THE LAST OF THE RED-HOT LOSERS.

As I mentioned in the column on Monday, some conservatives are using the Trump tape to establish moral distance between themselves and the candidate. George Will, for example, is so rattled he's quoting Kris Kristofferson. (He attributes "freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose" by the song's title rather than to its author -- guess he considers it a vulgar bit of folk wisdom from Hippietown and can't take it seriously enough to acknowledge authorship, as he would for Tacitus or Casey Stengel.)

Others are trying to spin it as a silly bit of potty-mouth rather than a sinister expression of hatred toward women (charitably assuming that didn't actually, as he memorably put it, grab them by the pussy). Part of the strategy, such as it is, is to confuse creative or even simple use of obscenity with misogyny and sexual menace. A popular example is former New York Lieutenant Governor, national health care assassin, and all-around dumbass Betsy McCaughey conflating Hillary Clinton's appreciation of Beyonce with Trump's appreciation of sexual assault on CNN because both involve words not normally spoken in church.

But for my money the more interesting version is by ancient Washington Times hack Wesley Pruden. (For background, here's a typical passage from a column in which he compared, and not as a joke, Herman Cain to Ronald Reagan: "Things have gone from bad to badder for the self-righteous artsy-fartsy elites, who for all their book-learning and self-regard just can’t figure out America.") Pruden loves Trump because he sticks it to sissies like "the editor of the precious and erudite New Yorker magazine" on their "fainting couches in recovery rooms across the precincts of the mainstream media," and this week he suggested that grab-her-by-the-pussy isn't so bad because Trump is a man, unlike some Presidential candidates he could name:

It’s a credit to their sex that women are rarely good at either cussin’ or telling what were once called “smutty stories.” Most women think the woman is always the butt of the joke, even when it’s usually the man cast as hapless jerk who humiliates himself in an absurd pursuit of elusive prey. A woman with a good repertoire of abuse is occasionally said to be able to “cuss like a man,” but she more resembles the woman preaching in Dr. Johnson’s famous jibe, “like a dog walking on his hind legs. It is not done well; but you are surprised to find it done at all.”

You ladies should stick to what you're good at, like needlepoint and cocksucking.

On the other hand, a talented teamster with a brace of ornery mules, headed to the sawmill with a heavy load of fresh-cut pine logs, could keep up a string of obscene abuse for fully two or three minutes without ever repeating himself.

Pruden recalls this from when he was a cub reporter on the Fritters (Ala.) Slaver-Picayune back afore they came up with the horseless carriage. Last time Pruden saw a present-day Teamster, he was probably nervously asking him what he thought of those Redskins while planning a column on how unions are destroying the country.

Not many dirty mouths, male or female, can do that. Who would want to?

Nobody cultivates a dirtier mouth than Hillary Clinton. It’s difficult to describe Hillary in full because a decent regard for the gentle reader forbids it. Any teamster, cop, or Secret Service agent assigned to Hillary duty has to put his hands over his ears even to think about it.

Lordy, sech language! Pruden then recirculates a bunch of jacked-up claims from the age of Troopergate about Clinton's cursing abilities, fondly reminisces about the days when Strom Thurmond would bestow "the occasional pinch when he came upon a young lady bending over the groaning board at a cocktail party," and then just basically wanders off onto a tangent about these new-fangled cellular phones that take recordings kids can play back on their Walkmen.

At no point does Pruden portray a hint of awareness that normal American women are acquainted with coarse language -- not only because men yell it at them on the street whenever they wear anything more revealing than a hijab, but also because they live in the 21st Century -- and a great number of them occasionally employ it themselves, and probably would not only excuse but admire Clinton's ability to pitch it back at the limpdicks by whom she is surrounded. Unless Pruden really is being kept in a jar on a musty old rolltop in the City Room, he can't have failed to notice this. So why's he pretending? The same reason guys like him pretend we can keep out the world with a wall, and that white men will always run everything: The alternative is too awful to contemplate.