The GOP congresswoman has accused trans people and drag queens of “grooming” and “sexualiz[ing]” children

Rep. Lauren Boebert has been outspoken about her disapproval of drag queens, but that didn’t stop the Colorado congresswoman from spending hundreds of campaign dollars at a bar that hosts drag shows.

According to Politico, which cited her latest Federal Election Commission filings, Boebert’s campaign spent $317.48 in July for “event catering” at Hooch Craft Cocktail Bar in Aspen, Co., which is owned by Boebert’s former boyfriend, Quinn Gallagher. Boebert and Gallagher were booted from a performance of Beetlejuice last month for disruptive conduct, including vaping, loud singing and fondling each other at the family-friendly production. Boebert later said she and Gallagher, a Democrat, had broken up. “All future date nights have been canceled. I learned to check party affiliations before you go on a date,” Boebert told TMZ.

  • thejml@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I learned to check party affiliations before going on a date

    Yeah, that was definitely the Problem. Not the vaping, fondling, obnoxious behavior… Sure.

    • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      1 year ago

      Don’t forget the tits out for Harambe too. She exposed herself in the presence of children—a tried and true Republican tradition at this point.

      • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        When did this happen?

        The most I’ve heard is that her husband whipped it out in front of her and her friends, she fondled her new play-toy at a Beetlejuice musical, and apparently is OK with public lewdness so long as it’s not with a Democrat. Not sure where this came from.

        • buddhabound@lemmy.world
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          It happened. Her boyfriend was playing with her boobs, and she was giving him an over the pants rub in the theater. There are night vision shots of it that were published at the time. I’m not googling it for you, but try “Boebert Beetlejuice fondling” and that should find it.

          • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Please point out where she whipped out her boobs.

            Yes, we all know the incident happened. We don’t need to make it any worse than it really is by claiming they did things they never actually did. They groped each other, yes, but at no point did she “whip them out” or actually expose herself or her date.

              • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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                Oh, come on. That’s a load of horseshit and you know it.

                There’s the image. There is zero chance in hell your “wife” saw nipple or anything else. You can barely even make out that his hand is on her boob. She absolutely did not expose herself.

                And the fact that you used the terms “turned on the high beams for her” shows you don’t have a clue what you’re talking about. “High beams” doesn’t mean her tits were out. It means her nipples would have been hard, and from that distance you wouldn’t be able to tell unless she were standing on the chair topless. The fact that she was tucking in a boob means nothing; walk down the street and you’ll see random women making random adjustments all the time. That, and we already know he groped her, so her having to adjust herself shouldn’t be a surprise.

                For the love of God, what she did was bad enough without having to completely make shit up to make it sound even worse.

                • WeirdGoesPro@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  1 year ago

                  I love how you put “wife” in quotes as if she’s my imaginary friend, lol.

                  I was trying to bring some humor to the situation with my word choice. It’s a ridiculous story of ridiculous behavior by a ridiculous person. Rather than say high beams, I probably should have said she’s a vapid, hypocritical, idiotic, white trash, no good, dumpster fire of a woman. You can see all that from the video a mile away.

        • Wilibus@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          He wasn’t her husband when he sexually exposed himself to minors in a bowling alley. The fact he ended up marrying one of them doesn’t make him any less a paedophile.

  • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    I’m reading this book called Conservatize Me by an NPR/McSweeny writer from back in 2006. Ignore the title, remember everybody was doing that kind of stuff after Super Size Me.

    Anyway, for a month he had to stick to only “conservative culture.” He could only watch conservative news shows, listen to AM radio, etc. He met with folks at New Republic and the first thing guy said to him was “you have to ignore hypocrisy, liberals care about that. It’s just a distraction.”

    Almost 20 years ago, and here is this dude just openly saying what we all kind of know. Not that liberals are somehow better and always consistent. But we really do obsess over it, and this guy is sitting here telling him “it is a waste of time to play that game, and conservatives are almost fueled by it.”

    I agree that Boebert is a hypocrite. But they don’t care. This stuff just reads as “slander by the media” to them. No one had their mind changed about Boebert. We have to focus on their bad policies and leadership or their voters aren’t going to be swayed.

    The reason they like to point out the “hypocrisy of the left” so much is because it makes them feel like they have the moral highground, and because they know the left cares about it. It’s a cudgel, it’s a tool. It’s not a shared value. Google “learjet liberal” and take a look at the results from the 2000’s/2010’s. It’s the same nonsense today.

    • usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca
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      My interpretation is that they don’t see it as hypocrisy. They don’t judge actions, they judge people, so the same actions they would condemn others for when done by the “right” people are fine. It’s almost a tautology; good people do good things, because if they weren’t good people then those things would be bad.

      • mosiacmango@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        Add in a heap of “good people are people that do things like me” and you have the whole conservative hierarchy in a nutshell.

    • jjjalljs@ttrpg.network
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      They don’t care about internal consistency. Or truth. They care about effect.

