Lighten Up

I was going to comment on Saturday's teabagger rallies, but thinking about them makes my brain hurt. So instead, here's something a little different.

Back in 2004, Republican Jack Ryan was the man to beat in the Illinois Senate race. He had the money, the coverage, the endorsements and the support of the Christian right. And then Jeri Ryan showed up.

Jeri, better known as Borg babe Seven of Nine on Star Trek: Voyager, was once married to Jack before the union dissolved in a messy divorce. One of the messiest parts revolved around Jeri's allegations of Jack's appetites being, well, nonstandard.

I [Jeri] made clear to Respondent [Jack] that our marriage was over for me in the spring of 1998. On three trips, one to New Orleans, one to New York, and one to Paris, Respondent insisted that I go to sex clubs with him. They were long weekends, supposed "romantic" getaways. ...

The clubs in New York and Paris were explicit sex clubs. Respondent had done research. Respondent took me to two clubs in New York during the day. One club I refused to go in. It had mattresses in cubicles. The other club he insisted I go to. ... It was a bizarre club with cages, whips and other apparatus hanging from the ceiling. Respondent wanted me to have sex with him there, with another couple watching. I refused. Respondent asked me to perform a sexual activity upon him, and he specifically asked other people to watch. I was very upset. We left the club, and Respondent apologized, said that I was right and that he would never insist I go to a club again. He promised it was out of his system.

Then during a trip to Paris, he took me to a sex club in Paris, without telling me where we were going. I told him I thought it was out of his system. I told him he had promised me would never go. People were having sex everywhere. I cried, I was physically ill. Respondent became very upset with me, and said it was not a "turn on" for me to cry.

When the divorce files were unsealed and made public, Jack first called his ex-wife a liar and then dropped out of the race. With only a few months to go to the election, the national GOP had to scramble for a replacement candidate, especially after Chicago Bears coach Mike Ditka turned them down. The party eventually went out of state to get Alan Keyes, the party's token black conservative, to stand in on the ballot. The far-right (he has since become a birther) Keyes never had a chance and was creamed in November by a state senator named Barack Obama.

Fast-forward five years. Republican uber-pundit Jonah Goldberg has spent most of the last year shrieking about Obama's election and America's subsequent transformation into a socialist (or fascist, he can't seem to make up his mind) tyranny. After all, look at how many teabaggers were arrested and/or beaten to a pulp on Saturday by Obama's private army of ACORN operatives and indoctrinated schoolchildren.

There weren't any? Really? I'm pretty sure I heard something about how America is now a dictatorship where dissent is punished harshly. Oh well, never mind.

Anyway, Goldberg has decided who is to blame for our current situation. It's Jeri Ryan.

Yesterday, Goldberg posted to his Twitter page:

Lightened up?

The lady's husband took her to places she did not want to go, which clearly upset her and left her feeling betrayed, and this guy's response is to tell her to lighten up? Did he not have enough tweet room to tell her she should have taken one for the team?

And the Republicans wonder why their party is so often seen as hostile to women.