The 2024 election is already historic for many reasons, from an assassination attempt to a last-minute dropout to secure the nation’s first black female candidate for the Democratic nomination. For perhaps the first time in American history, a vice presidential nominee has been rumored to have had sex with the couch.
Let’s get this out of the way: JD Vance didn’t say he had sex with a couch The rumor at X started as a joke, when user @rickrudescalves tweeted on July 15: “Can’t say for sure but he might be the first VP pick to admit to shoving the all-time bestseller inside-out latex glove. between two sofa cushions (Vance, Hillbilly Elegy, pp. 179-181).” The tweet, which appears to be taken directly from Vance’s memoir, Hillbilly ElegyMany people have been convinced that this is actually true, but if they read pages 179 to 181, what they will find is Vance talking about his time at Ohio State University.
Many people embraced the shitpost, however, it took on a life of its own, with countless memes popping up on TikTok and X.[W]JD Vance cannot be allowed near the Oval Office. one person tweeted With pictures of many sofas inside the house. Another juxtapose Vance stares wistfully at a zoom-in on a leather couch during Barry White’s “Never, Never Gonna Give Ya Up.” When the rumor spread widely for the Associated Press with a lengthy explanatory headline, “No, J.D. Vance Didn’t Have Sex on the Couch,” no one else It quoted and referenced the infamous Bill Clinton denial, writing“I didn’t have departmental ties.”
It is common for rumors about famous people that are objectively untrue but are funny or entertaining to go viral (a famous example suggests Cheer up actress Lea Michele can’t read secrets), whether initiated by deliberate trolls, as was the case with Vance and the couch, or through games of digital telephone, where all context and reality are translated. Most of the time, the reason rumors are spread is because people really want to believe them. In Vance’s case, the fact that he wrote a coming-of-age book meant that a common trope (a teenage boy trying to have sex with an inanimate object) made some sense, combined with the fact that he endorsed something. Very strange scene On sex and gender.
Curiously, the AP article debunking the rumor has since been removed from its website — an unusual decision usually reserved for serious factual or editorial errors. “The story, which did not reach our subscribers, did not go through our quality editing process,” an AP spokesperson told Vox via email. We are looking into how this happened.” Some still speculate that perhaps the AP’s commitment to fact-checking is such, even though Vance did not write about it. Hillbilly Elegy, there There is no conclusive evidence He never tried to have sex with a couch.
What’s even more surprising is that the couch joke was one of the three most off-putting things he did during his first 10 days as VP nominee, and the only one that wasn’t verified as true. After Trump announced his pick on July 15, a clip Tucker Carlson’s 2021 appearance went viral in which he complained that the United States was “effectively run” by “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable in their own lives,” naming Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. . “The entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children, and how does it make any sense that we’ve handed our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it,” he said, discounting Harris’ two. step-children whom she co-fathers with husband Doug Emhoff. Then, Vance tried and failed to get a smile at a Trump rally make an awkward joke Mountain Dew and how to drink about food[Democrats] Call it racist.
Already Vance hold extreme opinions on sex and gender; He also opposes abortion even in cases of rape and molestation Compare it to slavery. he Voted against A bill guarantees access to IVF and a proposed Porn is prohibited. he to call Universal child care is “a class war against ordinary people.” he Opposes the same-sex marriage rights legislation And that proposal People in “violent” marriages Divorce should not be done.
He is also among a nebulous group of young intellectual conservatives backed by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Peter Thiel loosely called “new right,” whose core project is making techno-fascist and incel-adjacent ideas sound cool and edgy. At X, where Vance spent a lot of time, At one point he followed A number of white nationalist narratives, many of which glorify bodybuilding and fascism while promoting the Great Replacement Theory. In other words, he’s exactly the kind of guy you can claim is the start of a glorious future without couch sex robot women.
One of the Democrats’ main tactics in the fight for the Republican ticket now points to Vance and Trump’s apparent strangeness. And it’s working: Minnesota Governor Tim Walz was appreciated for his face On MSNBC where he emphasized how “weird” the Trump-Vance platform was, Harris’ campaign went viral. statement of During Trump’s Fox News appearance, which read, “Is Donald Trump OK?” and “Is Trump old and pretty weird?” This kind of blunt, call-it-like-you-see attitude was once a boon to the Trump camp, which delighted in offending “blue-haired” “soy milk” liberals they saw as myopic and out of touch. But when we get someone like Vance spouting profoundly antisocial and outlandish ideas that are outside the realm of normal political discourse, the most effective response is often a simple, “What’s up?”
I don’t need to explain why everyone thinks the vice-presidential candidate’s couch sex joke is hilarious, it is. Like memes depicting Kamala Harris as a pop icon who “brats” out in the summer, “JD Vance fucked a couch” is another absurdity of the wildest election summer in recent history, where the truth is far crazier than the fiction that fiction begins to believe. No, JD Vance did not fuck a couch. But he will always be remembered as the vice presidential nominee who was once rumored to have sex on the couch. And that’s pretty weird.
