"Nevertheless, she persisted."


Macho man Mitch McConnell
 

Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, who used his influence to keep firebrand Elizabeth Warren from reading a letter Coretta Scott King had written in 1986 criticizing Attorney General candidate Jefferson Beauregard Sessions. Make no mistake, I think Ms. Warren is a great woman and Mr. McConnell is a pompous buffoon. But I also know a thing or two about getting an overbearing yenta to quit flapping her gums at me and Mr. McConnell went about it in the worst way possible. Because he operated under the assumption that he could win. Oh, I know Mr. McConnell thought he won by saying “She was warned. She was given an explanation. Nevertheless, she persisted” when she was forced to stop reading the letter disparaging his racist buddy (the letter was read on the Senate floor by no less than four other Senators after Ms. Warren was silenced, although no one objected to that; presumably because they're dudes).


Your beloved correspondent with Hall of Fame yenta Misty LaRue demonstrating the only acceptable way for a man to respond to a woman's yammering.
 

But all he did was unleash the wrath of hundreds of millions of other yentas who wouldn't have said thing one if he'd just shut up and let her speak her piece. Let me assure Mr. McConnell of something I know from personal experience: a woman yammering in a man's ear is annoying because it takes up time we men would otherwise be using thinking about the Cubs' World Series win or how freakin' wonderful we are. But the reality is – and I'm only going to say this once – that the dullest woman who ever lived is smarter than any man. Because they've spent their entire lives maneuvering around us to do their bidding while making us think that we're superior to them. So you go ahead and think you're keeping women like Ms. Warren and the late Mrs. King from speaking their minds, Mitch McConnell. When the dust settles, you won't just be sleeping on the couch for a week or two. When chicks like those persist, dudes like you have a tendency of going down in history as hopeless assholes. You've been warned and were given an explanation.



Betsy DeVos. Occupation: fucktard.
 

Since every rule has an exception, newly-minted Education Secretary Betsy DeVos – who is not a woman that I would categorize as being smarter than any man. Ms. DeVos sat through her confirmation hearings looking like a deer caught in someone's headlights, famously stating that schools should be required guns to protect children from nearby Grizzly Bears and displaying no qualifications for the position save that she donated over a million dollars to the election campaigns of the Republicans who voted on her. Ms. DeVos is one of those paradoxes: a multi-billionaire who fancies herself a Christian despite the fact that Jesus was pretty explicit about rich men and a camel traveling through the eye of a needle. Maybe she thinks she's found a loophole because the savior said nothing about rich women. But just to be sure, when she goes for her interview with Saint Peter to be allowed entry into heaven, she'll be packing heat to persuade him. If there's any trouble about it, she can just claim that she spotted a Grizzly Bear loitering by the Pearly Gates.



Stephanie Fredricks in a perfect universe
 

Stephanie Fredricks. I made another of my delightful "Cool People" illustrations to cheer myself up this week and chose Ms. Fredricks to be included among the titular groovy folks depicted. "Titular" is actually a particularly appropriate word since I showed Ms. Fredricks wearing a tee-shirt emblazoned with the logo of the production of The Apple Tree in which I starred that she supported me in, but the tee-shirt model that I used for her body in the image was too flat-chested for her liking. After taking a quick peek at my tribute, Ms. Fredricks' only comment was "Diggin' my shirt, but where did my boobs go?" A fair question but one that I have a hard time relating to because ever since I turned 50, the issue I always broach is "Where did my boobs come from?" But since the idea of these illustrations is to make the people depicted in them happy, I offer up this image of Ms. Fredricks with cleavage more to her liking. I suppose that it's no more accurate than the first one but at least no one can accuse me of making her look too boyish. And the best part is that if she really was blessed with this much endowment, she and I could go halvsies on buying brassieres. Now that I'm getting older, I'm on a fixed budget.



Robin Greenspan displaying true one-touch live TV to Lacie Harmon
 

Lacie Harmon and Robin Greenspan, whose latest video chronicling the perils and advantages of the lesbian lifestyle described Ms. Harmon's challenges with turning on a modern television set without having to work through multiple complexities of technology to get it to display "live TV." I sympathize with her plight since I have to endure a series of frustrating steps to get my laptop to exhibit my beloved Internet porn despite the fact that I have yet to determine that there is any other use for a computer. I do recall that the television sets from my childhood needed only the push of a button but they could only show 3½ channels (PBS always being a dicey proposition) with nothing containing the fabulous nudity we now take for granted on Game of Thrones or Shameless (although with that one you take the risk of seeing William H. Macy's hungover ass showing its pock-marked face). I'd like to think that our current options of thousands of channels of quality viewing are worth the extra few minutes it takes to rev up the TV, although it seems like whenever I plop myself down to take advantage of it there's nothing worth watching. Maybe we should go back to the old days when there were only 3½ channels to choose from. Ms. Harmon's TV would come on a lot faster and I would face a smaller risk of accidentally catching a glimpse of William H. Macy's hungover ass.



Mara Marini, badass
 

Enemies List favorite Mara Marini. Longtime readers of these pages know Ms. Marini as the sexy starlet who I fixate my sexual obsessions on and she responds with flirtatious emoticons and not-so flirtatious restraining orders. But ever since the recent presidential election, she has transformed into something decidedly different: a badass protester who is outraged at the commander in chief's every blowhard, sexist move and won't grant him a inch of leeway in his perverse regime. There was a time when I took a daily gander at Ms. Marini's Facebook feed to get a creepy thrill at her posts of selfies featuring her awe-inspiring figure in a bikini. But now everything she puts on the social network is a passionate call to arms to tear down an oppressive dictator. To tell you the truth, I used to think of her as an empty-headed blonde with an amazing body – and I thought that was pretty hot. But now that she's revealed herself to be a fiercely independent thinker who won't take shit from anybody, no matter how many mindless minions they've conned into believing their fascist bullshit, I honestly can't say that I think she's hot anyone.

Now I think she's smokin' hot.

Fight the power, ladies!!! You've taken too much crap for too long!