DEMOCRATIZATION: The name they've been calling Governor Walz!

FRIDAY, AUGUST 9, 2024

The Underbelly and Us: We've never spoken to Kevin Drum. We have exchanged the rare email on the rare occasion.

Will his striking work on lead exposure make its way into the history books? We don't know, but we awoke today to his frustration—his frustration about the savage nickname The Underbelly has been dumping on Governor Walz.

"Democratization" can look like this. This is the way NPR's report on the subject begins:

Why Republicans are calling Walz 'Tampon Tim'—and why Democrats embrace it

Republican critics of Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz have given him a new nickname: “Tampon Tim.”

After Vice President Harris announced her pick, Stephen Miller, a former adviser to former President Donald Trump, tweeted, “She actually chose Tampon Tim.” Chaya Raichik, who runs the far-right social media account Libs of TikTok, photoshopped Walz’s face onto a Tampax box.

“Tampon Tim is hands down the best political nickname ever,” tweeted conservative commentator Liz Wheeler. “It’s so… savagely effective. In one word tells you EVERYTHING you need to know about Tim Walz’s dangerous radicalism.”

The moniker refers to a law that Walz, the governor of Minnesota, signed last year, requiring public schools to provide menstrual products—including pads and tampons—to students in 4th through 12th grades.

According to NPR's report, so said "conservative commentator Liz Wheeler." Such people want our nation's discourse to be about derogatory nicknames. They want our discourse to be about "savagely effective" attacks on the scary and dangerous Other.

We'll note that NPR took the safe route in this news report. According to NPR, Walz is being mocked as "Tampon Tim" by his "Republican critics," with the little-known Wheeler offered as the principal case in point.

Cowering in fear or drenched in ignorance, NPR chose to skip past more consequential names from some very large media orgs. We think it's time to start saying their name—-the names of people like Watters and Gutfeld, with paid spear-chuckers like Arnolt and Concha always prepared to join in.

If there were some such thing as terrible people, these would be terrible people. Their recent conduct has Kevin sputtering as he offers this blockquote from an unnamed source:

"No, Tim Walz did not sign a law that requires schools to stock free tampons in boys' restrooms. The law leaves implementation up to individual school districts, and they're free to do as they want. Most districts supply menstrual products only in girls' and gender-neutral restrooms (and the nurse's office)."

Kevin offers this blockquote "just for the record." Quite understandably, he does so after saying that "this [whole discussion] is so stupid I can hardly bring myself to write about it."

We don't blame him for being frustrated to the point of madness. But such assaults have routinely worked in the past, and they could always work once again.

Kevin cites no source for his blockquote, nor can we find one by googling. We'll note again that NPR has failed to say the names of the highly-placed people who have been pushing that claim and that nickname around:

We'll especially note that NPR chose not to say the name of the well-known employer of these high-profile miscreants.

This is a major part of the way our finer orgs have chosen to relate to the "savage" assaults from below. Regarding the Minnesota law which set people like Watters and Gutfeld off, here you see the New York Times' attempt to describe its contents:

Trump Campaign Criticizes Walz for State Law Providing Tampons in Schools 

As part of their effort to portray Tim Walz, the new Democratic vice-presidential candidate, as a far-left liberal, the Trump campaign attacked the Minnesota governor on Tuesday for signing a bill last year that provides access to menstrual products for transgender students.

At issue is broadly inclusive language in the law, which states that products like pads, tampons and other products used for menstruation “must be available to all menstruating students in restrooms regularly used by students in grades 4 to 12.” Republican state lawmakers in Minnesota had tried—and failed—to amend that bill so that it would apply only to “female restrooms,” though some Republicans went on to vote for the final version of the bill.

Karoline Leavitt, a spokeswoman for the Trump campaign, said in an interview on Tuesday on Fox News that the law, among other policies seen as supportive of transgender rights, was “a threat to women’s health.”

“As a woman, I think there is no greater threat to our health than leaders who support gender-transition surgeries for young minors, who support putting tampons in men’s bathrooms in public schools,” Ms. Leavitt said. “Those are radical policies that Tim Walz supports. He actually signed a bill to do that.”

Possibly displaying good judgment, the Times didn't mention the "savage" nickname which has been flooding the prime time pseudo-discourse at the Fox News Channel. Possibly displaying good judgment, the Times also failed to mention the fairly obvious insinuations—insinuations by that channel's major stars—that Governor Walz is secretly gay gay gay gay gay!

(It's hard to behave more terribly than the way these people behave. The "democratization of media" has helped create the world in which they're now so prominent. That said, it's a world in which the finer news orgs aren't willing to say their names.)

Did Governor Walz "sign a law that requires schools to stock free tampons in boys' restrooms?" That's the specific claim which has been shouted from the rooftops all over the Fox News Channel, with a certain savage nickname added to the mix.

In its report, the Times suggests that the question isn't as simple as Kevin's blockquote says. We leave aside the question of what would actually make sense as a matter of policy. We're merely asking if the claim in question is factually accurate, and if so to what extent.

We've googled around in the past few days trying to answer that question. As usual, it's very much as Mark Twain didn't say:

A savage nickname can get halfway around the world before the truth can get its boots on.

Sad! The monkeys they pay at the Fox News Channel have been leaping about in their cages, flinging that nickname—and that claim—around and around and around. On Wednesday's Gutfeld!, the reliably savage Charly Arnolt took things one step farther.

On Wednesday's edition of The Five, the essentially respectable Gillian Turner lodged a fruitless request, begging the monkeys to stop. Somehow, she'd been dragooned into a rare guest spot on The Five. 

Turner essentially cursed her own fate. But the monkeys just kept leaping around, and millions of voters—millions of neighbors and friends—were sitting at home and were watching as the claim, and the nickname, got flung.

No one wants to say their names; democratization put them in place. Upper-class indolence helps them journey along.

Warning! If you google this topic, you'll be hard-pressed to find a clear account of the actual facts of the case. By way of contrast, it's easy to hear the savage nickname, or to hear the sweeping claim the chimps keep advancing on Fox.

It's easy to hear the name-calling! You just have to turn on the Fox News Channel during its prime time hours.

The chimps and the apes have been leaping around, exactly as their types have done down through the annals of time. Thanks to the democratization of media—the invention of "cable news" is one of the fruits of that development—the chimps and the monkeys have much wider access than their counterparts did in the past.

Also, and for better or worse, the finer people at the finer news orgs still won't say their names.

A group of chimps wants to traffic in nicknames. The finer people aren't willing to say their names.

A nickname can get halfway around the world of "cable news" before the truth can get its boots on! And of course, the facts of the case may never emerge. Facts are both boring and hard.

 Mark Twain never made those statements. But he might well have made them today.

Tomorrow: The latest stolen election

In fairness: In fairness, the chimps are being paid millions of dollars to conduct themselves this way. The channel won't tell you how many millions. They could do it, but it would be wrong!