Brandi Kruse
Politics • Culture • News
'Orgasmic' drag king convinces media to help him do damage control
Rather than accept any responsibility for having such poor judgment, Kelsey Wayne played the victim and reached out to local news outlets for help.
October 08, 2024
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A high school teacher turned ‘orgasmic drag king’ is on a local media tour, trying to drum up sympathy for his poor life choices – and there is no shortage of so-called news outlets who are eager to give him a platform.

Last month, unDivided featured a segment on a Peninsula High School teacher named Kelsey Wayne. Several parents alerted us after their children discovered that Wayne was moonlighting as a drag king with quite the stage name: Jack King Goff.

For those who are pure of heart – that’s a play on jacking off. Get it? Jack King Goff.

Moving on.

As I stated several times during the segment, I don’t have a problem with public school teachers who want to do drag shows in their spare time. I’ve been to many a drag show. Some are tame – focusing more on singing or dancing than anything outwardly vulgar. I don’t see much of a difference between those drag performers and a traditional stage performer. Certainly, society wouldn’t look down on a teacher who appeared in theatrical productions. Drag isn’t much different.

Suffice it to say, we wouldn’t dedicate a segment of our show to exposing a teacher just for doing drag. That would be a full-time job in Seattle.

Kelsey Wayne is different for two reasons.

First, the vulgar nature of his public-facing persona and social media posts.

Second, the fact that Wayne was unable – or uninterested – in taking reasonable steps to make sure the vulgar nature of his drag life stayed private.

On social media accounts that have since been made private, Wayne referred to himself as the “Orgasmic Drag King Jack King Goff” with a little squirting emoji.

Again, for the pure of heart, that would represent the “orgasmic” part.

When students found out about the persona, rumor spread quickly – as it often does in a high school setting. After it got to us, Wayne told multiple local news outlets that he felt forced to quit his teaching job because of the negative attention and what he characterized as “bullying.”  

Rather than accept any responsibility for having such poor judgment, Wayne played the victim and reached out to local news outlets for help.

The Stranger, The Tacoma News Tribune, Real Change News, and KIRO 7 News have all reached out to unDivided in recent days asking us to explain ourselves.

What is there to explain?

In each case, the outlets were clearly intent on painting Wayne as the victim of a right-wing, anti-LGBTQ+ smear campaign – and, in the process, letting Wayne completely off the hook for his personal decision making.

Shockingly, The Stranger had what I thought was the least terrible coverage of the ordeal. In part because they didn’t skirt around the key reason we did a segment on Wayne in the first place: the sexual nature of his profiles.

Still, The Stranger excused it as a non-issue, writing “a masturbation pun is not exactly out of orbit for teenagers.”

Yeah ... for teenagers. Not their teacher.

Undermining their own efforts to blame me for Wayne's unemployment, The Stranger went on to admit that even before our coverage, blowback against Wayne was so bad that he hadn’t returned to school in several days.

Note: The Stranger uses Wayne’s preferred pronouns of they/them.

…Wayne learned the Instagram account @phs_crazy, an anonymous, student-run page that bullied queer and minority students at Peninsula High School about their looks and 'cringe' behavior, had discovered that on nights and weekends Wayne performed as the drag king, Jack King Goff.

 

The district didn’t fire Wayne. They took leave voluntarily after their union advised them to stay home for safety reasons, and they stayed home when the commotion didn’t stop. After a few days passed, when it still seemed plausible they might return to work, conservative commentator Brandi Kruse obliterated any chance of that with a segment on her show, [un]Divided with Brandi Kruse. 

 

'[The district was] already having a hard time with the community because of the initial Instagram posts, and then the Brandi thing threw kerosene on the fire,' they said. 'I literally can’t do my job because the kids are only going to think about one thing; then they’re not going to be able to focus … And therefore, I’m no longer going to be a competent employee. I hate to say that.'

So, whose fault is that?

Wayne has a public job, where he is paid with taxpayer funds to educate other people’s children. Along with that comes a responsibility to conduct yourself accordingly – both in and out of the classroom.