      Sartre had a quote about this

      Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti-Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.

    • Chetzemoka@startrek.website
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      1 year ago

      Because they know very well that their only actual political stance is to get all the power by any means necessary.

      • BolexForSoup@kbin.social
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        I think it’s very easy to boil these things down into very simplistic world views like this, but there actually is more to it. In the book, a lot of them go “I am a conservative, I do not like what the Republican Party is doing.“ this allows them to mentally insulate themselves from some of the more detestable or harder to defend decisions the party makes. Is it just an excuse? Sure. If you vote for that party, you’re responsible for all of their actions. You need to be able to critique them or they won’t stop. But the mentality isn’t simply “I want power.” I’m sure plenty of politicians in their seats, think roughly along those lines, but not the average voter.

        And honestly, this makes sense! I am passionate about how we treat people trying to enter the country. Obama and Biden have not done a great job of it, but what am I going to do? Vote Republican? The group that calls them invaders and wants to put up a massive wall? Of course not! So I critique the way they are handling the border and I still vote Democrat. But I’m still culpable for the actions of the Democrats because I pulled that lever when I voted. I don’t try to logic my way around it or separate my voting for them from policy.

        • Chetzemoka@startrek.website
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          Have you ever talked to many conservatives? Because I have the misfortune of having many in my family. There’s nuanced “I don’t agree with everything this one party does” and then there’s “it doesn’t matter what this party does, I’ll never vote for anyone else”

          That latter line of thinking is 100% just “I want my team to win at any cost no matter what they’re actually doing” and it’s very common amongst conservatives.

    • treefrog@lemm.ee
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      I think transphobia will have an effect here. It’s one thing to be a hypocrite, it’s another to support a queer bar and date someone who owns a queer bar.

      It’s not going to cause the GOP to name and shame her, but it will reduce campaign donations as well as voter turnout.

      IMHO anyway.

      Sadly, I think this will affect her more than the groping and vaping in front of children. In the minds of the GOP that’s the lesser of the two evils. Supporting transpeople on the other hand, goes against their whole fascist/hate fueled agenda, and I think it will show come election season.

  • Hyperreality@kbin.social
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    Oh. Is it time for that Sartre quote again?

    “Never believe that [they] are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. [They] have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert. If you press them too closely, they will abruptly fall silent, loftily indicating by some phrase that the time for argument is past.”

    • BraveSirZaphod@kbin.social
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      I know it’s not hugely relevant to this particular case, but I do think the original context of the quote should be included here, just for completeness if nothing else.

      Never believe that anti-Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies.

      While he’s discussing anti-semitism, bigots of all kinds use very similar rhetorical strategies. A lot of this stuff did originate with anti-semitism though, and I feel that shouldn’t be forgotten.

    • quindraco@lemm.ee
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      “Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.”

  • prole@sh.itjust.works
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    They don’t even bother trying to pretend they actually believe what they say anymore. They don’t need to, their voters do not care. They probably like it because they think it “owns the libs”.

          • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            No, they got booted because she refused to stop vaping even though vaping isn’t allowed, mouthed off to a pregnant lady, was generally being obnoxious, and played the “do you know who I am?” card when asked to tone it down. A review of the security footage later showed that she was also fondling him during the performance, but there’s no reports that she exposed herself, outside of the dress itself she was wearing accentuating her cleavage.

            Given her attractiveness, if she whipped her boobs out during that incident, the footage would have made its way to every site from Reddit to Pornhub in record time.

            EDIT: Everybody is linking to the original footage and while yes, they were groping each other. However, at no point did she “whip out her boebs”.

              • Nightwingdragon@lemmy.world
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                Among other misbehavior at a performance of Beetlejuice the musical, she and her date groped each other within site of children at the show. He fondled her breasts (some say that they appear to be out on the video but I can’t tell) while she gives him a handy through his pants. The video is at the link above.

                At no point did she “whip out her boobs” or anything else. What they did was bad enough, but she did not expose herself or her date. If she had exposed herself, the footage would not be freely shown on TV and would be censored on the internet, along with providing video evidence that would put them both on a sex offender registry.

                • Wilibus@lemmy.world
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                  I said boebs not boobs in the original comment.

                  Also just put of curiousity do you believe that Congresswoman Lauren Boebert was never prostitute.

    • Everythingispenguins@lemmy.world
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      But she just brings the trashy neighbors to Congress with her… Hmm that doesn’t sound quite right. I feel like that idiom got away from me. Kind of like her behavior.

  • Taleya
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    We need to stop trying to ‘gotcha’ the bastards

    They will never, ever be ashamed and their supporters and media machine will excuse away or outright ignore any hypocrisy. All we are doing is tiring ourselves out.

    presses start button on woodchipper

  • Iwasondigg@lemmy.one
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    I think it’s sad the message this sends. Specifically that people of opposite political parties can’t even jerk each other off in public anymore.

  • tsonfeir@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Was this before or after she masturbated a man and exposed her breasts in public in front of children?