Hi! Welcome to the Weekly Dingus, my Friday newsletter, where I round up my internet reads, share a drink, and yell about a dingus. Is that dingus a politician? A boat in a canal? My dog? Or maybe it’s just pants. You can read about past weekly dinguses in the archives.
This week, Kentucky Congressman Rand Paul disclosed that his wife invested in Gilead, a company that makes COVID-19 treatments. Kelley Paul’s stock purchase came right after Congress had been briefed on the virus, but before the public fully understood the scope of the pandemic. Let me just quote from the Washington Post here:
The Republican filed a mandatory disclosure Wednesday revealing on Feb. 26, 2020 that Kelley Paul purchased somewhere between $1,001 and $15,000 worth of stock in Gilead, which makes the antiviral drug remdesivir. Under a 2012 law called the Stock Act, which was enacted to stop lawmakers from trading on insider information, any such sale should have been reported within 45 days.
And what do you think Rand Paul has been doing for the past 16 months besides insider trading? Oh that’s right, spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and the 2020 election. And in case you also forgot, in early 2020, when Americans were staying at home, Paul was out, attending fundraisers and going to the gym, all the while asymptomatic with COVID. He got tested and tested positive at a time when COVID tests were rare and masks were impossible to find. And he did this all while holding up the passage of a coronavirus relief bill that made it possible for Americans to get tested for free. Why did he do that? Because he wanted to bloviate about the deficit.
And let’s not forget the time when Dr. Anthony Fauci essentially called Paul a dingus straight to his face.
And as the Delta variant causes huge surges, Paul is out there again, telling people to refuse to stay home and to stay defiant in the face of government efforts to stop people from dying. His YouTube videos keep getting taken down because they spread COVID-19 misinformation. YouTube is basically the drunk, negligent, divorced dad of the social media parents. Never around to enforce the rules and allows very problematic behavior. So, listen, when YouTube tells you you’ve gone too far, you know it’s bad.
To boil it all down, in addition to being a walking superspreader, Paul has been all but encouraging people to contract a deadly and novel virus, while his wife invested in a company that sells antiviral drugs. But the worst part is, they weren’t even good at being evil. And listen, if you are going to go out there and basically use your voice and platform to encourage people to endanger their lives, at least be smart enough to profit.
However, unlike former Republican Sens. Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, who also did some pandemic stock speculating, the Pauls apparently lost money on the investment.
Rand Paul is like the knockoff David Perdue, which might be the most cursed sentence I’ve written yet.
What I’ve Been Reading:
On vacation I read Of Women and Salt, which is a beautiful novel about Cuban women, immigration, and survival. I also read a book I’ve wanted to read for a long time, Creating Anna Karenina by Bob Blaisdell. My minor in college was Russian history and language and that means that I am an absolute nerd about Tolstoy and the Russian masters. I mean, messy family drama married with money and politics and religion? Sign me up! The past couple of years my book reading has been mostly limited to books by friends and books for research. So, I have loved just getting deep into the world of Tolstoy, who, it would seem, was an absolute nightmare. And I love that he basically tried to solve the literacy crisis in Russia instead of working on his books. I also love that he wrote horrible essays about life and art and faith. And Blaisdell, who loves Tolstoy a little too much, is like, “Uh, yeah, he should have stuck to fiction.” I don’t love how Blaisdell aggressively questions Sofia Tolstoy’s accounts and finds fault with them, while deferring to Tolstoy. Sure, she had an agenda in her memoir, but he has an agenda too. I don’t think this in any way ruins my enjoyment of the book. It just feels like being back in college fighting about books again. And also makes me want to audit some Ph.D. classes at the university, because why not? I did that once for a class on Medieval Literature, and it was the most fun thing. Do I know how to party or do I know how to party? Anyway, the book is a lovely literary mess about a lovely literary mess. But also, okay, I’m re-reading Anna Karenina too because in so many ways she’s the ur-text of scandalous women and I am writing a book called This American Ex Wife.
