I love to live in America, a country where every day you wake up feeling like Pete Hegseth personally knocked you in the face with a skateboard, and you get to play my favorite little game, “Am I Dying?”
Is it the stress of knowing my health care costs are rising, and so are the costs of my medications?
The rising cost of literally everything due to tariffs? The only thing Trump hasn’t put a tariff on is stupidity, because that would amount to a tax on the wealthy.
Was my pillow positioned incorrectly, thereby causing a pain in my body so severe that it has me confessing to kidnapping the Lindbergh baby?
Is it allergies, which have gotten worse thanks to global climate change and a country that thinks polluting the environment has no consequences?
Is it the knowledge that the administration is sending armed ICE agents into people’s homes without warrants and disappearing them without due process?
Perimenopause?
Blond influencers on Instagram keep telling me to wake up early, splash my face with spring water, and eat more protein. But no amount of protein powder is going to defend me against the rising tide of authoritarianism. Maybe I need some creatine?
At no point has eating more boneless skinless chicken breast made me feel better, and the water in Iowa is poisoned, so at this point I’m just going to take up smoking, swallow seven Tylenol each morning, and bathe in red dye #3 until the microplastics in my brain become sentient and take over.
Welcome, my friends, to the Dingus of the Week newsletter. Each Friday, I make fun of someone or something in the news that has made our lives just a little or a lot worse.
In a time when Jimmy Fallon is being a coward and Stephen Colbert is being canceled, I think it’s even more important to make jokes and to laugh at the army of lobotomized incels running our country. To quote the late and great Molly Ivins, “Satire is traditionally the weapon of the powerless against the powerful.”
This week, Dunning-Kruger poster boy Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called all the nation’s generals into a room to give them a 40-minute speech that could have been a three-minute TikTok, which could have been a 10-second skateboard to the nuts, or alternatively, an email.
Traditionally, the military does not like to gather all its top commanders into one room because it’s too tempting to our greatest enemies, who continue to target America, our freedoms, and our way of life.
By which I mean other white men.
But Pete, who looks like a nondenominational youth pastor just seconds away from being discovered on Grindr, had an important message that could not be an email, a Zoom call, or a TikTok.
For days leading up to the event, news commentators wondered what the message could be that was so important. What could the man who looks like if Yakety Sax was a person and also drunk have to say to the leaders of the greatest military presence in the world?
It’s not like I had high hopes for Hegseth. Trump’s administration so far is being run by crooks, dorks, brainworms, and sentient lip filler. But Hegseth, a man so sauced even Prego won’t jar him, spent millions of taxpayer money on the day the government shut down to gather everyone together and tell them to stop being so fat.
Well, listen up chucklefucks, because Pete Hegseth downed a 32oz of vodka and rolled onto that stage and delivered a rousing address to the military that makes the St. Crispin’s Day speech look like a PowerPoint from Brenda in HR.
What did he tell them? Not to get fat.
It’s not like I had high hopes for Hegseth. Trump’s second administration is run wholly by crooks, dorks, brainworms, and sentient lip filler. But Hegseth, a man so sauced even Prego won’t jar him, spent millions of taxpayer money on the day the government shut down to gather everyone together and tell them to stop being so fat.
Anyway, here’s Pete Hegseth hitting himself in the nuts.
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Dingus of the week: Pete Hegseth
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And now for something good
This week, past DotW winner Eric Adams dropped out of the NYC mayoral race, leaving America’s largest village in want of an idiot. RIP to the campaign of a man who made Mr. Bean look like Albert Einstein. (New Yorkers, the nation is counting on you to bear in mind that Andrew Cuomo has spent tens of millions of dollars of your money to defend himself in multiple sexual harassment lawsuits. Please do the right thing.)
The beloved children’s television show “Reading Rainbow” is coming back. This time, the host will be Mychal Threets, the internet’s favorite librarian.
Happy Taylor Swift Day to all who celebrate.
And Philadelphia has its first queer women’s sports bar!
Mark Duplass launched a production fund for queer filmmakers.
Garrett Bucks and Sarah Wheeler have a new podcast. And you know what? That’s very good news.
Like so many ambitious girls who grew up to be called “difficult” women, I loved Jane Goodall. And while I am sad that she died this week, she led an incredible life.
In response to the president’s repeated attacks on the First Amendment, Jane Fonda is reviving a Cold War-era activist group. I really loved the deep dive that one of my favorite podcasts, You Must Remember This, did on Jane Fonda and Jean Seberg. It’s worth listening to recall the smear campaigns that the FBI orchestrated against these women and how so many people believed them and still do.
Something I am enjoying
This week, I am in Maine to run a writing workshop hosted by the MidCoast Villager. The Villager is a small, local, independent newspaper run by my friends Alex Seitz-Wald and Willy Blackmore, who edit the paper, and Lucia Graves, who works on the marketing side.
What a delight to see my friends and spend time in the beautiful world they live in. I ate at Primo, one of the best restaurants in Maine, and made so many jokes about “airy balls” I thought I was going to get kicked out of the place.
The workshop was designed to drive revenue to the paper, which, like so many small newspapers in America, is struggling. But we need these papers and these voices. We need to tell these stories because they are a record of our lives and the things that give them meaning. And even if these stories feel small and inconsequential, in the overwhelming onslaught of a world of genocide and attacks on our democracy, they are the very texture of our lives. Sure, maybe a story about road construction on Highway 1A isn’t the most glamorous thing to write, but it’s far more important to the people who need that highway to get to work than a profile of a famous actress. Every story about a new restaurant is the story of someone’s dream, someone’s future hope. Every story about a high school athlete is a story of triumph. Every story about a local artist is the story of artistic freedom and vision. And every single time we write a story that tells the truth about our lives, even just the fact that we existed, and ate food, and had one glorious night, we leave a reminder that we lived and that we mattered.
I walked into my therapist’s office last week with 44 oz of red dye #3 and aspartame (diet Dr. pepper). I told her that I’d typically be embarrassed about my addiction, but at this point she should be glad I’m not smoking in her office (yet).
Every paragraph in the first part of your post made me laugh out loud. I'm glad you enjoyed the workshop in Camden; I have friends who work at the paper and they're all working hard to break the mold so they can survive.