Here at alicublog we've been having fun for years with Rod Dreher's Letters to Repenthouse -- those too-good-to-be-true anonymous "reader" "letters" Dreher posts that have the same breathless I-never-thought-it-would-happen-to-me vibe that made lonely teenage boys hot and Bob Guccione a fortune. Through this shoddy journalistic device Dreher thrills and chills readers with honest-to-gosh you-bet real scenes of "obviously transgendered" he-shes grooming a child at a Dallas showing of a Captain America movie, "a 13 year old girl in his church who came to the pastor and asked innocently if it was worth it to give a boy a blow job in exchange for a meal at McDonalds," etc.
A classic of the genre is the MAGA Gryphon -- a Liberal who has suddenly decided to turn right-wing, like a Letters to Repenthouse "reader" who said he was "anti-NRA, pro-Obamacare to an extent, and detest[s] the Republican Party generally" but was now ready to "vote for a sort of lower-key Trump (someone like Ben Shapiro)." JustTheTip Trumpers like Dreher love this bit, as it convinces them they're not alone in wanting those sweet, sweet Handmaid judges without the indignity of owing it to the thuggery of Trump Republicans.
This has been a niche entertainment for years, but I guess us hipsters couldn't have it to ourselves forever: Bret Stephens is taking it mainstream --
Meet a Secret Trump Voter
‘Being a lesbian who’s voting for Trump is like coming out of the closet again.’
Gotta say, it's a clever twist on a classic formula; Dreher hates gay people, so he's unlikely to use them in his fantasy stories. And it's found money, because there's nothing rightwinger readers love more than a persecution narrative, and the idea that the MAGA Lesbian is forced to "come out again" for Trump (which must be painful, right? I mean we made coming out gay hell on earth!) must tickle their innards.
Much of Stephens' script, though, is straight out of Dreherville:
It’s worth understanding where she’s coming from.
Start with the economy. “I haven’t seen double digit [gains] in my 401(k) since the internet boom of the late ’90s,” she says. “It went up 19.6 percent” in the year before the pandemic.
That's like saying the car felt like it was flying before it plummeted to the ground.
“Look at the stock market,” she says. (Up about 35 percent from four years ago.) “Look at gas prices.” (About the same as what they were when Trump took office, but well below the $3.31 per gallon at the midpoint of the Obama administration.)
That last part is great -- I wonder if Stephens went back and asked MAGA Lesbian if "the midpoint of the Obama administration" was what she meant. More:
"...I care about having a job. I care about having health care through my company."
Wow, normally you have to be in a Koch Brothers front-group ad to explicitly insist your health care come "through my company."
"I was out of a job a few years ago. Obamacare priced me out [of private insurance]. It was like, $560 a month. Then Obama’s website blew up. He can’t get the website right?”
How about that website, huh? I'm still thinking about that. And Obama with his Grey Poupon! As always when a conservative sets his scene the Big City, the topic turns to bums and poop:
What worries her more are the effects of the response to the pandemic in a liberal city like New York. “Crime is in my neighborhood now. There’s a homeless encampment near me that’s growing and growing. They have a living room and a shower curtain and that’s where they go to the bathroom. I have a guy who walks in front of the store every day. In a diaper!"
Yeah, gay New Yorkers are shocked to the tits by this sort of thing.
I ask Chris whether Trump’s behavior has ever come close to being a deal breaker for her. She asks me to name some of the lowlights.
“Grab ’em by the. …”: “Didn’t bother me at all. For every cad out there, there’s equally a gold digger who will let you do it.”
I imagine Stephens' readers in Fritters, Alabama smiling broadly: "I betcha that Anne Heche was a lesbeen gol'-digger. Whut's a 'cad'?" And they ain't seen nothin' yet:
The media as the enemy of the American people: “These days, yeah. Whenever I read a front-page story and I get to a disparaging adjective, I stop reading.”
Definite city slicker stuff. "I didn’t believe Christine Blasey Ford for one second," "“The Clintons’ fingerprints are all over this," etc. -- yeesh, at this point I bet even Dreher's going, "Whoa, tone it down, guy." And here comes the piece de Resistance:
You don’t have to agree with Chris on any of these points. You can note some of the inconsistencies in her views, most of all between her support for Sanders...
Stephens has never shown much talent for writing or argument, but I'll say this for him: He's sure got nerve.
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