Women dressed like characters from The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood’s novel-turned-Hulu series) crashed the Ohio Senate this week as legislators made their case for Ohio’s SB 145. The women dressed as handmaids to protest the bill, which would effectively criminalize abortions in the second trimester. If you’ve been under a rock and don’t know what women in giant bonnets and red capes have to do with reproductive rights, the book/show depicts a dystopian future where women are stripped of their rights and reclassified based on fertility. Fertile women are forced to bear children for elite couples who can’t. Upon seeing the cloaked crowd, one senator begged “No spoilers! I’m only on Episode 4!” while another confused the reference completely, thinking of The Scarlet Letter. “Yes… All women who have abortions must wear the scarlet mark. We’re adding that to the bill!”
THURSDAY, JUNE 15
There are three things Dennis Rodman loves: basketball, Hot Topic body jewelry and his BFF Kim Jong-un. Rodman returned to his fave vacay spot North Korea this week as part of his ongoing effort to “bring sports” to the country and help encourage peace between it and the U.S. The trip was sponsored by PotCoin, which is basically a Bitcoin for legal weed. While he was unable to meet with Kim Jong-un, he did meet Korean basketball players and Olympic athletes, visited an orphanage and spent time with the country’s “minister of sports.” Oh, and Rodman gifted the leader with Donald Trump’s shitty book, The Art of the Deal. Of course, none of this had anything to do with North Korea releasing Cincinnati-area native Otto Warmbier, who had been serving a 15-year hard labor sentence for tearing down a propaganda poster and was sent home in a comatose state the very same day. He died shortly after returning home. Jesus. This reads more like a Mad Libs story than an actual news item.
FRIDAY, JUNE 16
Sometimes as a journalist, you get scooped. You land an interview, thinking you’ll be the first to break a story, and the next day you come to find your source has spoken to another outlet who runs the story first. But what about when the source scoops you? That’s what happened to Megyn Kelly this week after interviewing performance artist and conspiracy theorist extraordinaire, InfoWars’ Alex Jones. People were pissed that the former Fox News anchor, now on NBC, would give airtime to a dude who says Sandy Hook was a hoax (Kelly was dropped from hosting a Sandy Hook benefit because of the interview). In response to the controversy, InfoWars claimed Kelly was all sweet to Jones at the time, but NBC edited the interview to look “tougher” on Jones. So before the episode aired, he decided to publish secretly taped audio from the pre-interview. The shade! Kelly essentially pulled a Joan Callamezzo, promising to go easy on Jones before employing some gotcha journalism and inviting families affected by the Sandy Hook massacre to the show for a segment. So who came out looking worse? Anyone who actually wanted to watch Megyn Kelly interview Alex Jones.
SATURDAY, JUNE 17
Every year, the “Teacher of the Year” finalist from each state is invited to the White House and the next Supreme is named and celebrated. This year’s event took place earlier this spring, but everyone’s just talking about it now thanks to Rhode Island special-education teacher Niko Giannopoulos. In his official portrait with Donald and Melania Trump, Giannopoulos stole the show by striking a fierce pose with a black lace fan. Don’t worry: the man was not carted off by security for injecting too much fabulocity — Trump approved, calling him stylish. This is the best photo op to come out of the Oval Office since the Beverly Hillbillies — a.k.a Sarah Palin, Ted Nugent and Kid Rock — posted up in April.
SUNDAY, JUNE 18
Sunday was Father’s Day. While you were golfing with your pops or gifting him a coffee mug (real original!), Jay Z was bailing dads who can’t afford attorneys out of jail. On late night TV, Jimmy Kimmel challenged kids to sneak up on their fathers and yell, “I love you, Dad!” and Jimmy Fallon shared #DadQuotes. Meanwhile, the day takes on new meaning with the popularity of dad hats (otherwise known as basic baseball caps), dad jokes (otherwise known as basic corny jokes) and “dad bods” (otherwise known as basic dude bodies). Just be sure to shield your father from the emerging alternative use of the word “daddy.”
MONDAY, JUNE 19
Singer-songwriter and lil goth bb Lorde is super-talented. At age 20, she’s already had hit records, won Grammy, Billboard and World Music awards and just dropped her second album. And if you thought this young kiwi couldn’t be any cooler, she revealed this week that she anonymously ran an onion ring review Instagram, @OnionRingsWorldwide. Well, she tried to. After being outed by New Zealand website NewsHub, who noticed the posts corresponded with her travel schedule, Lorde copped to being the onion ring queen and deleted the page (she didn’t want to reek of desperation to seem #relatable — the girl just loves her some battered and fried onions). Journalism isn’t dead after all!
TUESDAY, JUNE 20
This week in questionable decisions: Bill Cosby yelled the Fat Albert line, “Hey, hey, hey,” upon leaving court for his rape case, which ended in mistrial; Beyoncé’s shady dad tweeted a holy twin birth announcement ahead of any confirmed news that the babies were born; N-word user Bill Maher interviewed Breitbart editor-in-chief Alex Marlow and agreed with him on many issues; Minnesota officer Jeronimo Yanez was acquitted in the killing of Philando Castile; FC Cincinnati set its sights on a new dedicated soccer stadium… in Kentucky; Caitlyn Jenner spoke at a convention of the College Republican National Committee and joked about the GOP congressional baseball practice shooting: “Fortunately the guy was a really bad shot… liberals can’t even shoot straight.”
