By David Futrelle
If anyone thinks the Mike Pence rule of never being alone with a woman lest something naughty happen isn’t discriminatory against women, consider the case of Mississippi Today reporter Larrison Campbell, who learned earlier this week that she wouldn’t be allowed to “ride along” with GOP gubernatorial wannabe Robert Foster on a 15-hour campaign trip because people might think that the two were “riding” each other, wink wink nudge nudge, knowwhatImean?
Because obviously every time a woman is alone in the presence of a man, sex breaks out.
“In two phone calls this week,” Campbell wrote in a story yesterday,
Colton Robinson, Foster’s campaign director, said a male colleague would need to accompany this reporter on an upcoming 15-hour campaign trip because they believed the optics of the candidate with a woman, even a working reporter, could be used in a smear campaign to insinuate an extramarital affair.
“The only reason you think that people will think I’m having a (improper) relationship with your candidate is because I am a woman,” this reporter said.
Robinson said the campaign simply “can’t risk it.”
I don’t even know what gender Colton Robinson is, but frankly they sound HOT. Are we sure Foster isn’t having sex with them right now?
Anyway, in a Tweet today, Foster said he was just following in the footsteps of Billy Graham, which really aren’t great footsteps for anyone to be following in but never mind. He also sort of suggested he might find it impossible to resist sex with Campbell and/or any other female person who wandered close to him unaccompanied by a man or men.
Clearly they aren’t thinking this through. If Campbell rode along with a male colleague in tow, wouldn’t people assume they were having an MMF threesome? I know I would.
Wait a minute, are there other men and women on this campaign bus or whatever it is that Foster is using to get around? DUDE IS TOTALLY HAVING ORGIES!!!1! ALLEGEDLY!1!
Still, in the odd moments when he is not having sex with ladies in his immediate presence (allegedly), Foster has found time to be mad online about the coverage of his not-sex-having policy with regard to Ms. Campbell.
I’ll give him credit for one thing: he can spell Mississippi correctly, despite all the sex thoughts about lady reporters and other nearby women he apparently has bouncing around in his head all day long.
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Oopsie! Misspelled by name & comment didnt post.
@Naglfar:
Yes he’s very horny. And he’s setting the record wayyyyyyyyyyy too straight! Hid campaign tour gives him some time for teh buttsecks with his boyfriend. I hope his wife gets some sex on the side while he’s away.
@Skye
Pretty much. They’re deeply horrible people, and they haven’t a strong enough theory of mind to understand decent, worthwhile folks in any way, so they assume that everyone’s as awful as them, some people are either better at hiding it or cowed into pretending otherwise by threat of consequences.
@Pyxxxi3
Stop it. Now.
@Pyxxxie
I’m with Dalil just stop it with the calling people gay and telling them to cheat on their spouses.
@Pyxxxie
Not even a tiny bit funny fam.
@Dalillama:
Hence also their fixation with strict law and order and harsh punishment: they know it would take a significant chance of really serious punishment to deter them from doing $(TERRIBLE_THING_THEY_ARE_OF_COURSE_SECRETLY_DOING_EG_KIDDY_ DIDDLING_ON_EPSTEINS_PRIVATE_ISLAND), so they honestly believe that without extreme laws and punishments to deter such things everyone else would do the same things and society would implode. (In fact, only most conservatives would do those things … sadly, still likely enough people to cause a lot of problems. And they don’t realize there are steeply diminishing deterrence returns with harsher punishments past a point; likely “1 year in prison” already gets you 90% of the deterrence you will ever get, and the only way to really increase it is to raise the likelihood to get caught, not the size of the downside risk.) Of course they also make sure to rig things so that being sufficiently wealthy or privileged gives one ways of evading those same laws …
Isn’t one of the things about Christianity supposed to be self-control in the face of temptation, as opposed to running away from it because you’re afraid you’re too weak? Or is this one of those “evangelicals look at it differently” things?
Having grown up evangelical, here’s another effect of the “Billy Graham Rule”: it kills male/female friendships long before puberty, and evangelical parents know it and (sometimes) encourage it. Because of course, as a girl, there’s no point making male friends when “you’ll just have to get rid of them after you’re married!” Actual thing I’ve heard evangelical mothers say to girls. Because once you’re married, the only man you have deep meaningful interactions with is your husband, I suppose, and immediate male relatives.
Of course, when you’re a girl who’s just not interested in stereotypically feminine stuff, immersed in evangelicalism which is constantly pushing the most stereotypically feminine stuff possible on the kids…you don’t have any female friends from ages like 10-16 because you’re not “pink” enough for any of the girls to acknowledge your existence. So of course to survive socially you talk to the boys, which is viewed with suspicion. (Ditto, I assume, for boys who wanted to be friends mostly with girls.) Thus, according to the plan-ahead version of the Billy Graham Rule, you’re screwed. Which is why, even when I was evangelical, I called BS on this one when I was like 10.
I think part of it is that conservatives are just playing out 17th century imperialist philosophy all over again. The ones who study any philosophy at all invariably seem to gush over that cohort of philosophers, specifically. That period gave rise to the concepts of rational self-interest and the state of nature (as well as penal substitution in theology), asserting that humans are rational and motivated solely by self-preservation, so an arbitrary, unaccountable ruler has to exist to enforce social contracts because otherwise society would devolve into savagery with everyone killing each other for even the smallest resources. This logic was then used to justify colonialism, because obviously other nations without leviathans were in a state of nature and needed “saving.” Probably influenced Nazism and other dictatorships, too.
