That American Conservative piece is quite, um, somthing.

Anybody who has spent any time on the platform has noticed the near-ubiquity of generally distasteful content. This includes racist content, which seems to be supercharged by the algorithm preference system for some reason or another.

If you're going to feign cluelessness, you should pick something other than that.
posted by Dr. Twist at 10:25 AM on September 25 [18 favorites]

Increasingly, "Let's all just take our masks off" is the GOP vibe.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:30 AM on September 25 [8 favorites]

Also notable in the Robinson story is this succession of events after CNN's damning exposé on Robinson's outlandish and/or disturbing comments on porn sites:

1) Robinson swears this is all hacking/fakery/AI
2) Conservative IT gurus offer to step in and help him prove this
3) Robinson declines their offer
4) His staff largely resigns
posted by DirtyOldTown at 10:36 AM on September 25 [24 favorites]

NC resident and voter checking in. We've known Mark Robinson was awful for years. Nothing in the CNN report was surprising. I think the theory that the GOP is finally dropping him because of the adult content he liked to watch is interesting. I wonder also if they just looked at the raw numbers, saw he was losing to Stein, realized this wouldn't help, and cut their losses.
posted by TheKaijuCommuter at 10:36 AM on September 25 [11 favorites]

5) Amid mounting evidence, Robinson admits that some of the scandalous accusations are true, but not the worst ones, and that the media is exaggerating this whole thing
6) Amid mounting evidence, Robinson admits that the worst accusations are true, but everybody else does these things, and the Democrats do them worse
7) Robinson looks directly into news cameras and says "I did it all, and fuck you"
8) Robinson is keynote speaker at National Prayer Breakfast
[Fake, until it's not]
posted by Rykey at 10:50 AM on September 25 [21 favorites]

I think the theory that the GOP is finally dropping him because of the adult content he liked to watch is interesting.

They don't care what he watches -- as a matter of fact, they'd love to hang on to it as kompromat. They don't even care that he got caught -- there's no higher accomplishment in the modern GOP than to get caught and skate on the consequences. They're dropping him because he wouldn't be able to skate on the consequences.
posted by tclark at 10:54 AM on September 25 [7 favorites]

That American Conservative piece is quite, um, somthing.

Of course, they can bring themselves to admit that the pet-eating is a lie.

Yes, hyper-informed Zoomers will scroll long enough to find out that Springfield, Ohio’s city manager did, in fact, receive reports of Haitian animal sacrifices.

All they needed to add was "false" before reports.
posted by CheeseDigestsAll at 10:58 AM on September 25 [8 favorites]

As a fun side note, the 3rd party ads served on the American Prospect are all for AR-15 cases. Jesus Christ.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:09 AM on September 25 [5 favorites]

I think this is the straw that broke the camel’s back because commenting on a porn site is weird. For conservatives, watching porn is fine regardless of content as long as you try to hid it. It just makes you a hypocrite, which is a core value. They consider it a power move. Legislating against the very thing you’re engaging in is seen as powerful because it shows your willingness to favor the in-group over any other principles.

But commenting? That’s not a power move. That’s just weird.
posted by fryman at 11:12 AM on September 25 [18 favorites]

That American Conservative piece is quite, um, somthing.

Among (many) other things, it's trying to reclaim the word "weird" and I don't think that is going to work.

I enjoy scrolling on X as much as the next politico, but the platform is generally incomprehensible or frightening for most Americans, especially older Americans. The issue set promoted and discussed on the site may percolate out to a wider audience, but it’s often received without necessary context and winds up making the discussing parties appear, for lack of a better term, weird. ... Voters who aren’t scrolling X perceive some degree of weirdness, creating a reality that GOP campaigns across the country are being forced to confront.
posted by chavenet at 11:17 AM on September 25 [3 favorites]

4) His staff largely resigns

Honestly, I don't think for a minute his staff resigned because of this scandal. Before any of this hit he was a holocaust denier, a public misogynist, an embracer of conspiracy theories. And there were already credible narratives about his penchant for porn. All of it was public, all of it well known.

His staff resigned because they don't want their wagon hitched to a guaranteed loser. It's not less cynical than that. They are all amoral grifters.
posted by mcstayinskool at 11:44 AM on September 25 [20 favorites]

What else would the staff do, unionize?
posted by the antecedent of that pronoun at 11:59 AM on September 25 [3 favorites]

I halfway think the idea of "republicans can get away with anything, and if they can't get away with something, they're out" isn't a useful framing, or maybe has the line of causality backwards. There seems to be more of a respiratory rhythm here--angry populism draws in both voters and candidates, and for a time, the angry stuff wins attention. But it's boring after a while (ineffective at governance too, but that never seems to be a factor), and stops bringing in the votes and eyeballs, and at that point, the republicans begin to trim down who they support based on their usual guidelines. Like, there's a reason Robinson is out and Gaetz isn't?
posted by mittens at 12:15 PM on September 25 [1 favorite]

Like, there's a reason Robinson is out and Gaetz isn't?

Racism?
posted by tommasz at 12:17 PM on September 25 [7 favorites]

“What are the specific mechanics of how prices come down? You know, the steps that would be taken in a second term for you?”

