Why JD Vance Can’t Get Off The Couch
The all-purpose insult
JD Vance is a couch fucker. I don’t mean that he actually fucks couches (although I can’t watch him every moment of the day). When you call someone a motherfucker, you don’t literally mean that they’re method acting the title role in Oedipus Rex. It’s simply a colorful way of describing a despicable and vicious person. “Couch fucker” is a pithy yet degenerate shorthand for “creepy weirdo.”
It wasn’t always: In his 1982 concert film, Live on the Sunset Strip, Richard Pryor describes how he once hooked up with a Playboy bunny. They went back to her apartment, which was so stylishly decorated he considered sectional relations with her couch. Pryor had his problems, but even at his lowest point, he wasn’t a no-good couch fucker like Vance.
In case you’re pretending you don’t know about the JD Vance couch gag, last month an American hero with the handle @rickrudescalves shared this now classic post: “can’t say for sure but he might be the first vp pick to have admitted in a ny times bestseller to fucking an inside-out latex glove shoved between two couch cushions (vance, hillbilly elegy, pp. 179-181).”
I love that the user includes an MLA-style in-text citation. Humor is all about specificity. The cited pages from the book you shouldn’t read make no reference to couches or latex gloves. The post has its own fact-check, yet the meme went viral because Vance is such a couch fucker.
Boring people unite against metaphor
The usual suspects have lectured us against calling Vance a couch fucker. Even if it’s an accurate moral descriptor, it’s still technically untrue. Anti-Trump conservative Tom Nichols has scolded Democrats about the joke, yet he once described Vance in The Atlantic as a “smarmy and pretentious asshole.” LBJ was an asshole but he gave us the Civil Rights Act. Vance is just a couch fucker.
Former White House correspondent Ron Fournier said, “Democrats, please drop the couch crap. It’s a lie. We aren’t the liars. They are. It’s juvenile. It’s dishonest. It’s off brand. And we don’t need it. Be better.”
In general, you should ignore the advice of anyone who says “be better.” They are usually the most annoying people on the planet. No one literally believes that Vance banged a couch because he has a weird fetish like a character from Nip/Tuck. That would make him almost interesting. Besides, he can’t seriously claim the accusation offends his dignity when he willingly shares a presidential ticket with an adjudicated rapist who bragged about assaulting women.
Noah Rothman at the National Review complained that the “Harris campaign has spent [Minnesota Gov. Tim] Walz’s first day on the trail retailing him to voters as the ‘folksy’ education professional who all but personifies ‘Midwest nice’” yet he made a couch joke at Tuesday’s rally in Philadelphia. “How, then, is this man, the very model of conviviality, supposed to **explain the joke?**” Well, he shouldn’t explain the joke. Even Batman villains understand this basic rule of comedy. Rothman suggested the Harris campaign is “too online” with the couch gag, but that’s the beauty of it: Walz dared Vance to “get off the couch and show up” for their debate, which is hardly a slanderous statement. Republicans are the ones ignoring the Streisand Effect whenever they correct an allegation the average person didn’t know was made.
Washington Post columnist Megan McCardle wrote, “Yes, Trump has said worse. But that was bad for the country. And so, to a lesser degree, is this. To close this horrible chapter for our nation, we need to rise above Trump's disgusting, unpresidential behavior, not emulate it.”
Trump’s blatant corruption was bad for the country. Separating migrant children from their families was bad for the country. And trying to overturn the presidential election he lost, which led to a violent attack on the Capitol, was really bad for the country. Of course, country-club conservatives are fine with the fascism but chafe at Trump’s WWE-inspired approach to politics, where he gives his political opponents disparaging nicknames. Well, they had their chance to pick a more polite MAGA nominee but instead doubled-down on the convicted felon.
Democrats are done with the banana-in-the-tailpipe arrangement where they take the high road and focus on health care and infrastructure while Republicans call them “groomers” and “baby killers” who castrate kids for kicks. Far-right podcaster Matt Walsh has said the entire children’s entertainment industry is filled with “groomers and pedophiles,” yet now he claims that Democrats mocking Vance as a couch fucker is one of “the dirtiest things I’ve ever seen a presidential campaign do. These people are pure evil.” He then Streisands himself and includes the Walz clip, which I’ll also share again.
I love this line leading up to Walz’s couch zinger: “Like all regular people I grew up with in the heartland, JD studied at Yale, had his career funded by Silicon Valley billionaires, and then wrote a bestseller trashing that community.” That’s who JD Vance is, and if the couch fits …
But he is a couch fucker …
Republicans are singularly graceless liars, and the ones protesting the loudest about the couch meme have also repeated Trump’s vicious slur that Harris only recently “became” Black. Trump won’t even bother to spell her name correctly, and Vance has openly lied about her background, suggesting she spent more time in Canada than Oakland, California.
