Is Vance cozy with his couch?
No truth whatsoever. A week after J.D. Vance, author and senator was named vice presidential candidate with Donald Trump, social media blew up in his face. It demonstrates the scariest part of social media. It doesn’t matter if it is an outright lie. If it goes viral it helps a cause. Or does it?
Fast Company notes that a protected account with the handle !ricksrudecalves posted on X a fabricated incident, claiming it was written between pages 179-181 of Vance’s book, Hillbilly Elegy. Then a teenage Vance wears rubber gloves and relieves himself onto the family couch.
From there a thousand memes cropped up with couches playing a major role. As if there was something wrong with masturbating's. How Puritanical is that?
What isn’t funny, more scary is Vance’s speeches saying women should stay married to a physically abusive or drunken man, because his grandmother did so. Even Carrie Nation, the mother of prohibition, didn’t go that far. She wanted the bars closed, temptation eased.
Sit down on the couch. Question time. Are we veering too far into lies that entertain? At a time when so many news organizations are going out of business, or laying off staff every other month, how do we tell the truth? Are real news organizations dinosaurs?
How does truth become “cool” again?
What is far more important about J.D. Vance is that he wrote the preface to Project 2025, the Heritage Foundations Manifesto for banishing democracy and basing every governmental hire, every funding on loyalty to Trump. Joy Reid, of MSNBC is running a whole week of programming to explain the inflammatory document.
Crazy is the new normal. What can we do anything about it?