine for him to attack trans people year after year. But the moment someone gives him the finger? Well, whatever happened to the long-gone days of civility? The days when you could make someone’s entire existence illegal and then go home and sleep in your comfy bed and have no one raise their voice at you?
What America needs is more civility. We need more people issuing death threats but in a way that would make the Founding Fathers proud. We must be more like Shipley, who, when he threatens someone, does it in a nice quiet voice. He doesn’t use curse words. No. That would be unseemly. What he does instead is simply try to take away someone’s right to exist and call all queer people mentally ill as a way to delegitimize and dehumanize them. Where he draws the line is all the shouting.
Remember folks, if you are going to legislate away someone’s existence, do it with a smile.
Don’t you remember WWII? Won by love and love alone. Remember MLK? He hugged it out with everyone. Remember Stonewall? The first brick was actually a flower that had been kissed by a small toddler.
Listen, I just don’t know what America is coming to when men who try to legislate hate must then face people who are mad about it. We used to be a society!
And now for something good:
U.S. Senator Tina Smith of Minnesota is perhaps the perfect person.
As my friend Anna told me, “Savage isn’t just a suburb of Minneapolis.”
Also, the dingus’s bill went down in flames. Now to stomp out the 15 thousand other fires of hatred.
Literally everyone loves Taylor Swift, except the woman who told my daughter that the pop star “didn’t know how to keep a man.” In response, my daughter told me, “That’s rich coming from someone without the self-respect to lose hers.” I am terrified of tweens and I have every right to be.
The child tax credit expansion passes the House.
Well, well, look at that. Consequences in Oregon.
Pharmacists prescribing birth control? That’s a great thing!
EVENTS!
When my first book came out, I had a book launch in NYC. But NOT THIS TIME. Why does New York get all the nice things, like Cronuts, and Chloe Sevigny reading them for filth? IOWA DESERVES FUN!
DES MOINES Friday, February 23, at 7pm at Storyhouse Bookpub in Des Moines. There will be divorce cake! Books! And me! Get your tickets.
CHICAGO March 6 at 7pm at Women and Children First in Chicago with Laura Danger of That Darn Chat and the Time to Lean Pod.
MINNEAPOLIS March 20 an event with Magers and Quinn at 7pm. Details to come.
I am still working out the details of other events. I am a swim mom now and all of this is happening during the state season for swim. It’s hard being Swim Mom Simone de Beauvoir, but we sally forth.
What I am drinking:
My dear friend is starting chemo next week. So, on Monday, she and another friend came over and we drank French 75s and ate soft cheeses and all the things she cannot have once she starts chemo. And I made a lot of jokes about cancer, because what else can you do when life has become so ferociously overwhelming? You buy champagne. You eat some cheese. You get tipsy and you laugh and you refuse to cry. Because you can’t cry. Not when there is champagne and cheese. Not when there are friends and memories and long life spent woven together. Still being woven together. So you cheers. You make toasts. You promise that everything will be okay. You make promises you do not know how to keep.
I don’t know how to do this hard, messy life that requires so much of our hearts. I don’t know how to live knowing tragedy is always happening. I can’t close myself off from it. But I also cannot cry because I may never stop. So, here is how I begin, this dining room table that I purchased with the money from the first essay I wrote about my divorce, champagne, cheese, and so many jokes.
I love you all.
But if anyone else gets cancer, I’ll be so mad.
We have merch!
This week, I launched a MYAM merch store. If you are a paying subscriber you get an exclusive code for 10% off. If you aren’t a subscriber, now is the time! It’s just below this little paywall.