These goons didn’t waste much time before attacking Walz with smears far worse than couch molestation. NBC’s $69 million mistake Megyn Kelly predictably trotted out the boring groomer lies: “Tim Walz signed a bill that lets the State take away ur kids if you d/n/agree to sterilize them & chop off their body parts in the name of ‘gender affirming care.’ So if your 14-yr-old is sad but thinks it’s gender confusion & u object to castrating him, the St takes custody.” She’s so MAGA now, even her punctuation is sub-Trumpy.
Sen. Josh Hawley spread a lie about Walz’s selection as VP that was both less credible and less amusing than “Rick’s” couch post: “So I hear Kamala had chosen SHAPIRO last week — but the lefty Dems had a meltdown. So she caved and went with Gov. Angry Old Man instead. Great decision making skills there, Kamala.”
You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe Hawley’s account of events. He sounds like Simone from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: “My best friend’s sister’s boyfriend’s brother’s girlfriend heard from this guy who knows this kid who’s going with the girl who saw Ferris pass out at 31 Flavors last night. I guess it’s pretty serious.”
The VP vetting process had remarkably few leaks, and I doubt that anyone in a position to know anything would have confided in Hawley, another known couch fucker. (He refers to the vice president by her first name, like she’s his maid, but uses Gov. Josh Shapiro’s last name in all caps like he’s GARBO or KARLOFF!)
Republicans look ridiculous when they call Walz an “angry old man.” There are photos of children hugging the guy. Normally, you have to bribe kids so they’ll let their grandmothers kiss them. This feeble attack only highlights the obvious distinction between the Democratic and GOP tickets. Harris/Walz is joyful and enthusiastic. Trump/Vance is bitter and resentful. Donald Trump epitomizes “angry old man,” and JD Vance projects all the mirth of someone who sold his soul for Pez. Wednesday, when a reporter asked Vance what makes him smile, he replied, “Well, I smile at a lot of things, including bogus questions from the media … right now I am angry!”
If you consider “what makes you smile?” some kind of “gotcha!” question, you might be a humorless couch fucker. You don’t need Bill Clinton’s political instincts to realize that voters don’t like self-professed “angry” candidates. Even when they opposed the current direction of the country, successful politicians ran a positive campaign. Barack Obama was all about “hope and change” not “mope and rage.”
Politico’s Natalie Allison posted on social media, “Feels like Democrats could land on something other than fabricated disinformation (the couch thing) to be their top dig against JD Vance?”
George W. Bush zinging Al Gore about “inventing” the internet was, in fact, “fabricated disinformation.” People call JD Vance a couch fucker because he acts like a couch fucker.
Yesterday, Vance stalked the vice president in Wisconsin. He creeped up to her plane and boasted about how it would soon be his, like some creepy Lifetime movie villain. This is classic couch fucker behavior.
“Hopefully, it’s going to be my plane in a few months,” he said. “I also thought you guys may get lonely, because the VP doesn’t answer questions from reporters.” Democratic House Rep. Jared Moskowitz immediately dunked on Vance: “I’ve been on Air Force 2 JD,” he posted on social media, “there is a great couch on it.”
Vance also took aim at anyone who calls him “weird,” stating that “I think that the ‘weird’ argument honestly came from a bunch of 24-year-old social media interns who were bullied in school, and they decided they were going to project that onto the entire Trump campaign ... I’m a normal guy.”
That’s probably his Richard Nixon “I am not a crook!” moment, because normal people don’t declare themselves normal while stretching their mouth into the rictus grin they call a smile.
Vance outright lied on Wednesday about Walz’s military record — a standard bit of GOP couch fucking. He claimed that when his country needed him to serve in Bush’s phony war, Walz bailed. However, Walz retired from the National Guard in 2005 after 25 years of service — months before his unit received deployment orders. That’s an objective fact, whereas we don’t actually know what Vance does when alone with a couch.
Like Trump, Vance is a coward, so he’s afraid to repeat these lies to Walz’s face. He says he’ll only debate Harris (who’s not the VP nominee) next week, suggesting that Democrats could switch out candidates again. He’s only delaying the inevitable ass whipping. Always bet on the football coach over the couch fucker.
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JD Vance is the kind of guy you'd HATE in school--condescending, snobby, know it all. I went to elementary and junior high with a guy like that. I THOROUGHLY ENJOYED stepping over him to get to the podium to claim my academic rewards (two more than HE got, take that, Paul). It was the 1970; he was also a sexist, a word I knew even in 8th grade at a Catholic School.
I hope Madame Vice President, soon to be PRESIDENT, knows the same joy I felt when she steps over these smarmy assholes to claim her victory.
After years of GQP lying and throwing bullshit all over the place, it’s hilarious to see their pearl-clutching and moral scoldings over JD’s couch-fucker label. “Hey you Dems! Quit having fun at our expense! This is sooo juvenile and mean! That’s OUR gig, not yours!” LOL. Harrumph louder! They’re scared. LOL.