This is a classic case of someone being mad they got caught. By his own admission, Wayne knew the persona would be a problem if it were uncovered. Yet he chose to maintain it anyway – only making his accounts private once they were discovered.

While The Stranger’s assessment took great pains to paint Wayne as an innocent, wholesome teacher targeted by hate – the real troublesome coverage of Wayne’s self-inflicted ordeal came from the Tacoma News Tribune and KIRO 7 News.

In a lengthy article, the TNT failed to make clear that my key criticism of Wayne was the sexual nature of his posts (only underscoring that point after I sent the author an email). A casual reader would have come away from the article believing I simply hate drag performers and targeted Wayne for that reason.

An English teacher resigned from their teaching job last week through a mutual agreement with the Peninsula School District, after online trolls began attacking their after-hours profession as a drag king on social media and the information was amplified by a local conservative commentator.

But much like The Stranger, TNT was seemingly oblivious to the fact that Wayne’s own statements only serve to prove the point of my criticism.

If students knew they were a drag king, that could be a distraction in the classroom and make it difficult to teach, according to Wayne.

You think?

Wayne started getting a flood of notifications beginning Sept. 6 and into the weekend of the Gig Harbor High vs. Peninsula High Fish Bowl football game, Sept. 7-8. 'All these people are following me and commenting on posts,' Wayne said.

'And I’m like, ‘What’s going on? It’s not like I’ve made a reel or something and it’s gone viral, something’s happened.’ And then I realized it’s a bunch of my former and current students.'

 

They immediately set the account to private and began blocking and deleting followers that they could tell were their students, former or current. By then, it was too late. Images from their drag king Instagram account spread to Facebook and started getting comments by parents and leaders in the community — some in support of Wayne, others not, according to Wayne.

Again, whose fault is that? It’s easy to blame the scary “conservative commentator.” But did the TNT, which is supposed to be straight-forward news site, ever think to press Wayne on whether he had some responsibility for the series of events?

Of course not.

In fact, the TNT went to extraordinary lengths to explain away what I saw as Wayne’s most problematic post: a picture of him dressed in drag, reading “Lock up your daughters. Jack Goff is here.”

As I pointed out on the show, can you imagine if a straight male teacher called himself “Jack Goff” and posted things like “lock up your daughters"? If I were a parent, I’d have half a mind to call the police.

But according to the TNT, anyone bothered by that post missed an obvious and totally not obscure explanation.

Kruse didn’t mention that Wayne had been dressed up as a hair metal (a subgenre of heavy metal) musician at the time and the line, 'Lock up your daughters,' was a reference to the 1981 song of the same name by the English rock band, Slade. It also appears in the song lyrics to a 1976 song by AC/DC called 'T.N.T.' It’s an allusion to a reoccurring trope in heavy metal and fit the version of the early 'Jack Goff' character Wayne was performing at the time, playing off of stereotypes of rock stars, they said.

Ah yes, because any rational parent would have seen that post and thought, "oh, he must be referring to that 1981 song by English rock band Slade! Nothing to see here folks!”

Good god, we’re doomed.

As for KIRO 7’s story, which aired Monday afternoon, it was about as vapid and shallow as one would expect from a local TV news story.

KIRO 7 TV Reporter Deborah Horne reached out to me for comment just two hours before her story was scheduled to air. She seemed more interested in getting permission to use my videos than she did asking for my side of the story.

Perhaps not shockingly, KIRO 7 glossed over the sexual nature of Wayne’s persona – and didn’t even tell viewers his drag name in broadcast or print, leaving out the most critical part of the story. It sure says something that the name was too inappropriate for TV, yet apparently fine for a high school teacher's public profile.

Again, it was painted as nothing more than an attack on a schoolteacher for the crime of doing drag.

The English teacher quit their job at Peninsula High School on September 30th.  And it happened after a local commentator posted videos revealing the teacher’s side job as a drag performer.

 

The teacher says they gave up their profession because of this.

Not only is that a complete misrepresentation, but it only furthers divisions – leading viewers to believe that conservatives are ganging up on LGBTQ+ teachers for no good reason.

