Recently, a deranged Canadian immigrant attempted to upend the government of the United States by means of violence. I mean, a deranged Canadian immigrant other than Ted Cruz, though that would have been a solid guess.

No, I’m talking about a different cuckoo Canuck, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to write his name here and give him the publicity of my 17 followers.

Side note: you know how we use the name “John Doe” to fill in when the real name is unknown or unshareable? I would like to suggest we use the name “Ted Cruz” instead. Think about it: It’s two syllables, simple, and already has a shitty connotation. In fact, I’m going to use it here, because Elon Musk descended from the great emerald mine in the heir air to bestow repercussionless free speech upon me. And apartheid apart from his express written consent, what more permission do I need?

So, Ted Cruz broke into Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s home in San Francisco, hell bent on “kneecapping” the person third in line to the presidency. Shouting, “WHERE’S NANCY?” Ted scurried around the home until he encountered 82-year-old husband of the Speaker, whom he promptly beat with a hammer.

This was a surprising turn, namely because a quick glance at the overly-shared pictures of Mr. Cruz would lead one to believe his soft hands, unaccustomed to work as they clearly are, would be unable to grasp and wield a heavy hammer.

Paul Pelosi suffered blunt force trauma from the attack, resulting in the need for emergency skull surgery. As of writing this, he just got out of a six-day hospital stay and is now at home recovering from the vicious attack.

In a wholly predictable twist, allies of Ted Cruz rushed to provide “reasonable doubt” to anyone unreasonable enough to accept the doubt.  And in likewise, wholly predictable “we’re all apparently in third grade” fashion, that reasonable doubt is that Ted Cruz is a gay prostitute.

Yep. “Ted Cruz is a gay prostitute.”

Ha. It has that sort of ring to it that, if said often enough, makes this essay rank first on Google for search queries such as, “Is Ted Cruz a gay prostitute?” or “Ted Cruz = gay prostitute.”

No, not Senator Rafael “Ted” Cruz, who is a public figure and clearly not a gay prostitute. Just throwing that out there for the upcoming libel case against me, a mere satirist with zero actual malice toward the Senator.

So anyway, back to the real story: Ted Cruz hitting an elderly man with a hammer.

Occam’s Razors On Sale For $8

It’s impressive, the lengths to which a sizable minority of our country will go to ignore logic and seize upon a completely unbelievable explanation. Which do you suppose is more likely? A nutjob breaks in and looks for the oft-vilified Speaker of the House, can’t find her, and instead attacks her husband, OR…an 82-year-old heretofore straight multimillionaire hired the least attractive, most violent gay prostitute in San Francisco?

But I guess if you believe stuff like “Donald Trump cares about the working man,” nothing is too crazy for you.

Armed with the most patently idiotic conspiracy theory since their last one, right-wingers ran to their keyboards to do what they always do: type a bunch of stuff that wouldn’t age well.

I believe it was Pastor Ted Haggard who once said, “It’s never easy to pinpoint exactly where insane gay prostitute-related rumors start.” I mean, besides in the latent subconscious desires of the accusation flingers. I swear, if I had a dollar for every gay-curious homophobe trying a little too hard to convince us of their own heterosexuality, I’d be rich enough to hire noted gay prostitute Ted Cruz!

That being said, it seems an article in the right-wing “newspaper,” the Santa Monica Observer, kicked off the homosexual-for-hire rumor extravaganza.

If that newspaper sounds familiar, it might be because you remember its name from 2016 when it loudly proclaimed Hillary Clinton was dead, and the person on the campaign trail was her body double. I’m assuming she died from “adopting an alien baby”-related injuries. Tragic.

The Santa Monica Observer, on advice of San Francisco County prosecutors, kept the story’s URL alive but deleted the text within the story. They replaced it with a mix of “that hammer-swinging gay prostitute is a leftist!” and “Look at me! I’m wishing Mr. Pelosi the best and a speedy recovery, so I must not have any actual malice toward the public figure I just maligned in print.” You know, courageous journalistic stuff like that.

Note to self: if shit gets real, remember to delete the text of this article and replace it with accusations that the author is a leftist whackjob, and Ted Cruz is definitely NOT a gay prostitute.

It’s True! I Read It On The Internet!

But with the barely-plausible cover of a newspaperish site like “Santa Monica Observer” and a head whose primary use is “hat rack,” every average MAGAt quickly shared the story. And because the MAGAverse is an extraordinarily effective and transparent echo chamber, the story bubbled up quickly to more “reputable” sources with way bigger megaphones.

What kind of sources, you ask?

Sources like Donald Trump, Jr., who shared via Instagram (then deleted) a cartoon meme of an older man holding a hammer, shtupping a younger man, and calling the cops to report an assault. In a trending theme, Sir Snorts-A-Lot left a comment to feign innocence in the comments, stating, “Dear fact checkers this has nothing at all to do with anything going on in the news and simply posting a cartoon of what appears to be an altered South Park scene.”

Sure, Don Yayo is the adult equivalent of a 12-year-old bully who’s lashing out because his daddy doesn’t love him, but he’s a justifiably unloved 12-year-old bully with 6.2 million followers on that platform alone.

Noted right-wing nutjob and Trump pardonee Dinesh D’Souza took to the Twit machine and innocently asked his 2.5 million followers, “was this a case of political violence or a gay rendezvous gone sideways?” Ah, the old Tucker Carlson/Bill O’Reilly “I’m just asking an innocent yet leading rhetorical question!” maneuver. Classic.

