Drag shows are fun as hell, but drag shows are not for children.
See how easy that is?
Unfortunately for America, culture wars won’t allow for such a simplification. Simplifying debates into commonsense statements robs culture warriors of their most effective weapon: outrage.
In culture warfare whichever side can be angrier for longer is victorious. What they win is still a mystery. But when it comes to the latest battleground – drag performances and whether they are suitable for children – neither side is showing signs of surrender.
In full disclosure, I’ve been to quite a few drag shows. Some more tame than others. One time in Bangkok we stumbled into a drag show that featured performers pretending to (forgive me) go down on each other. Another time, in New York City, the drag queens simply told stories and sang songs (albeit while wearing very little clothing).
Whether PG-13 or X-rated, I’ve never been to a drag show I didn’t enjoy.
I’ve also never been to a drag show where I thought, “Hey, some kids should be here to see this.”
For months on end, the social media account Libs of TikTok has been posting videos showing children exposed to genitals at drag shows. In other videos, children are the performers – dancing for tips from adults.
In one video out of California, a drag performer went full spread eagle on a table while wearing a thong and thigh-high leather boots. Two toddlers were watching on.
In another clip, a drag queen in Miami holds a young girl’s hand while walking around in a dollar bill-stuffed thong and nipple pasties.
Any rationally thinking person should be able to look at those videos and see a problem. But since the conservative Right is pointing it out, the progressive Left refuses to back down and instead defends indefensible behavior for the sake of disagreement. As both sides dig in, the debate becomes less and less grounded in reality. This is how the culture wars work.
Take Jon Levine, a politics and culture writer for the New York Post, who tweeted over the weekend, “Can someone actually articulate the ‘harm’ a child experiences when exposed to a drag queen?”
Really? Does he really need someone to explain why children seeing people in thongs dance for cash is harmful? Of course he doesn't. Would we be having the same conversation if kids were photographed at a strip club? Of course not. The police would be called immediately. But because this debate involves a protected class of people (drag performers are often LGBTQ+) we somehow end up debating whether adults exposing themselves around children is actually just fine.
What the progressive Left shouldn’t hesitate to acknowledge is that drag shows are not acceptable entertainment for children.
What the conservative Right shouldn’t hesitate to acknowledge is that drag shows are acceptable entertainment for adults who choose to attend.
That would be that and we could all get back to worrying about the price of gas.
I wish.
The drag show debate is what happens when people with common sense eject themselves from political conversations. It's not that I blame them, social media is a cesspool of stupidity. But just imagine how much more productive our conversations would be if the silent majority decided to take control of the dialogue?
When commonsense takes the stage, outrage is forced to exit. When outrage makes an exit, division isn't far behind.
Until that happens, I guess the culture wars will drag on.
Everything you need to know about what happened this week during the legislative session in Olympia.
If there were ever an episode we’d be removed from social media over, this is it! Citizen sleuths look into Washington’s spending, and what they find is gag worthy. National civil rights complaint filed on behalf of Tumwater basketball player. Is Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell being punished for his bad basketball joke?
Prefer to listen? https://audioboom.com/posts/8656992-doge-washington-digs-up-dirty-dirty-dirt-2-20-25
Brandi Kruse and Zach Abraham dive into all things Department of Government Efficiency in this weekly series. On this episode: Elon wants to open up Fort Knox to check for gold. $4.7T in untraceable payments. Vampires getting Social Security!? Trump considering DOGE Dividends for Americans.
These remarks were delivered to the Snohomish County Lincoln Day Dinner on May 17, 2024.
The following remarks were delivered to the Whatcom County Lincoln Day Dinner on March 23, 2024, in Ferndale, Washington.
I struggled with what to talk to you about tonight.
Well, that’s not true. I didn't struggle with what to talk to you about – I struggled with whether I was brave enough to say what I wanted to say.
When I'm invited to speak to groups, I don't want to offend anyone or be too controversial. So, I reached out to a few of your fellow party members to ask whether any topics were off limits or wouldn't go over well with the crowd.
I got some good advice.
Then I decided to ignore that good advice entirely.
Too much is at stake to be polite.
As we sit here tonight, we are in the final battle of a war.
A war that has pit sanity against insanity.
Pragmatism against idealism.
A war that has sacrificed the public good, in favor of a twisted idea of progress.
It's a war that began long before I moved here 15 years ago. It started silently and it was mostly waged in the shadows.
Most of us didn't even realize that a war was being fought. We were too caught up in our own lives and our own problems. ...
If there were ever an episode we’d be removed from social media over, this is it! Citizen sleuths look into Washington’s spending, and what they find is gag worthy. National civil rights complaint filed on behalf of Tumwater basketball player. Is Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell being punished for his bad basketball joke?
