Dingus of the week: Jay Ashcroft

“Life is pain, only potato”

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This week, paying subscribers got to participate in a debate watch party chat, which was very fun. Don’t miss out on the next one.

England has its ruling monarchs, the great families that control the land and wealth. Even though these royal families are largely figureheads, they encompass the ethos of the country.

In America, we fought against the monarchy for our right to self-rule. But we too have our ruling class, although it is more profoundly stupid and more likely to have brain worms and leave bear carcasses in Central Park.

Currently, Missouri is being overrun by a gaggle of these nepo-dingus babies in the form of Jay Ashcroft and Christopher Limbaugh.

Jay Ashcroft is the secretary of state for Missouri and the son of John Ashcroft,. You may remember John Ashcroft from his time as attorney general under President George W. Bush, where he was best known for his work utilizing torture and flagrantly violating the constitutional rights of American citizens.

This week, his son, who seems similarly despotic but a little less effective, took the initiative to violate a court order to take a proposed initiative off the Missouri ballot. It’s a little complicated, so stay with me. In Missouri, people working to overturn an abortion ban gathered 380,000 signatures to put Amendment 3 on the ballot. According to the Missouri Independent, “Amendment 3 would establish the constitutional right to an abortion up until fetal viability and grant constitutional protections to other reproductive health care, including birth control. It would also protect those who assist in an abortion from prosecution.”

And this is where Christopher Limbaugh comes in. Limbaugh is the cousin of Rush Limbaugh, the man who dominated AM airwaves with his constant rantings about immigrants, women, and the gays. Limbaugh was a Mount Vesuvius of hate-filled lava that he spewed all over America. Limbaugh is dead now and I hope wherever he is, he’s in a hell of his own making, being forced to drink matcha tea made by a transgender barista while a spin instructor who has had four abortions plays Lady Gaga and tells him to “get that heart rate up, queen.”

In any case, Christopher Limbaugh, the cousin of that forefather of every misspelled death threat on the internet, is a judge in Missouri. This week, he ruled that Amendment 3 didn’t meet the legal requirements to be on the Missouri ballot. But he put a stay on that decision so the Missouri Supreme Court could weigh in.

Ashcroft then took it upon himself to violate the stay and take the amendment off the ballot. The next day, the state Supreme Court ruled the amendment is valid and it will be on the ballot. It’s confusing, but basically, Ashcroft took Amendment 3, which is something the people of Missouri want, off a ballot, even though he was told not to, because the cousin of the rotting corpse of Nazi America ruled it wasn’t legal.

This is what Republicans mean when they say they want the states to decide on abortion access. What they mean is they want states to pass draconian and unpopular laws that threaten the health and well-being of women and when people use the democratic process to fight back, they’ll put their necrotic thumbs on the scales of justice to preserve the bans.

Ashcroft the lesser failed in this circumstance. Which is kind of sad if you think about it. Your father did war crimes and you are over here losing primaries for governor and getting your little whiny despotic tantrums slapped down by courts? You are descended from one of America’s most evil dinguses! Act like it!

I imagine John Ashcroft’s moldering fingers grabbing his son by the collar and whispering — his breath stinking of the gangrenous socks of a Confederate soldier — “I taught you to evil better than this!”

It’s like John Dillinger’s son being reduced to knocking over liquor stores. Or Hannibal Lecter’s son reduced to eating roadkill. Like John Wayne Gacy’s son forced to fry ants with a magnifying glass. You know what they say, “Shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations.” At this rate, the Ashcroft line will be forced to complain about The Color Purple at school board meetings in Gentry County.

Dingus runner-up: Frank Luntz

Ladiez! Frank Luntz, who is *checks notes* a former pollster for that party that famously loves women — Republicans — wants to give you a few tips. Settle in.

Your faces must be frozen in time. They must not respond to age, the wind, the screams of children, nor the provocations of a bloviating unemployed fascist. You must be pleasing, but not so much as to make it appear that you are trying. No, no, see now you have resting bitch face. Smile more. But not too much more. You can’t be happy. But you cannot also reveal in any way that the man you are listening to has said the most god-awful lie imaginable. You’ll make all the other men who believe those same things feel bad. And you don’t want to make the men feel bad, do you? No, because that will make them not want to vote for you. So you must be pleasing at all times in these increasingly contradictory ways that I, a man, have prescribed for you. 

And now for something good

If you want to do good and not evil, you should sign up for Garrett Bucks’ Barnraiser sessions, where he teaches people how to organize their communities to fight the Ashcrofts of the world.

337,000 people visited Vote.Gov, a site dedicated to getting people registered to vote, after Taylor Swift posted a link on Tuesday. The link was part of an endorsement of Harris for president.

So rarely do political debates have clear winners, but Tuesday’s debate did, and that was Kamala Harris. Other winners include everyone in the MYAM community who joined in for the live-chat during the debate. Despite the clunkiness of the app (which Substack says it’s working on fixing), we had a wonderful time! And it was so fun, I’ll be hosting a chat for the vice presidential debate on October 1. And I will be hosting an election day chat on November 4. Turns out online community is great when it isn’t filled with alt-right trolls and AI bots.

All community chats will be for paying subscribers only. Sorry, it’s how I keep out the aforementioned trolls and bots.

Also, good news, I am getting an Iowa Author Award on October 6 in Des Moines. The awards are part of a fundraiser dinner for the Des Moines Public Library. JOIN US! And in this economy, our libraries need all the help they can get. I’ll be there with my kids and you can watch them troll me in real time. Kids: The trolls you can’t really filter out of your life.

We are funding abortions in Iowa! On October 22, the Iowa Abortion Access Fund is hosting its annual fall fundraiser. As board co-chair, I’ll be there. Funding abortions is more crucial now than ever with the six-week ban in place.

PHill, the water buffalo who fought the police and won his freedom, survived surgery and is heading to a preserve with his buddies. We love you, PHill.

While Dave Grohl is out here being a menace, Jon Bon Jovi saved a woman’s life.

My friend Elon Green has a new book to pre-order AND IT IS INCREDIBLE. It is called The Man Nobody Killed and it is an in-depth accounting of what happened to Michael Stewart, the young Black artist and model who was the victim of a fatal assault by police in 1983.

What I am enjoying

This week, I gobbled down Taffy Brodesser Akner’s Long Island Compromise, which was a big, meaty, messy book. It was like if John Irving had fully realized female characters. I forsook my family, my pets, the cleanliness of my home, all to finish that book. And now that it is over, I find myself bereft , heartbroken, and lost. 

I’ll find (book) love like that again. You never feel like you will. But you do. Eventually, you do. There are so many magical books out there.