And now, on the lighter side of the news. …
By Gail Collins
Opinion Columnist
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So, it appears the Republican Senate candidate in Ohio flew to a meeting of “faith leaders” in a plane owned by a Cleveland strip club owner.
I am telling you this just to cheer you up. The world of politics has been pretty fraught lately, and today we’re going to try to be cheery, and just talk about good old-fashioned weirdness and stupidity.
Such as Representative Jim Renacci’s decision to travel to campaign events — including a “meet & greet … with local faith leaders” — in a plane owned by the proprietor of the Peek-a-Boo club in Cleveland. The congressman said the owner, who we will call Mr. Peek, is a campaign volunteer. “I’m not going to vet volunteers,” Renacci told an Ohio news site.
Well, we would hope that all our candidates do a little bit of vetting when it comes to air safety. But the best thing about this story is that it has nothing whatsoever to do with Donald Trump. Who recently suggested that when we’re contemplating the coming elections we should “think of it as the same thing as me.”
O.K., he’s probably right. But that doesn’t mean we don’t deserve a little political diversion.
For instance, you’ve probably heard about Representative Paul Gosar, an Arizona Republican, who is a heavy favorite for re-election even though he’s been the subject of an attack ad made by six of his siblings.
“It’s intervention time, and intervention time means … you go to vote Paul out,” says one brother in the ad for Gosar’s opponent, which is titled “A Family Defends Its Honor.” I can’t tell you this has really made a difference; the polls suggest Gosar is still going to win. However, it could be a useful citation during your next family argument. (“Well, at least I never made an attack ad against you!”)
I am sorry to report that Florida Republicans have let us down and nominated a Spanish-language TV star, Maria Elvira Salazar, for Congress in a district where one of the other candidates was a businesswoman whose résumé included having been kidnapped by space aliens.
Bettina Rodriguez Aguilera did actually have a lot of assets, including a career as a local councilwoman and a strong record of helping other women run for office. On the other side you had the fact that she told reporters that when she was 7 she was beamed aboard a spaceship and met visitors from another galaxy, with whom she communicates telepathically. But nobody’s perfect.
And this week we had the Taylor Swift story! Even people who do not know the name of their current member of Congress know that Swift has endorsed former Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen for the Senate. After a career in which she’s avoided saying anything much about politics, Swift popped up with the announcement that she’s voting for Bredesen because his Republican opponent, Representative Marsha Blackburn, has a voting record that “appalls and terrifies me.”
Swift had in mind things like opposition to the Violence Against Women Act. But Blackburn lives on in my memory as the House member who once gave a vigorous denunciation of a bill raising energy efficiency standards for ceiling fans. In which speech, she appeared to paraphrase a famous Holocaust poem about fear and apathy. (“First they came for our health care. Then they took away our light bulbs … now they are coming after our ceiling fans.”)
Celebrities endorsing candidates is not normally all that big a deal — Trump himself has a number of entertainers on his bandwagon, from Kanye West to Tila Tequila. It is a venerable tradition that dates back to 1920, when Al Jolson announced his support for Warren Harding.
But Taylor Swift’s announcement was a little more dramatic than the usual singer-supports-candidate Instagram post, since she hasn’t said anything about her political preferences until now. This void apparently allowed white supremacists who saw her as a beautiful Aryan goddess to decide she was one of them.
Also, they thought she let them name her cat. It’s sort of a long story, but the moral is that if you are an extremely popular singer and you buy a pet, try to make sure no alt-right website runs a Name the Cat contest. Otherwise, you could both wind up picking the same name, and next thing you know they’ll be under the impression you’re going to vote for Marsha Blackburn.
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When Trump learned about the endorsement he announced he likes Taylor Swift “25 percent less now.” This was the most mystifying presidential remark of the week. Why not 100 percent? When Lisa Murkowski voted against the Kavanaugh nomination, Trump did not say he thought a quarter of her constituents would be really ticked off. No, he decreed that “the people from Alaska will never forgive her for what she did.” I would hate to think the difference is only about Murkowski not being a 28-year-old blond superstar.
Trump is a Marsha Blackburn supporter — in fact, he was just in Tennessee for a rally in which she was actually permitted to come on stage and talk for three minutes. “A vote for Marsha is really a vote for me,” he told the crowd.
See? Bring back the space aliens and the strip club owners.
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Gail Collins is an Op-Ed columnist, a former member of the editorial board and was the first woman to serve as Times editorial page editor, from 2001 to 2007. @GailCollins • Facebook
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