Tuesday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "VA Democratic House candidate performed sex acts online for tips". This thread, which was posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics" forum, is about the revelation that Susanna Gibson — a 40-year-old mother of two who is running for Virginia's House of Delegates in a suburban Richmond district — has been posting sexually explicit videos of herself and her husband online. This is really going to test the maxim of whether there is such a thing as bad publicity. But, on the positive side, Gibson will probably soon rival all Virginia politicians in terms of name recognition. For those who want their politicians to be transparent, Gibson has left very little to the imagination. There was a time when it didn't take much of a scandal for a candidate to withdraw from an election. But, that time appears to be gone. Numerous politicians have attempted to ride out — many successfully — scandals of varing degrees. Who can forget that former President Trump, while still a candidate, was caught on tape admitting to sexually assaulting women? Gibson shows no indication of backing down and has, instead, gone on the offensive against the Republicans who are behind the disclosure of the videos. Whether it is due to increased partisanship or changing mores, it is not clear whether this controversy will hurt Gibson. The first indications are that she has successfully increased her campaign fundraising in the aftermath of the disclosure. Those responding in the thread are divided between posters who think the videos are disqualifying and those who believe that consensual sex with a spouse is completely acceptable even if there is a bit of a twist. Conservative posters accused liberals of only being concerned about abortion and gun control and, therefore, ignoring anything negative about Democratic candidates. Democratic posters agreed that they only care about abortion and gun control and don't care what Gibson is live streaming herself doing. A significant number of posters contended that they would have to watch the videos in order to have an educated opinion. Gibson and her husband apparently solicited monetary tips in exchange for requested activities. This, Republicans argued, made this more than a matter of consensual sex and instead made it a form of prostitution. I am fairly certain that prostitutes are viewed more favorably than politicians among significant numbers of voters, so this line of attack may backfire on conservatives.

The second most active thread yesterday also dealt with a political topic, but one of national instead of local interest and, therefore, was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "Biden impeachment", this thread was started just over two weeks ago with the original poster linking to an article in which Speaker of the US House of Representatives Kevin McCarthy was quoted as saying he was considering launching an impeachment inquiry targeting President Joe Biden. The thread was active yesterday because McCarthy finally carried through with his threat and announced that the House would begin an impeachment inquiry. It is important to understand exactly what McCarthy has ordered. This is not an official impeachment process. Remember that even an official impeachment does not lead by itself to the removal of a President. An impeachment is like an indictment. The articles of impeachment describe the violations of law of which the president is accused. If the House approves the articles, the Senate holds a trial to decide on guilt or innocence. Former President Trump was twice impeached but acquitted by the Senate each time. There is even less chance of the current Senate voting to convict Biden than there was of past Senates convicting Trump. So, there is no actual threat of Biden's removal. Moreover, a handful of moderate Republicans have no interest in having anything to do with an impeachment of Biden. Therefore McCarthy protected them from even being forced to vote to begin the impeachment process. Instead, on his own accord, McCarthy launched an impeachment inquiry. What is an "impeachment inquiry" you ask? Well, one thing it is not is an impeachment. There are no articles of impeachment and, therefore, will be no vote to impeach. In addition to his desire to protect moderates, McCarthy also has to contend with the fact that he has no evidence of illegality on Biden's part. This was implicitly admitted by McCarthy's explanation that the purpose of the inquiry is to find such evidence. McCarthy's main motivation appears to be appeasing conservative Republicans associated with the House Freedom Caucus. Democrats, for their part, don't appear to be much concerned with the inquiry and assert that they look forward to the Republicans continuing to come up empty in their search for evidence of actual crimes that Biden committed.

Next was a thread titled, "What can American women learn from foreign women?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. The original poster says that many men in the forum have looked to foreign or foreign-born women for romance and consider them to be of higher value than American women. Therefore, she wants to know what she can learn from foreign women to become more appealing. She then lists a number of traits that she appears to believe are common in American women but that she does not have. Let me first say that I appreciate that some posters attempted to provide serious and well-considered responses to this thread. I don't mean to takeaway from your efforts. But, frankly, this is not a serious thread. Ultimately people are individuals. Groups of them may have some things in common, but that only goes so far. Even trying to generalize about German women or South African women would be a useless exercise in any meaningful sense, let alone the entire female population outside the US. One poster started a thread in the "Website Feedback" forum asking whether this poster is real or some kind of troll. She found the idea of an American woman putting down American women not to be very believable. I also thought the thread was suspicious and checked to see how the original poster was responding in the thread. She didn't post much, but one lengthy response expressed very detailed opinions about the positive attributes of foreign women. As represented in that post, the original poster clearly sees herself as knowledgeable about foreign women and with sophisticated views. But, in my opinion, neither of those things is true. Instead, she portrays a sort of idealized version of what is likely her own opinion of what a foreign women should be. But, that description is pretty far from where most actually are. There is really nothing "foreign" about the characteristics she lists and countless American women share exactly those same attributes. All of this leads to the question, "why did the original poster start a thread with a question to which she obviously believes she has the answer?" I don't know why, but I suspect that the thread was not started to get advice for the original poster herself, but rather to provide advice to others. Whether that advice is either desired or helpful is a question I'll leave to others to address.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "Beauty and Fashion" forum. Titled, "Just for fun! We need this back! - Post your work bag and we'll guess what you do!", the original poster says that she leaves her bag in the car but it is a "Lululemon nylon mini crossbody in bright orange". A poster subsequently guessed, correctly, that the original poster is a teacher. Much of the thread is sidetracked into discussions of the good and bad points of various bags plus some discussion about whether women even need bags at all. But once posters finally got into the swing of things, there were some pretty fun posts. Some posters spun elaborate stories they envisioned for the owners of the bags, frequently getting amazingly close. For instance, when poster said that her bag was a "Jansport backpack with a flowered print", a poster guessed the following:

The floral print is a real F you to the man as you toil away at your fairly paid but also fairly boring job as a contractor. Your last holiday was to lisbon and you entertained a wild fantasy of staying there and becoming a ceramicist. But here you are, back again, commuting on the VRE. Oh well. The money is nice, anyway, and UVa tuition for jasper won’t be cheap in 2032.

The bag owner responded to say that while she is not a contractor, she works at an organization that has government contracts, she would prefer being a horticulturist over a ceramicist, and Jasper is actually going to college in two years.