“First of all, she can’t do an interview. She could never do this interview because you ask questions like give me a specific answer. She talks about her lawn when she was growing up. This woman is not equipped to be president. She’s not equipped to deal with President Xi, who I was very, I took in hundreds of billions of dollars with him and Putin. We had no war with Putin. Remember, and I’m just gonna go off just for this. With Bush, they took a lot. Russia. With Biden, they’re trying to take everything. With Obama, they took a lot. With Trump, Russia took nothing. Just remember that, you know, it’s a little, a little chart. But what happened? And when you look at what took place was so sad, when they took over, they cut the oil way down and oil started going through the roof. It was gonna go to $10 a gallon. It was gonna go to numbers that nobody’s ever seen. And so they went back to the Trump drilling, they said, ‘let it go back’. That was the only good thing. But they stopped because I would be there, but four years later, I would be triple what the number was. Right now they’re just about even where I was. But they only did that because of the fact that they eventually have an election coming up.

And you remember at the beginning what happened. That’s one of the reasons that Putin went in because it went to $100 a barrel instead of $40 a barrel. And he could fight all the wars he wants with those kind of numbers, cause he’s a big seller of oil and gas. So what happens is they went back to what I was doing, just said reopen. Just reopen. It wasn’t hard. It’s so crazy what they wanna do. They’re gonna destroy lives. They’re gonna destroy the, what they have done to this country. And especially in the sense of allowing millions and millions of people come in because that’s something, you know, we can fix the gasoline situation and we can fix the, anything.”

This is destroying my brain.
posted by kirkaracha at 12:24 PM on September 25 [7 favorites]

Vice President Kamala Harris on the Economy; live now.

Compare and contrast:

"I HAVE A CHART THAT'S MY ALL TIME FAVORITE. I love tha..... is it around? .... is it around ... *wanders off and hugs the air* ... I sleep with that chart every night. I kiss it. I love it."

posted by kirkaracha at 12:31 PM on September 25

When I was in high school, a teacher had a sign up in the classroom:

MAKE SURE BRAIN IS ENGAGED BEFORE PUTTING MOUTH IN ACTION

Clearly, this is an example of not having a brain engaged. The mouth moves, sounds come out, but it’s just noise, no information.
posted by njohnson23 at 12:35 PM on September 25 [1 favorite]

From the Prospect article:
Yet here's Robinson referring to Black folks as “Schvartze,” a Yiddish slur akin to the n-word

His use of "schvartzes" isn't just more anti-black racism. It's main focus is anti-semitic. Here's the quote they reference (he's talking about the movie Black Panther):

How can this trash, that was only created to pull the shekels out of your Schvartze pockets, invoke any pride?

Anyway, my point is he seems nice. Real leadership material.
posted by PlusDistance at 12:53 PM on September 25 [1 favorite]

Compare and contrast:

"I HAVE A CHART THAT'S MY ALL TIME FAVORITE.."

I really think there's nothing wrong with a love of charts and data. As with many things, it's about whether you can speak about it like a normal person who just happens to love data and not some fucking weirdo.

Compare and contrast Trump's chart love with Madame Vice President's fondess for Venn diagrams.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 12:57 PM on September 25

Yup, he was found in other places talking about "Hebs" [sic] and of course the Holocaust denial, so very much into antisemitism. He's talking about Black people from the imagined perspective of Jewish nefariousness.
posted by Lord Chancellor at 12:57 PM on September 25 [2 favorites]

He’s not any different from the rest of the GOP . Anyone who didn’t spit at Trump’s feet and walk away the minute the Access Hollywood tape came out is worthless. The entire party is spineless worms with horrible prejudices and laughably bad policy ideas. I stress this because people need to remember that Robinson isn’t worse for the country than, say, Mitch McConnell. They’re all terrible in their own ways. Some of it is patriarchy . I can’t imagine just doing something because my boss said, or the President said, or God said, or my friend from the country club said, or my commanding officer said. To me all those things represent abdication of one’s responsibilities as a thinking human, but Republicans love saluting shit.
posted by caviar2d2 at 3:15 PM on September 25

I find myself continually enraged at political media throwing their hands in the air in mock bewilderment at how we have arrived at such a parlous situation. The same publications that pretended not to know the difference between neutrality and objectivity, or even right and wrong, are now surprised that the political landscape is overrun by a cast of characters lacking in strategy, skill or the merest scruple. In my lifetime there is no industry in the world that has so consistently failed in its function as the political media (in the UK and US at least), and has yet managed to persist.

I mean, obviously, fuck this guy, but he is only the immediate symptom, he is not the problem.
posted by Jakey at 3:32 PM on September 25 [1 favorite]

I can't believe you've all missed this, from right near the start of the Prospect piece:

Robinson, a 56-year-old internet edgelord and former furniture upholsterer

Emphasis mine. The conspiracy goes deeper than we thought.
posted by flabdablet at 3:41 PM on September 25 [3 favorites]

Are you suggesting JD Vance has his back as a quid-pro-quo, paying back coverups of couchfucking? I'm sold.
posted by axiom at 3:48 PM on September 25 [1 favorite]

GOP in disarray.

Seriously, what is the future of the Republican Party at this point? If you don’t show fealty to their orange idol you get drummed out. And like most, I am just aghast at the fact that the presidential race is even close. I think the only hope of for the GOP to lose horribly up and down the ballot. They could write another autopsy that they’ll then ignore but hopefully people will realize that the whole party of off the rails and do something to try and recreate a success opposition party that is Vance and his ilk.
posted by misterpatrick at 3:51 PM on September 25 [1 favorite]

Are you suggesting JD Vance has his back as a quid-pro-quo, paying back coverups of couchfucking?

We report. You decide.
posted by flabdablet at 4:18 PM on September 25

I was actually wondering why Harris doesn't use charts more. For example, crime rates are lower than they were under Trump.
posted by kirkaracha at 4:24 PM on September 25

The conspiracy goes deeper than we thought.

It’s not the crime, it’s the coverup.
posted by mhoye at 5:33 PM on September 25

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