This week, I also read Donald Antrim’s Finding a Way Back from Suicide, about electroshock therapy and depression. It was beautiful and helped me understand so much. I also read Jennifer Senior’s wonderful story about 9/11 and grief. And, I loved this newsletter from Anne Helen Petersen about her friend Harriet and giving girls a new model for happiness. I remember a woman, a friend of my mother when I lived in Texas, who owned a bed and breakfast in a beautiful old house. I must have been 8 or 9, and she would invite me over and I would help her clean and we’d have tea on her lawn. And then she’d let me play in the rooms and wear hats from her large collection of hats. She was married, but I never saw her husband. Later, they divorced, and she sent me some letters from her new life tooling around on motorcycles in Alaska. I loved that woman and I still love her. I love her because when I was a mouthy kid, she treated me like an adult. And I also love her because in a way, she showed me that life, our lives, can be more than one thing. That they are complicated. And you can quit and start over.
Anyway, thanks AHP for writing that and for being an incredible model of what a woman can be.
For this newsletter, I wrote a story about Iowa’s derecho. And for The Riveter, I wrote about making my kids watch me while I work.
What I Am Drinking:
It’s Campari time! I love Campari and this is a new revelation for me. But apparently, I love things bright and bitter, just like my soul. I’ve had Campari in wine with sparkling water as a spritz. Or just Campari and watermelon-flavored La Croix. Listen, it’s hot. We all just want refreshing drinks, and Campari provides that.
Also, as subscribers know (because we talked about it in the weekly thread), I stepped on a rake on Monday and got a large puncture wound in my foot. But the real wound has been to my ego. Because I don’t love going to the doctor and explaining why I need a tetanus booster because I was trying to garden at 8:30am barefoot on a Monday. The nurse at urgent care honestly walked into the room, looked at me, and said, “Oh, I’m sad you don’t have a goose egg on your head because the rake flipped up and hit you.”
And I was like, “No one is more sad about that than me.”
Anyway, to soothe my throbbing foot, I will be trying a Siesta cocktail, which is tequila, Campari, and simple syrup, but I will probably forgo simple syrup, because, listen, I think simple syrup is overrated.
Also, this week, I did my favorite thing: read a book in a bar. And that bar, which I’ve mentioned before, Cobble Hill, is serving a drink where they have flash frozen Campari like little caviar. I loved it. I drank it and eavesdropped on a bunch of guys, who were in town for the baseball game at the Field of Dreams, talking shit about their wives. Apparently, their wives aren’t supportive. I would love to interview those wives. Because did one of those guys hit on me? ABSOLUTELY, HE DID. Maybe we should go on lockdown again. Apparently, none of y’all learned your lessons.
Also, I was gone last week and I appreciate the kindness you show to my guest posters Jessica Ripka, who wrote an incredible essay about taking care of her sister’s children and the pandemic and Josh Gondelman, who fired a shot heard round the newslettersphere at dingus Matt Damon. I do hope to have more guest writers in the future, but will only pick the best of the best, because you deserve it. Also, I’m a Type A control freak.
Men Yell at Me is a newsletter about the places where our bodies and politics collide and yes, the occasional yelling man. Learn more about it and me (Lyz) here. You can sign up to receive the free weekly email, which includes interviews, essays, and original reporting. The Friday email is a weekly round-up of dinguses, drinks, and links. On Monday I have a subscribers-only open thread where we discuss politics and our bodies and more.
I went to college with Kelley Paul. She was a colossal dingus then and no doubt remains one now. Ew. These people are so gross.
Excellent dingus choice. I feel like Rand Paul could be Dingus-of-the-Year, every single year. I quit gluten this summer and found a wonderful GF Pilsner called New Grist by Lakefront Brewery in Milwaukee. I love it and now after 18 months I'm off the wagon.