Most bizarrely, Horne refused to identify me by name in her story – despite my segment being the entire basis for it. She referred to me only as a “local online conservative commentator.” Weirdly, she included a quote I gave her on the record, but didn’t attribute it to me in her print story. That’s a first in all my years in the media.

KIRO 7 heard back from the commentator Wayne accuses of costing them their job.  The commentator says no one forced them to quit.

How weird is that?

The more I read, the more confident I am that we did the right thing in exposing Wayne's poor judgment. He is hardly an outlier in the state's public school system, which seems to have increasingly low standards for the conduct of teachers (See: Operation Indoctrination).

Any who, the lesson is this: If you’re a public teacher and lose your job for doing something dumb, go spin your sob story to the local media – you’ll find a handful of willing, and completely uncritical, supporters.  But if you want them to take the bait, just make sure you blame a conservative for your mistreatment. It'll work every time.

 

 

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EXCLUSIVE: When being a social media troll comes back to bite you – hard
If you simply can’t help but poke the hornet’s nest, at least make sure your own hive is in order first.
 

 

 

This story has it all. Politics. Conservative infighting. Social media trolls. Lawsuits. A fugitive from justice. Charges of sodomy. And a side of karma, served cold.

Let’s start with the basics.

On March 26, a 24-year-old named Tyler James Crowl was arrested at his dad’s house in Lakewood, Washington, for a warrant out of Oregon. The arrest didn’t make the news in Washington, which isn’t a surprise considering the alleged crimes weren’t perpetrated in our state.

Crowl was wanted out of Yamhill County, Oregon, on three counts of Sexual Abuse in the First Degree and three counts of Sodomy in the First Degree. Both crimes are felonies. According to court records from September 2024, prosecutors allege Crowl “unlawfully and knowingly engaged in oral sexual intercourse with a child under 12 years of age” on multiple occasions and “did unlawfully and knowingly subject a child under 14 years of age to sexual contact by touching her vaginal area and/or upper/inner thighs” on multiple occasions.

While Tyler Crowl would have been a teenager himself at the time of the alleged crimes, Oregon state law says minors under 12 years old cannot consent to oral sex. And minors under the age of 14 cannot consent to sexual intercourse.

The details of Tyler Crowl’s alleged crimes are disturbing. But the way he came to be arrested in Lakewood is the stuff movie scripts are made of.

For those who frequent the bowels of political social media in Washington state, the last name Crowl might look familiar. Eric Crowl, known by the X handle @OutragePNW, is a well-known social media troll in conservative circles. His schtick is attacking Republicans who he deems not conservative enough. In full disclosure, I’ve been a favorite target of his for my reporting on former gubernational candidate Semi Bird. Bird, a Republican, was accused of stolen valor, on top of other documented criminal cases from his past. I found the accusations credible and important enough to discuss on my show.

OutragePNW didn’t like that one bit.

His online posts became so unhinged, not to mention defamatory, I informed my local police department that I was worried for my safety. We had officers at our home a couple times to check in.

1.png?token-time=1744848000&token-hash=08A8qzwyNh1P_xGdASRiY-hEB_Fkn0epz6V44aQtwaU%3DWhile I’ve had my share of social media trolls rile their followers up into a rabid mob, Eric Crowl presented a different kind of security concern – one worth taking seriously.

In 2016, Eric Crowl, then 39-years-old, was arrested in Portland with a cache of weapons including a rifle, shotgun, camouflage, police scanner, and hundreds of rounds of ammunition. Police there had been investigating Crowl for months, after they “noticed him videotaping police outside the bureau's east precinct, often showing up during shift changes and leaving after hearing his name over the police scanner he carried,” according to Portland station KGW.

Crowl was arrested and charged with attempted assault of an officer and unlawful use of a weapon. 

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While out on house arrest, he was accused of violating the conditions of his release by allegedly showing up – with his wife and son in tow – to the home of a federal inspector.

“Crowl and his family were described as ‘aggressively’ staring into the inspector’s open garage and duty vehicle,” according to Portland station KOIN. The federal employee said Crowl was wearing shorts and did not have his court-mandated GPS monitor on.

“The inspector believed the Crowl’s were acting suspiciously and/or conducting surveillance on his home,” according to court documents.