I took a couple of philosophy classes to fulfill a “breadth requirement.” One takeaway that I’m reminded of constantly when contemplating conservative philosophy/theology is that you absolutely can just attack the premise with your lived experiences. We may be motivated by dopamine releases in the end, but self-preservation is far from the only contributor to that. (And that’s another thing I notice in conservatives and some liberals: a tendency to conflate all motivation with the specific concept of rational self-interest…)
One look at that guy’s over-age-emo-kid haircut was all it took to convince me that he’s got nothing to worry about. Not boning, and not rumors of boning, either.
But I could completely understand HER not wanting to be alone with HIM. I wouldn’t, either. He’d probably lie and say that we did it, because he looks like the type of guy that would.
Hmm. Well, one thing I’ve learned over the last few decades watching Republicans is, if they’re accusing the Dems of doing something (or acting like they will) then they’re already doing exactly that.
This isn’t about whether he WILL have sex with her, it’s the PERCEPTION of whether he COULD. It’s about the plausibility.
Why? Just keep your eyes on the main picture. They’ve been trying to discredit #metoo ever since it started because it called their boy Kavanaugh and of course the Orange Blunder into question. That means Dem candidates will need to be wary of planted women from the Republicans who will try to catch them alone, then accuse them of sexual misconduct later. Either the Dem will get knocked out of the running because “Believe the victims!” or else they prove she was lying (in which case, “women are liars that can’t be trusted and they lie constantly about being raped and harassed”). This way it does double duty discrediting Dems and women, and mollifying any doubts within their base. Either way, the Republicans win, sadly. And they’ve really excelled at playing long game strategies, from Nixon’s creation of the idea of Fox News to nudge the nation slowly rightward, to the way they’ve steadily gerrymandered their way through the nation.
Do you mean school principals? CEOs? Leading actors?
And I’m just gonna ask: Exactly how are they shared?
Who? Who is this someone? In 2019! Incredible.
There have been more than a few closet cases in the Republican party so if this one of em, I wouldn’t be shocked.
But really, this kind of behaviour suggests to me that he’s hiding something. Don’t believe for an instant that people like this are true to their values and ideals. They use principals as a cover for self-interest and political gain.
@Pyxxie
You’ve already been told to stop. So fucking stop.
Denying women equal professional opportunity absolutely is the point. These guys don’t think women should be out in the public sphere at all; they should be confined to the kitchen and the nursery. It’s textbook benevolent sexism, with a dash of faux-sanctimonious #MeToo trolling: “Oh, you’re going to accuse us of rape, ladies? Then you can never be alone with us, ever. Not even professionally. We’re just trying to protect you.”
It’s similar to all the MGTOW huffing & puffing about signing contracts and videotaping consent prior to every sexual interaction. In their imaginations, treating women as adversarial litigants serves them right for daring to set boundaries on sexual activity.
I think Campbell should just skip interviewing this guy and leave him out of her piece altogether. Let the media cover other candidates for governor, while Foster shelters safely at home with his wife. He’s far too delicate a flower for public life.
(By the way, in an interesting plot twist, Campbell told the Washington Post that she is “pretty openly gay”).
@Kimstu
I’m a Christian, and I agree.
@Foster, Pence, etc
If you’re afraid that even a single one-on-one interaction with a woman who’s not your wife will either tempt you to adultery or make others think you’re a cheater, you’re free to think that way. I don’t like that thought or agree with it, but you’re free to think it. However, it’s your responsibility to provide your own damn chaperone. Don’t let your own short leash restrict the freedom of others.
@Nikki
I like your thinking.
“I respect my wife by staying away from other women so I don’t cheat on her the moment I’m left alone.”
I don’t think this guy respects his wife as much as he thinks he does.
Another option would be for him to wear a body camera, so that there’s always evidence of what he did/didn’t get up to. I’m sure he won’t mind. God already watches everything he does anyway.
What about lesbians?! He’d be really safe with us… ? Oh, hadn’t thought that through… ?
If memory serve well, the poor journalist is an homosexual. Which make his defense even worse, because it’s not even “I can’t resist any occasion of consensual sex” to “I can’t resist raping women when alone”.
Implying, of course, that any married, Christian man who does not follow the “Billy Graham rule” does not value his relationship with his wife or uphold his Christian faith like Foster does. So Foster gets to be superior not just to those Godless Liberals but also to nearly all of the other married, Christian men.
I mean, I don’t recall Jesus saying anything about “Let he who thinks lustful thoughts about women cast them away,” and I do recall Jesus saying things about “Let he who thinks lustful thoughts deal with his own damn issues” (I’m paraphrasing maybe).
Foster might also be surprised to learn how many of those Godless Liberals not following the “Billy Graham rule” are in fact married, Christian men who have never been accused of infidelity because they… value their relationships with their wives, and so would never cheat on them, and so no one has ever thought they would.
@Ohlmann
Ah, but we all know Lesbians Aren’t Real and they’re just rebelling against God out of spite, so when faced with such as example of Godly Manliness as Foster any “lesbian” would forget her charade and try to tear his clothes off.
He’s not protecting women from himself. He’s protecting women from themselves.
Truly, we are blessed to have him.
“Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for you are at my side… but if there’s a woman there, fuck that shit, I’m outta there.”
Chickenshits, the lot of them.
Maybe if she wore a long, very roomy black robe from head to toe? With a little slit for the eyes.
I’m sure he’d be ok with that, right?