The White House called on former Vice President Mike Pence to apologize to Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg for mocking him for taking paternity leave after he and his husband adopted twins.
If I did not know better I would say that the White House is trying to elevate Mike Pence for the Republican nomination by attacking him for being a Republican, I mean gay basher. That is would Biden like to run reelection against Mike Pence.
As for Pence himself, every time he opens his mouth I think the 1/6 insurrections were right about what to do with Pence.
First of all, these people never apologize. Fact is when they do, they do it repeatedly for the same odious offenses. For Pence the sanctimonious ass considers himself a Christian meaning he forgot Love they Neighbor.
So what is more Pro-Life than two gay men adopting twins?
The WH is right to punch Pence but the bad joke was only the last third of his misfeasance, the first third was his mischaracterization of transport events as somehow exceptional or worse than Trump’s disaster record and the next third was pretending any Secretary of Transportation could have altered those events in real time by being on duty.
No big deal I guess but it does get tiresome hearing or reading reich-wing delusional versions of reality followed by some non sequitur w/o getting both the delusion and the bullshit called out together.
These people are sick with their preoccupation of what goes on in their opponents’ bedroom. Talk about sticking their nose into other people’s business.
Wait? You expect Magats to refrain from punching down on premature babies?
They are simply incapable of refraining from such a “target rich environment”.
Who wouldn’t?
Pence is clueless about how he comes across. So is DeSantis. So is Trump. None of them have a sense of humor, just a sense of victimhood – Pence about being a Christian, DeSantis about the “woke mob,” and Trump about … god only knows. They all lack the ability to empathize with others, which gives them licence to bully and demonize others.
The homophobia is always baked into the cake whenever they’re talking about Secretary Pete, but that joke itself doesn’t express any particular homophobia.
There are few things I find more tiresome than demanding apologies. What is the point? Forced apologies are not sincere, the person receiving the apology is not going to feel any better (if hurt at all), those demanding the apology are not going to neither forgive or forget. So it is a completely useless exercise, so yes I can understand the temptation is there to double down, keep the demanders angry.
Posted in another thread by mistake.
Other than white hair, Pence has nothing in common with the other gay father we know about, Anderson Cooper. He seems to still be in awe that he’s become a father to two healthy boys and is raising them without his partner.
Cooper also wrote a terrific book about the Vanderbilts, (his mother was one) very prominent in NY history, Vanderbilt: The Rise and Fall of an American Dynasty
They’re usually along the lines “If I offended anyone, I regret it.” That’s an un-apology.
The crux of the “joke” is how uncomfortable Pence is about a gay man taking paternity leave, because postpartum depression is, from his point of view, something that only a woman experiences. That he thinks it makes a killer punchline is what makes this joke homophobic.
Another tell is how he thinks this is an indictment of “woke” culture – Mayor Pete nearly caused midair collisions with his unmasculine paternity leave!
It also helps to understand the context of this joke – for example, Tucker Carlson calling Buttegieg “flamboyantly incompetent” after the Northern Suffolk train derailment, the dog whistle being the word “flamboyant,” as in “flamboyantly homosexual.”
I don’t much care about anything Pence says or does because I have no space in my life for cowards.
He became irrelevant a long time ago.
The point is pointing out their bigotry. The apology demand is merely the vehicle for pointing it out.
I couldn’t agree more. Want to be called a snowflake? Demand an apology. Want to engage in a useless rhetorical exercise? Demand an apology.
Buttigieg has more brainpower and humanity than Pence’s entire campaign staff. He doesn’t really need defending from these morons.
Buttigieg doesn’t need defending, but bigotry needs to be called out, and demanding an apology (which they don’t expect to get I suspect) is one way of doing that. There may be better ways of doing this, but this is a direct, rather than a passive aggressive, approach.
Chasten Buttigieg for the easy win.
Who among us is unaware of their bigotry?
Reacting to it only serves to make them more popular with their base. I fail to see any good coming of it.