Crowl was rearrested and had his bail set at $1 million. In November 2016, he agreed to a deal with prosecutors and pleaded no contest to a reduced charge of unlawful possession of a firearm in exchange for three years of probation, KOIN reported.

So, what’s the link between Eric Crowl (@OutragePNW) and alleged sodomizer turned fugitive Tyler James Crowl?

Tyler is Eric’s son.

Usually, the misdeeds of family members of social media figures wouldn’t be something I’d jump to report on (regardless of how I felt about that particular person).

But in this case, it was Crowl’s obsession with trolling his perceived political enemies that led to his son’s capture. And that’s a tale too interesting not to tell.

On March 4, Eric Crowl registered a nonprofit with the state of Washington named the Pierce County Republican Party. He immediately started a Facebook page using the name and even held live virtual events on X titled “Pierce County Republican Pary – Media Availability.”

If that sounds weird to you, it is.

There is, of course, already a Pierce County Republican Party. It’s the Pierce County branch of the State GOP and has been active in local politics since at least the 1960’s.

So why would Eric Crowl want to troll his local GOP?

The Pierce County Republican Party and its chairman, Dave McMullan, have been favorite targets of Crowl’s social media attacks. McMullan was an early and unapologetic supporter of Republican Gubernatorial candidate Dave Reichert, earning him the ire of the party’s right flank – and of diehard Semi Bird supporters like Crowl. Furthermore, the county party voted unanimously to ban Crowl from its biennial organizational meeting back in November – in part because of his conduct online.

What better way to make sure you're included than to register an imposter Pierce County Republican Party and put yourself in charge of it?

In response to Crowl’s filing, the legitimate Pierce County Republican Party made a filing of its own – in United States District Court.

On March 23, the PCRP filed a lawsuit against Crowl and his new nonprofit, accusing him of violating the Federal Trademark Act.

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The only thing left was to serve Eric Crowl with the papers at his home in Lakewood.

That job fell to Robert Parker, a local Republican who offered to help.

In advance of doing so, Parker told unDivided he thought it would be wise to see who else was living at the home. He knew of Crowl’s criminal history in Oregon and wanted to be prepared for what he might encounter.

A search of public records from the address showed a Tyler James Crowl was registered to vote there. Parker went into amateur detective mode. He put Tyler Crowl’s name into Google. Up popped a January 6, 2025, blog post from a small news outlet in Oregon. It was a list of outstanding warrants.

“Area law enforcement agencies are looking for the following people who have absconded from the law.”

On the list was “Tyler James Crowl, 23, wanted on warrants for first-degree sodomy and sexual abuse.”

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Unsure whether Tyler would be at his dad’s house, but armed with the information anyway, Parker went to serve the papers.

Sure enough, Tyler Crowl was the one to come to the door. Parker caught the whole thing on camera.

“Mr. Crowl?”

“That should be my father, but yeah, what’s this regarding?”

“That’s for him,” Parker said, handing over the notice of service in a manilla envelope.

“Ok … what’s it regarding if you don’t mind me asking?”

“It’s legal paperwork for him.”

A woman can be heard in the background saying “Tyler, don’t accept that.”

Parker leaves the documents with Tyler and walks away – only to promptly contact the Lakewood Police Department to inform them of the whereabouts of a fugitive from justice.

Within hours, Tyler Crowl was in custody and being held at the Pierce County Jail, where he is still awaiting extradition to Yamhill County, Oregon.

It is unclear whether the elder Crowl knew his son was a fugitive from justice. unDivided has reached out to prosecutors in Oregon to inquire whether they are investigating whether Eric Crowl knowingly concealed his son’s whereabouts.

A text message and email to Eric Crowl seeking comment went unanswered Tuesday. Crowl protected his X account (@OutragePNW) shortly after unDivided reached out for comment about his son’s arrest, limiting his posts to approved followers.

So, what lessons can be taken from this sordid tale?

For starters, don’t engage in sex acts with a pre-teen. That’s good advice for anyone.

Second, don’t be a social media troll. Also good advice for anyone. But if you simply can’t help but poke the hornet’s nest, at least make sure your own hive is in order first.

 

 

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