Dingus of the week: Megyn Kelly

Please, my son, he is very poly cotton

The weekly dingus would not exist without paying subscribers. The dingus newsletter is where I make fun of someone or something in the news that’s all made our lives a little worse. And remember, I’ve been calling these weird little dinguses weird since 2021. Am I saying I was Tim Walzing before being Tim Walzing was cool? Maybe.

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Back in 2020, when I first began writing the dingus of the week, I crowned Megyn Kelly as the second-ever dingus for complaining that liberals were attacking her. At the time I wrote:

The dogpiling on Kelly was delicious. A beautiful post-election cocktail of shut-the-fuck-uppery that we all needed. Because for too long we’ve been watching conservatives spew vile racisms, while liberals grab their pearls and say, “Don’t boo, vote.” Nah, you can boo and you can vote. And you can do both aggressively.

The idea of civility is just the window dressing of moral cowardice. If more Americans got used to calling evil evil instead of bending over backward trying to make excuses for it, instead of interviewing it in diners and saying, Welllll, the left doesn’t understand! We’d have a little bit less of it.

I bring it up because, four years later, we finally learned how to boo and Megyn Kelly is still annoying.

(Also, this is a reminder to subscribe, because the weekly dingus has been correct since 2020.)

The more things change, the more they stay the same. And this is comforting in a way, because as long as I have former Fox News hosts to make fun of, my kids will be able to go to college. Unlike fossil fuels, dingii are a renewable resource and they make a lot of them at the Murdoch Factory.

This week, Megyn Kelly joins the ranks of the twice-crowned dingii for hopping on the bandwagon of calling Minnesota Governor and vice presidential candidate Tim Walz  “Tampon Tim.”

The moniker came about because Republicans wanted to stigmatize Walz for signing a bill that provided free menstrual products to kids in Minnesota public schools. And Megyn Kelly, who brings shame to all of us with errant Ys in our name, was outraged. How dare politicians provide free period products for kids? Like what iniquitous act is next? Giving children free lunch? Can you imagine? Kids going to school and not having to worry about food insecurity? The very thought makes me recoil in horror.

Okay, I am hearing they did that and everyone loves it.

Let’s try again.

WHAT GODFORSAKEN, NOISSOME, HATCHED FROM THE LOINS OF BEELZEBUB HIMSELF HORROR IS NEXT? LETTING PARENTS TAKE PAID LEAVE TO TAKE CARE OF THEIR INFANTS?

Nevermind, also hearing Walz did that too and it’s going great.

Okay… WHAT MAGGOTY PUKETASTIC DAMNABLE AWFUL ACT THAT WOULD MAKE EVEN SATAN SCREECH IN HORROR IS NEXT? MAKING IT EASIER TO VOTE?

Wait, he did that too. And uh, making it easier to vote makes our democracy better? Okay, well, shit.

Kelly and other Republicans stated that Walz had forced schools to put tampons in boys’ bathrooms. The reality is, the bill was worded in a gender-neutral way to allow for all kids, regardless of their sex assigned at birth, to access period products and many Republicans voted for the bill.

It’s a stupid nickname, because as writer and podcaster Patricia Elzie-Tuttle points out “Timpon was right there!” If you are going to give someone a devastating nickname you have to at least make it good.

And I should know. I was once formally reprimanded for calling congresswoman Ashley Hinson’s chief of staff, a grown man named Jimmy Peacock, “Jimothy.” Do you know how hard it is not to burst out laughing in an HR meeting when everyone is mad at you for saying “Jimothy” online? VERY HARD. That day, I disappointed Glennon Doyle, and I did not do hard things.

Also, are we 7? Is just saying “tampon” enough to be funny? Actually, with respect to 7-year-olds, I don’t know many who think the word tampon is funny. Like, are we so outraged by the fact that women have bodies that “tampon” is some sort of slur? Although I guess if you spent all your waking political hours trying to find ways to misunderstand the very basic science of how bodies work and then building laws based on that, you too might be confused and terrified by a tampon.

Like have you seen what happens when a boy touches a tampon? You wouldn’t like to see it. Oh sure, he seems fine at first. But slowly over time cotton fibers invade his bloodstream, bit by bit, his fingers become whiter, his body absorbs water at a higher rate, he begins to feel softer and more textured, he shrinks at first wash. HE IS NO LONGER YOUR SON! HE TRANSITIONED INTO A POLY COTTON BLEND!

*Me walking into a fabric store, a scrap of cloth in my hands. I am weeping. “Please, my son, he is very cotton.”

But the bottom line is, if you are going to nickname someone you have to say (and I am just spitballing here) — Megyn Kelly has scrambled Megs for brains. Or she’s a Meganderthal. Megytron because she’s also a leader of deceptions. MegXYn Kelly because she won’t shut up about Y chromosomes.  Or how about the simple Megyn “remember when I would not stop talking about blackface and got my show canceled” Kelly?¹

But no, Republicans are not going to be creative or interesting, and that’s just them Megspresso. 

And now for something good

Giant pandas! At the San Diego zoo!

In the UK, huge groups of people are gathering to block far-right rallies.

Tim Walz says TRANS RIGHTS. And it’s so great and sadly too rare to hear politicians say that.

Peggy Flanagan could become the country’s first Native American woman governor.

This is good news that comes with the qualification of it’s about damn time, but health officials are asking doctors to do literally one thing about IUD insertion pain. As someone who has a very high pain threshold (it’s called being a woman, babe, look it up), I almost passed out from the pain of my IUD insertion and was fully unprepared for it. So, good. Finally.

Giant sparkly clams!

What I am drinking

It’s a week of drinking water. I think I had one beer on Monday night and that’s it. There is one week left before school starts here in Iowa and I am so busy. Additionally, my son’s soccer camp is this week. The “camp” lasts only for an hour and a half in the middle of the morning because this soccer camp is apparently part of Project 2025, designed to get mothers fired from their jobs. So, I’ve had to drive 20 minutes to the camp, turn around, drive 20 minutes back. Work for 45 minutes. Go back to pick him up.  And oh, what’s that? No sure, I’ll pick up his friend too because it turns out his mom also has a job. 

August is the February of summer. I don’t make the rules. Drink water. Stay safe, we are almost there. And by there, I mean Halloween!

1. Thank you to my friend Kate, who helped me make these very, very stupid jokes. It’s important that you know, while those jokes are very idiotic, they’re still better than “Tampon Tim.”