DIM BULBS OF THE WEEK

At some point, Rep. Madison Cawthorn might get some attention for doing something productive in Congress. But for now, his mouth seems to get him into trouble more than anything else. His latest faux pas is a claim that he’d been approached by older members of Congress to join in on some Washington, D.C., sex parties and saw people snorting cocaine in his presence. It’s probably more likely someone told him about the plot of Eyes Wide Shut and he got confused. However, his claims were enough to get called into the principal’s office for a talking-to with House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy and perhaps get a rap on the knuckles with a ruler. McCarthy said Cawthorn said he “exaggerated” his claims. Maybe he was referring to one of those Georgetown cocktail parties everyone always mentions.

Election season has primarily become an extensive marketing campaign. In a bid to show how open-minded he is, Gov. Gavin

Newsom tweeted a photo of him sitting in some restaurant with a copy of the book Beloved in his hands and a stack of other books, including To Kill A Mockingbird, on the table. The tweet said, “Reading some banned books to figure out what these states are so afraid of.” Unfortunately for the governor, “these states” would include... California. In the fall of 2020, the Burbank Unified School District banned several books after parents complained about racism. Harper Lee’s To Kill A Mockingbird was one of those books. Others included John Steinbeck’s Of Mice and Men and Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. Maybe Newsom will tell us what California is so afraid of at some point.