TWIBS: RFK, Jr., Far too Weird and Evil to be Confirmed
At a confirmation hearing for his proposed position of secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Robert Kennedy, Jr., lied about statements he’s made in the past and was evasive about his penchant for pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.
Humor by Alyssa Steinsiek
This Week in Barrel Scraping (TWIBS) is Assigned Media’s oldest column! Every Friday, Alyssa Steinsiek digs deep from the well of transphobia and finds the most obnoxious, goofy thing transphobes have said or obsessed over during the week and tears it to shreds.
On Wednesday, President Donald Trump’s nominee for secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services repeatedly lied to the Senate Finance Committee about conspiracy theories he had spread regarding transgender people and what he believes to be a man-made cause for gender dysphoria.
In spite of shockingly strong and imminently accessible evidence to the contrary (i.e., he said it on Jordan Peterson’s podcast), Robert Francis Kennedy, Jr., insisted that he had never publicly bought into the theories that chemicals in the water were making the friggin’ frogs gay. I’m not joking, he genuinely believes in the “gay frogs” conspiracy that Alex Jones perpetuated in 2017, propped up by a single study about the effects of the endocrine-disrupting chemical atrazine on the sexual development of tadpoles.
Amphibians, it must be said, are well known for being… amphibians. Not humans.
Kennedy would be an undeniable danger to the trans community, and in fact all of America, were he to be confirmed as the secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services. He has denied that AIDS is caused by HIV. He has described puberty blockers as “castration drugs,” and referred to gender-affirming surgeries as “mutilation.” He has long promoted anti-vaccine junk science.
If that were the end of it, I would simply say that Kennedy is not fit for any position relating to healthcare… but the other headlines he’s made in the last few years make it clear that he’s barely fit to live among other human beings.
For a start, Kennedy has been involved in two absolutely unhinged animal corpse conspiracies. In August of last year, while on the campaign trail, he confessed to being the culprit of a nearly ten year old mystery about a dead bear abandoned in Central Park. Talking to Roseanne Barr, of all people, he explained that a car ahead of him on the road had struck and killed the bear, and that he took its body intending to butcher it… but his day got so full up (a busy schedule of falconry and steakhouse dinners) that he was due at the airport, where you certainly wouldn’t want to take a bear carcass, so he staged an impromptu hit and run between the bear and a bicycle that he had been meaning to dispose of.
Then in September, after withdrawing from the presidential race and stumping for Trump, Kennedy revealed that he was under investigation by a federal agency for removing the head of a whale carcass with a chainsaw, and then strapping it to the roof of his car for a five hour trip home. Kathleen Kennedy, his daughter, recalled driving down the highway wearing bags to protect themselves from the smell of the carcass, “whale juice [pouring] into the windows of the car,” and everybody else on the road flipping them off.
Just “normal day-to-day stuff” for their family, Kathleen said.
If that wasn’t enough, you may recall when news broke in May of last year… about Kennedy’s hollowed out brain and the worm living inside of it.
Oh, yeah.
In 2010, Kennedy was experiencing memory loss and brain fog. Fearing that he might have a brain tumor, he met with neurologists who scanned his brain and found a dark spot. Before he could go under the knife, Kennedy was contacted by a doctor who explained that he believed the “tumor” was actually a parasite that had made its way into the man’s brain, eaten a portion of it, and then died.
If you don’t know quite what to do with that information, that’s okay. Neither do I.
Suffice it to say, an anti-science conspiracy theorist with a worm hole in his brain who used to experience significant self-described “cognitive problems” like short- and long-term memory loss really should not be in charge of America’s healthcare systems. Even his cousin, Caroline Kennedy, believes Robert isn’t qualified for the job; in a scathing six minute video released on Tuesday, she speaks at length about Robert’s disturbed childhood habits like dropping mice into a blender to feed his falcon, as well as a history of destructive narcissistic behavior.
It’s very clear that Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., should not hold any position in our government, and as usual… All we can do is hope somebody involved in this process sees reason.
Alyssa Steinsiek is a professional writer who spends too much time playing video games!
