Sexting Lobsters

I don't even want to know what he has in mind with the melted butter

Meanwhile, up in Maine, Democrats are finding out just how much they can tolerate in their desperation to defeat Senator Susan Collins and win the United States Senate. The scandals surrounding oyster farmer turned candidate Graham Platner aren’t issues that Democrats can just say “aw shucks” about. Get it? Shucks? Oysters? Never mind.

And from the looks of things, Graham Platner has had too many oysters.

The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times have reported that Platner's wife, Amy Gertner, informed his campaign last August that he had previously exchanged sexually explicit text messages with several women early in their marriage.

Both newspapers reported that Gertner wanted to ensure the texts didn't pose a political liability to the campaign. Platner's campaign team eventually decided that the texts were private and being handled by the couple, who were married in 2023. The two are in counseling, Gertner has said.

The New York Times named former aide Genevieve McDonald as one of the then-campaign staffers who confirmed the messages. It should be noted that so far, no woman has complained about Platner sending her unwanted sexually explicit texts. While I do not know if he and Gertner are in an open marriage or not, and that's none of my business, it does seem that the texts were consensual.

In a selfie-style video taken by Gertner, which was shared by Platner, she says, “I find it really shameful that there’s a group of media outlets and people who are willing to spread gossip. No marriage is perfect, and I don’t want a perfect marriage. I want my marriage.”

The campaign issued a statement from Gertner saying the disclosure of the conversations she had with a campaign aide was a betrayal that “deeply hurt.”

“I trusted this person with the most private chapter of our lives — the early days of our marriage before any campaign was on our mind,” she wrote.

There have been other scandals involving the candidate before the revelation of the sexually explicit texts. Platner had a tattoo recognized as a Nazi symbol, which he said he didn't realize until he was several weeks into the campaign. Fox News and other right-wing media outlets have portrayed the tattoo as a swastika, which would be terrible. But this was a Totenkopf, which is an image of a skull and crossbones. One could see how a young gung-ho Marine would go for such a thing without realizing that it is associated with Nazis. It is no worse than a Christian nationalist tattoo Pete Hegseth has. But we're not done with the scandals.

There are Reddit posts that were dismissive of military sexual assaults and used homophobic slurs, for which he has apologized.

There is another Reddit post from 2019, which has since been deleted, where Platner mocked a wounded combat veteran and Purple Heart recipient. Using the handle "P-Hustle," Platner attacked footage of a service member getting shot during a 2012 Taliban firefight, and wrote, “dumb, motherfucker, didn't deserve to live.” In another post, Platner writes that the army is "full of fat, lazy trash." But then again, service members always insult the other branches.

I know a lot of my readers will not like that I did this cartoon. One of them wrote on Facebook, “You have gone over to the dark side with this. Not happy.” Personally, I do not think that's fair. I'm a Jedi, not a Sith.

Here's the thing, dear readers. While I am a liberal, and I oppose just about everything that comes from Republicans, and especially everything that comes from MAGA, I am not a Democrat. I am not an activist. I do not consult or conduct strategy with any political party or activist organization.

One thing that I hate about my conservative colleagues is that most of them will attack a Democrat over a scandal that they will give a Republican a pass on. I'm better than them. I have a personal rule that if it's something I would attack a Republican for, then I have to hit a Democrat for it as well. If a Republican candidate did what Platner has done, you know damn well that I would be all over it. You're not going to see the MAGA cartoonists criticize Donald Trump for saying that POWs are only heroes because they were captured.

If you believe that I am not loyal to the Democratic Party, you are correct. Unlike my MAGAt colleagues, I am a journalist first.

That said, while I am comfortable that I'm practicing good journalism ethics, I'm never comfortable with giving MAGAts comfort with one of my cartoons. Over on GoComics, several right-wing trolls are constantly suggesting topics that they collect from Fox News and their hate sites. I don't know why they come to me to carry out their hate agenda when they already have it being done by the likes of Steve Kelley, Gary Varvel, Al Goodwin, Gary McCoy, Margolis & Cox, and Chip Bok. It's not like they're going to ask the goons to cover Donald Trump's $2 billion slush fund for terrorists. Maybe they realized that I'm a better cartoonist.

It's not my fault conservative cartoonists suck.

Creative note: Sometimes when I come up with an idea for a cartoon, I'm worried that one of my colleagues will beat me to it. But I quickly dismissed those concerns with this cartoon because my liberal colleagues probably won't hit this issue until at least after I do it, and the conservative cartoonists aren't funny enough to come up with it.

By the way, Phoebe is wrong. There is an episode of Friends where Phoebe Buffet claims that lobsters mate for life. This is not true, but I believed it for several years. The truth is that a female lobster will usually only mate with one male during a season, but that male will mate with what you could call a lobster harem throughout the season. Now, if the male did not do his job and fully fertilize a female’s eggs, then she may go to another lobster.

The male lobster can argue that he's been busy and he had to spread it around, what with the lobster harem and all. He's tired. But I think it's fair for the female to find another dude lobster if her main dude can't give her the good stuff. Honestly, if he can't keep every member of his lobster harem fully satisfied, then he shouldn't have a harem.

See? I'm a feminist.

Drawn in 30 seconds:

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