MMA Fighter Jake Shields (246,000 followers) tweeted a conveniently vague “confirmation” of the rumor, stating, “My friend who’s a San Francisco detective just told me Paul Pelosi won’t hand over video footage and they believe he was engaged in gay sex He isn’t directly working on this case so I can’t confirm reliability.”

In other news, I have a friend who is friends with another guy who said Jake Shields fucks sheep at elementary schools. The friends’ friends’ friend hasn’t actually seen the ovine fuckery, but still, it’s worth keeping the question, “does Jake Shields fuck sheep at elementary schools?” firmly in the front of your mind, right next to, “is Ted Cruz really a gay prostitute?”

Thanks for the rhetorical tool, Tucker and Bill-O, I see why you both use this now. This is fun!

Right-wing radio host Jesse Kelly tweeted the classic conspiracy theory argument that denial of the story confirmed its accuracy. “I didn’t know for sure the Paul Pelosi ‘gay hookup gone wrong’ story until the media started calling it a conspiracy theory.” Jesse shared that with his 560,000 followers on Elon Musk’s newly-acquired social media platform.

Which brings us full circle to the world’s most dangerous South African, Oscar Pistorius Elon Musk.

Remember that story I mentioned a few paragraphs back from the Santa Monica Observer? The one that kicked off this whole “everyone is saying Ted Cruz is a gay prostitute” story?

That story went from below-the-metaphorical-fold on a nonsense website to the prevailing counternarrative of the day when Elon “Guess What, I Am The Manager” Musk tweeted a link to it to his 113 million followers, writing, “There is a tiny possibility there might be more to this story than meets the eye.” Worse, he tweeted it as a reply to a tweet by Hillary Clinton, who herself has 31 million followers.

Of course, Elon later deleted the tweet with the link to the gay prostitute story.

Sorry, hang on, this bell is ringing super loudly in my apartment. It has now rudely awakened all my neighbors. Let me pause and simply unring it.

Okay, I’m back. No harm, no foul.

Free Speech Isn’t Free, Brother

Fast forward to today. Elon Musk is frustrated that advertisers are reconsidering whether they want to have their brands associated with an unregulated public square.

He’s blaming their reticence on “activists” pressuring the brands. Meanwhile, he’s ignoring the fact that he tweeted a gay prostitution conspiracy theory at the former Secretary of State 27 minutes into his ownership of the site. He’s disregarding the fact that use of the N-word spiked 500% the day after he took over. He’s discounting the apparent terroristic strategy of getting in the cockpit and then charging all the flight attendants $8 to land the plane safely…and offering a chance to fly the plane to anyone else with $8.

Twitter has always had its flaws, no doubt. What started as a “microblogging” site, where anyone in the world could share 140 characters of thought with billions of people, became an odd mix of public square, weekly advertising circular, handy subconscious exposure tool, and profit-motivated corporate venture.

That profit motivation led the secretive algorithm behind the curtain to regulate the public square to the liking of the advertisers paying the bills. And now, the formula is unraveling because the linchpin of the formula—regulation—is being threatened and eroded in real-time.

Here’s the problem with purportedly loving free speech and worshiping the free market:

The free market hates free speech.

It hates investing millions into selling its wares, and then having @fartknocker1488 stand in front of its kiosk yelling obscenities about the Holocaust. It doesn’t matter that Mr. Knocker has the right to yell those obscenities…but it does make the free market distance itself from his sales-killing rants. That sucks if you make your living renting out kiosk space. It sucks worse if you are renting out prime kiosk locations and actively inviting @fartknocker1488 and all his rowdy friends to the square…and then prodding them to be as outrageous as possible.

It’s why the Supreme Court—preserver of capitalism that it is—draws a major distinction between First Amendment-protected free speech in the literal public square and speech in a private forum. You can say pretty much whatever the fuck you want at the City Park, but the Piggly Wiggly can kick your dumb ass out for saying shit they don’t like in the produce section.

It’s why Twitter worked at all in the Pre-Elon era: the paying customers were guaranteed that the most obscene free customers would not be allowed to stick around. You can sell your widgets in peace, knowing that purveyors of disinformation, blatant racists and homophobes, and violence instigators would be quickly removed from your kiosk area.

The landlord had a common interest with you, the paying customer, and with 99% of the non-paying participants who simply wanted to chat and microblog in peace.

Those ousters understandably pissed off a lot of purveyors of disinformation, blatant racists and homophobes, and violence instigators. And, in a classic blunder, the rich neurodivergent nerd mistook volume for legitimacy. He listened to the minority’s loud and angry cries, assumed they were the majority, and gave them what they wanted: repercussionless free speech.

The landlord took the side of the fartknockers.

And all the kiosks are boarding up as quick as they can. Surprise, surprise. Free speech isn’t repercussionless for those beholden to the free market.

Any capitalist with a brain knows that running off your only revenue source right after you dramatically overpaid for the company is a massively stupid idea—squared.

Of course, I don’t know a lot about business. I’m just some weird dude with a website. That’s why, whenever I need to feel needed, important, and validated, I skip buying a $44 billion company and just splurge on a fun night with Ted Cruz: Gay Prostitute.

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