Phillipe & Jorge’s Cool, Cool World: #MeToo, the Race for Guv’nor and Our Delicate Sensibilities

Welcome to the Funhouse

The ongoing second-rate carnival that is Rhode Island politics continues to dazzle, amaze and confuse, even with the freak sideshow that is the General Assembly not in session.

Rep. Teresa Tanzi’s leap into the #MeToo ring, sparked by the Harvey Weinstein heinous rape and sexual abuse accusations that have spread like the California wildfires, has ignited a furor here in the Biggest Little — as they should if they are true. Rep. Tanzi, who P&J know and have worked with on occasion, and have no reason to doubt because she has always been dedicated, intelligent and forthright in our dealings with her, has accused a person with “a higher-ranking position” of saying that unless she provided “sexual favors” that her sponsored bills would be dead in the water.

While Tanzi has every right not to identify the person who said this to her,  process of elimination narrows the field down to probably no more than eight individuals — House leaders and committee chairs. This can’t be sitting well with them, especially if they are innocent. Still, victims should not be forced to further the hurt that has been done, or threatened to be done to them. Unfortunately, this ends up being a high stakes gambling game.

As in the case of most of the scandals that emanate from the State House, it was immediately worsened by some of the morons on our political scene.  Knuckle-dragging second vice president of the state Democratic party, Joe DeLorenzo, questioned Tanzi’s account of sexual harassment. That this came on a show on WADK with the unspeakable John DePetro should be all you need to know that the two were probably holding hands and giggling when DeLorenzo put his scuffed-up wingtip into his mouth. This came hard on the heels of DeLorenzo’s interview with The Urinal’s “Political Scene” column where he accused the party of being shanghai-ed by those nasty left-wing progressives, P&J suspect meaning that Neanderthals like him were being shown the door, which couldn’t come soon enough.

Virtually every ranking Democrat in the state called for this creep’s resignation, and after an inappropriate interval, the tone-deaf clown stepped down, bitching all the way about all these newcomers. DeLorenzo is a merely a rotten remnant of the old Vo Dilun Democratic party, which was anti-abortion and misogynistic and whose leadership was about as corrupt as you could imagine back in the 1980s and ‘90s, so any effort to reduce the number of people representing those bad old days is a step in the right direction.

Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on the way out, Joe. Just let John DePetro pat you on it.

The Amazing Race

Years ago, when Phillipe was working on a construction site in the St. John’s Wood section of London (no, P&J are not the delicate flowers you might imagine), he took a sort of perverse Dickensian pleasure in, as tradition demanded, calling his foreman “guv’nor,” as did all his fellow menial laborers.

While this show of respect was apt, the idea of someone being a respected “governor” in Little Rhody has lost quite a bit of its luster.

To wit, the fact that our own leader, Governor Gigi Raimondo, Little Miss Wall Street, is revered more outside the state’s borders than within, is discouraging. As are three newly declared opponents who feel worthy of the title in the GOP’s House Minority Leader and Donald Trump apologist Patricia Morgan (who she?); blowhard buffoon former Rep. Joe Trillo, who headed President Groper’s 2016 R.I. campaign; and Cranston Mayor Allan Fung, who lost to Gigi in 2014 in a dismal election that saw more than half of the state’s eligible voters shamefully take a pass on exercising their right to vote, which should be a precious commodity.

P&J have never met Rep. Morgan, so she could be a wonderful woman or a witch from Hell, though she seems to be leaning in the latter direction based on the comments she obviously feels obligated to make on everything in The Biggest Little except for what color is the Big Blue Bug. Trillo, a perfect example of two assholes in one pair of pants, should be a walking joke, save for the fact the state GOP is the modern day equivalent of “The Mickey Mouse Club.”

Mayor Fung is a different matter altogether. If he were a Democrat, which he isn’t far from being, he would likely be well seen within the party. In P&J’s dealings with him, he has been smart, fair, gracious and considerate, not the worst qualities for a person who wishes to lead The Ocean State into the future. But as long as three-quarters of the state will give a knee-jerk vote to anyone with a “D” next to their name, it ain’t gonna happen.

One would hope that someone, anyone (under the age of 70) in the Democratic party who gives a rap about the state’s future would step up to challenge Governor Gigi (did someone say Josh Miller? Deb Ruggerio? Bob Craven?). But that’s not bloody likely. Gigi will run, kick whoever is the GOP’s challenger’s ass at the ballot box, and then sit back and pray that Jack Reed or Sheldon Whitehouse gets hit by a bus outside DC’s Union Station during her next four years.

But of course we exaggerate. Right, guv’nor?

Goodness Gracious!

As everyone is well aware, Phillipe and Jorge are just a pair of old prudes, constantly scandalized by today’s societal behavior.

Whereas back in olden times, a TV ad for such delicate items as tampons was enough to make people blush, it can’t hold a candle to today’s upfront, appalling references to the more delicate parts of everyday life, in an effort to sell products that are even more intimate than your superior correspondents would care to consider.

Recent promos for lovely ladies to purchase underwear inserts designed to keep their dignity intact because they “leak” when they laugh, takes the (urinal) cake. And if anyone doesn’t squirm at the pitches for Charmin toilet paper being promoted by a family of bears who want their nether regions to be “clean” after, well, shall we just say, “taking a dump,” are mind-boggling.

(A quick aside here. A tip of the beret and sombrero to Charmin for at least using a thinly veiled allusion to the old “Do bears shit in the woods?” joke. Probably without Charmin, yes, we would pretty much guarantee, but nonetheless not a bad inside joke. We would suggest a similar approach by biscuit makers, along the lines of ‘The Pope, being Catholic, really goes for those Pepperidge Farm wafers at communion time.”)

Offensive may be in the mind of the beholder, but after we have had our fill of national ads touting douches and solutions to anal leakage problems, pissing your pants, having toilet paper stuck to your butt and generally everything but projectile vomiting, we seemed to have reached a point where nothing is too indiscreet to try to make a buck off of with a tasteless public appeal. P&J aren’t sure what pornography is, but we know it when we see it.

They Called Him the Fat Man