This is the weekly dingus, the newsletter where I make fun of someone or something in the news. Sometimes it’s Mitch McConnell, sometimes it’s milk. It will never be Sophie Turner.
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This week, Joe Jonas and Sophie Turner announced they were ending their marriage.
If you don’t know who these people are let me help you. Joe Jonas is one head on the singing, dancing hydra known as the Jonas Brothers. Sophie Turner is a British actress known for playing Sansa Stark, Queen of the North, and ruler of direwolves, in the Game of Thrones series. The couple began dating in 2016 and were married in 2019 when Jonas was 30 and Turner was 23. They have two young daughters together born in 2020 and 2022.
Since the couple announced the split, tabloids have smeared Turner as a “bad mom.” TMZ wrote that Jonas was with the children “pretty much all the time.” Page Six reported that a source close to the couple blames the split on their incompatibility. “She likes to party; he likes to stay at home. They have very different lifestyles.”
Then of course the Daily Mail chimed in with images of Sophie Turner partying and headlines announcing that she was….and I’m sorry this gets gristly…but she was…doing shots.
*Women scream. Strong men faint.*
Yes. I’m so sorry to tell you this but, a MOTHER of CHILDREN was DRINKING ALCOHOL.
The humanity.
In a viral Tweet, former editor-in-chief of Jezebel, Laura Bassett wrote, “I think I’m supposed to gather from all the carefully placed headlines that she’s a partier and thus a bad mom, while he is the hero dad making sacrifices, but no one seems to question why he at 30 decided to marry a 23-year-old and thought she’d suddenly turn into a tradwife.”
Left out of all these thinly sourced stories about Jonas taking care of his own children like a real war hero, is that Turner is actually filming a movie. She’s working. And her children are being cared for by their other parent. Joe Jonas is not a hero, or a selfless martyr. He’s literally doing the thing he signed up to do when he had children — he’s parenting. And she’s a human being who is working and horror of all horrors going out with her friends at night.
It’s so fucking exhausting to be in the year 2023 and see a woman being smeared for drinking alcohol because she’s a mother.
I don’t care if Turner was 45 or 107. She’s allowed to go out and have fun. She’s allowed to be a human being. And it shouldn’t be that radical to say that. And yet, here we are watching the regressive morality stomp across another woman’s reputation all because she had the audacity to be a mother and act like a human being.
There are few things society loves to laud more than a woman who is a mother. And there are few things society loves to hate more than a single mother. This is because we hate a woman who falls outside of the heteronormative boundaries we set for them.
In the Washington Post,
, author of Momfluenced and the newsletter , smartly observes:“Like even if she does like to party … that has nothing to do with her ability to care for a child, make a child feel safe and secure and loved, and provide for a child. It has absolutely nothing to do with her mothering capabilities. Nor does the assertion that [Jonas] is a homebody have anything to do with his capabilities as a parent.”
Yet, once a woman becomes a mother, she ceases to be a full human being in the eyes of the law and society. People who give birth are often shocked to find that they can no longer show off a little boob and hit the town anymore. Once you become a mother, apparently you have to wear Prairie dresses and raise chickens and make your own bread and Tik Toks about how your husband can’t find the ketchup at the grocery store. This is actually a law that Iowa Republicans will be passing this next legislative session.
Don’t believe me? Well, my friends, the Supreme Court literally ruled that pregnant people have fewer rights than an insensate piece of metal and bullets. People who happen to get pregnant have fewer rights than Hobby fucking Lobby.
Like, human beings are out here in 2023 telling me patriarchy isn’t real, meanwhile, I’m living in a state where literal piles of trash on a curb have more rights than me.
Listen to me, Sophie Turner. You go out there and you have a great time. Like, I want you screaming “Goodbye Earl” at the pub. I want you to do “You Oughta Know” at karaoke after four too many tequila shots. Do not worry about those headlines. In fact, show off a little more. You look amazing. YOU ARE SANSA FUCKING STARK! QUEEN OF THE GODDAMN NORTH!
You are also a human being who deserves to have fun. And being a full and complete human is actually being a good mom. Being a good mom does not mean tossing your body onto the burning pyre of home and husband. Being a good mom means you get to be a human being. A real flesh and blood human. And if you couldn’t be that in your marriage then I am so glad you got out.
And by the way, marriage is a fucking trap. Did you know husbands add on average 7 hours of housework to a woman’s day?
And I’m imagining that Mr. Perfectly Fine adds at least 10 more hours of housework since you have to spend all that time cleaning up after his ego.
I’d love for TMZ to talk about how Joe Jonas asked Gigi Hadid out when he was 19 and she was 13. THIRTEEN! And he kept trying to date her for years until she relented. Like, if that happened to my daughter I would simply call the police because that shit is illegal.
You know what’s not illegal? Being a mom and having a fun time.
If you liked that little rant. You’ll love my book This American Ex Wife, which is publishing in February. Happy fucking Valentine’s.
And now for something good:
My president, Errin Haines, who is also the founding mother and editor at large of The 19th, wrote that this summer was the summer of the Black woman.
All the nominees for the VMAs artist of the year are women.
What’s this? It’s so strange, so wild, is it MORE….consequences?
After Donald Trump was found guilty of defaming my other president
, he went out and defamed her again. AND LOST AGAIN.Here is another great story about women doing the work to make everyone’s lives a little better.
What I am drinking:
I do not care if it is 95 degrees out. Jesus Christ and all his saints, including Target, Starbucks, Home Goods, and the display of gourds at my local grocery store, have all declared it’s fall.
So we need a fall drink. And I am bringing back this classic, the Lion’s Tail.
2 ounces bourbon
1/2 ounce allspice dram
1/2 ounce lime juice, freshly squeezed
1 teaspoon simple syrup
2 dashes Angostura bitters
Garnish with an orange twist and enjoy.
The Lion’s Tail was the drink of the week two years ago. And I cannot believe I’ve been doing the Dingus of the Week for that long. I really commit to the bit. But in that newsletter, I found this gem of a quote from my agent, Anna Sproul Latimer, who once texted me:
Iowa, the land of chilly temperatures, puts ranch on everything. Meanwhile, New Mexico, the land of ranches, puts chilies on everything.
Anyway, I hope you all have a wonderful weekend. And if you are Sophie Turner, girl, we got you. We won’t let them do to you what they did to Britney.
*me removing Waffle House from my playlists* I'M DOING IT FOR FEMINISM!
I really want someone to make public the list of PR execs these men hire to smear their exes. The Jonas brothers are touring right now - there is no way he's some dutiful house husband and the fact that these publications are eating up this obviously bs story has a lot to do with power and personal connections on top of the clicks & the patriarchy.