[Video] Only students designated as females at birth can participate in girls competitions, WIAA says
Source: News8000com WKBT News 8
https://share.newsbreak.com/bm02e0qe
Silent Majority Foundation sues to challenge the validity of a masking rule that led to charges against election observers. Teachers’ union deletes post targeted at female athlete. Happy Aromantic Sexual Awareness Week! Seattle animal shelter gets political.
When I first started dating my husband in 2018, I avoided asking who he voted for in the 2016 presidential election. Part of me already knew the answer, but I wanted to bury the uncomfortable truth: he’d voted for Donald J. Trump.
If I’d asked him the question then, I’m not sure we’d be where we are today: happily married and head-over-heels in love.
When we met in the fall of 2018, I was a political reporter at the local FOX-TV affiliate in Seattle and President Trump was less than two years into his first term. While I’ve always been right of Seattle’s hard-left politics – it was difficult to break free from the groupthink of a newsroom. Especially a newsroom in one of the bluest cities in America.
Donald Trump had declared the “fake news” media the enemy of the American people and, in turn, we waged war against him, too.
To be clear, not all our coverage was unfair. It’s the media’s job to hold politicians accountable and there’s no doubt, when it came to Trump, the Fourth Estate took that job seriously. The problem, as I’ve come to realize, was they took it less seriously when it came to Democrats. They still do.
During my years at FOX 13 News, I like to think I did my best to hold Washington state progressives accountable for their failures on homelessness, crime, and the anti-business policies that were driving companies like Amazon to move jobs elsewhere. But, in truth, I spent far too much time as a local news reporter covering the White House. I even convinced my bosses to send me to the border in 2019 to cover the so-called family separation crisis – an unusual expense for a local newsroom to agree to. It’s worth noting that local FOX affiliates are different from the network and don’t necessarily share the same conservative bias. Ours certainly did not.
My family and friends knew I was vehemently anti-Trump. I voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 and often chided my older brother for flying a Trump flag outside his home in Minnesota. By 2019, I’d moved in with my then-boyfriend – but still avoided talking to him about Trump and left the room when he’d turn on his favorite network news show.
In hindsight, I had what the right calls Trump Derangement Syndrome. And my diagnosis had the potential to be terminal.
But things started to turn at a most unexpected time.
The January 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol had a different effect on me than you might expect. Rather than deepen my disdain for Donald Trump, it opened my eyes to disturbing depths of hypocrisy that I cannot unsee.
I’d just spent six months covering acts of leftwing political violence in Seattle that followed the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
I watched as cop cars were torched in the streets downtown. My security guard disarmed rioters of stolen police rifles. Stores were looted to the studs – bare manikins left strewn in the streets. Officers were assaulted and hit with improvised explosive devices. My crew was mobbed in what later became known as the Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone (CHOP) – six square blocks surrounding a police precinct that were taken over by armed anti-police extremists. A few days into the occupation, rioters tried to light the precinct on fire after putting quick-drying cement on a door to lock officers in.
Those are just a few examples of what unfolded in Seattle during the racial justice movement of 2020. Our mayor at the time, Jenny Durkan, famously referred to it as a “Summer of Love.” The acts of that summer were ignored and even supported by many in our city’s Democratic leadership. Then-Councilwoman Tammy Morales scolded anyone who questioned the behavior of criminal demonstrators.
“What I don’t want to hear is for our constituents to be told to be civil, not to be reactionary, to be told that looting doesn’t solve anything,” she said during the unrest.
Our state’s chief law enforcer at the time, Attorney General Bob Fergson, stayed mostly silent about the destruction happening on our streets. He had by then made a national name for himself by suing the Trump administration dozens of times and had his eye on the governor’s office (which he went on to win in 2024). There was no way he’d risk angering his base by condemning leftwing extremism. Instead, he issued a short statement focused on criminal justice reform.
The media downplayed the violence, too. Even my own station took great pains to excuse or ignore criminal acts and play up non-criminal elements of the protests.
No such pains were taken with J6ers.
That hypocrisy was the beginning of my yearslong red pilling.
In 2021, frustrated by new management and our coverage of both the riots and the pandemic, I quit my job in news to launch an independent show.
The biggest supporter of me walking away from my $185,000/year dream job?
My sweet, Trump-voting boyfriend.
I married him in the fall of 2023, five years after I almost let his support for Donald Trump steal the joy we now share. There’s little doubt that had I asked him in the early days of our relationship who he’d voted for in the 2016 election, I would have ended things.
Typing that now makes my heart hurt.
This past November, I voted for Donald. J Trump for the first time. And yes, my husband did too.
Today, more than any other emotion, I am full of hope and optimism for our country – finally free from the echo chamber that once soured me on Trump and his agenda. But I am also battling a tinge of guilt. Guilt for the viewers I let down in those early days of the Trump administration. Guilt over the wonderful life I almost cost myself.
For that, I offer a sincere apology to our 47th President (and my husband, for that matter). And I offer this advice to anyone upset by a second term of Donald J. Trump: Never let politics stand in the way of your happiness. And never be too stubborn to change your mind.
