Tag: Leslie Cockburn

It involves Bigfoot erotica and a Virginia congressional race. Perhaps we should back up first. It started with this tweet from Leslie Cockburn, a Democrat running for Virginia’s Fifth Congressional District. It includes a screengrab of her Republican opponent Denver Riggleman’s Instagram page, where he apparently posted what one could only call Bigfoot erotica. This is not what we need on Capitol Hill. Vox did an explainer. What should matter, in this case, is policy. From Lux Alptraum in the Verge: “By making a candidate’s sexual interests a part of the campaign rhetoric, we’re sending the message that the kind of smut you’re into is as important as your policy platform. It discourages talented people from even considering running for office because they don’t want their careers tanked by an accidental glimpse into their erotic psyche. Worst of all, it distracts from meaningful discussions of candidates’ actual merits and qualifications — in the specific case of Riggleman, it turns the conversation away from his truly monstrous affinity for normalizing white supremacy, a trend that is growing more widely acceptable in American political discourse by the day.” (h/t: Will Lager)