The Week in Review: Kyrsten Sinema is A-List & Gavin Newsom Faces a Condom Conundrum

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Animals,
It has been a long time. And if you want to know where we’ve been — I’ll fill you in on that below.
But for now, we have a lot to talk about in the carnival of politics.
To get there, let’s discuss the 5 NEW FACES IN AMERICAN POLITICS that are signaling the beginning of a new era.
SENATORS KYRSTEN SINEMA AND JOE MANCHIN GIVE SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE A HERNIA
This past week, Saturday Night Live, a show that has incubated countless A-list movie stars, spent 8 minutes lampooning two B-list senators.
They were Senators Joe Manchin (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ), the two Democrats who are thwarting progressives like AOC and Bernie Sanders.
Political hardos will complain that SNL’s treatment of these “moderates” was an unfair hatchet job, but they’re missing the real story.
The real story isn’t “media bias.” That’s so Obama 2008.
The real story is that popular culture is no longer popular.
It’s turning into another narrow art for the wealthy and educated.
Why? Maybe the cranks are right and Hollywood really is out of ideas. Now even comedy is just another drole reporting of the news from the same clique of people, in the same New York skyscraper, with the same opinions.
It’s not all bad though. Mainstream media’s insularity has made this a golden age for independent creators. Whatever creativity we’re missing from Hollywood is findable on podcasts, Patreons, and YouTube pages.
Give it a try. And maybe consider supporting this newsletter’s creator while you’re at it.
CALIFORNIA IS NOW IN THE BEDROOM POLITICS BUSINESS
Let’s go to the Golden State. This is an important beat because California has quietly become a barometer for Woke Liberal excess the way that Alabama has long been a good proxy for the Religious Right’s over-reaches.
But in place of Jesus, California crazies are finding Justice — Social Justice — and starting to pass laws that micromanage people’s lives in the name of the holy cause.
Now, let’s take a break to remember the core tenants of this Woke Faith: certain classes of people are damned because they have privilege, and politicians need to use the law to redistribute that privilege to other classes of people. Among the bottom feeders in this hierarchy are men and their “toxic masculinity.”
So it’s no surprise that this week, Woke Excess found its way into the bedroom, the same way that every righteous cause before it has.
On Thursday, Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a bill that makes it illegal for a man to remove a condom from his penis without receiving verbal consent from his sexual partner.
Let’s be clear: we are not in favor of non-consensual sex of any kind. It’s a bad thing.
But is prosecuting condom use really the antidote? Beyond that – how do you even prove this crime in court?
Newsom’s condom law feels like a piece of performance art. It’s really more about codifying the Woke hierarchy inside the bedroom than making a useful effort to protect women.
And at the end of the day, it feels like the Left Coast version of Trump posing with an upside-down Bible to keep his street cred thicc with Evangelicals.
I mean, do you really think Gavin Newsom could pass his own standard?
FRANCES HAUGEN, FACEBOOK WHISTLEBLOWER
I personally have no idea whether you are a Boomer who is still using AOL, or a Zoomer who has a TikTok addiction that is on par with Robert Downey Jr’s cocaine problem in the ’90s.
What I do know is that in your lifetime, you’ve never seen a Millennial in the highest halls of power… who walks and talks with the same confidence as the gray-haired senators seated across the table.
There have been approximations of this person:
- Young revolutionaries like Rep. Alex Ocasio-Cortez and Rep. Madison Cawthorn… But they’re a dime-a-dozen. Just ask Abbie Hoffman and the John Birchers about that.
- Athletes and performers who blow-up early in their lives… like Taylor Swift and LeBron James.
But what we’ve never seen is the full package — the thing that takes decades to incubate — an executive style that is distinctly of a new generation.
And that’s where Frances Haugen’s gripping and confident testimony on Facebook’s abuses comes into play. It was just so Millennial.
Haugen likely has no interest in running for office. But she’s cut from the same cloth as those in her generation who will. Her testimony was, therefore, a sneak peak into how Millennials will behave when they have their hands on our nation’s power centers.
And to be honest, we should take that as a good sign.
KEENDAWG.