"She just said a terrible thing. Shout it out, 'cause I don't wanna say it." "Pussy!" "You're not allowed to say..."

"... and I never expect to hear that from you again. She said — I never expect to hear that from you again — she said he's a pussy. Terrible! Terrible. That's terrible."



That's Donald Trump, last February. Trump paces around, throwing his hands up and shaking his head in mock puritanism. The "he" — do you remember? — was Ted Cruz.

Marco Rubio performed outrage: "My boys wanted to know, 'What was the word? What was the word?' I said, 'I can’t tell you.' I had to make something up."

At the time, I said:

This is ridiculous drama. When you call someone a "pussy" to mean that they are timid, you are referring to the little animal, the kitty cat. It's like calling someone a mouse. It shouldn't even be regarded as a bad word.
It's true that "pussy" can be used to refer to a woman's genitalia, but so can "box" and "snatch." As George Carlin said in his famous "Seven Dirty Words" routine:

Now the word twat is an interesting word. Twat! Yeh, right in the twat. Twat is an interesting word because it's the only one I know of, the only slang word applying to the, a part of the sexual anatomy that doesn't have another meaning to it. Like, ah, snatch, box and pussy all have other meanings, man. Even in a Walt Disney movie, you can say, We're going to snatch that pussy and put him in a box and bring him on the airplane.  Everybody loves it. The twat stands alone, man, as it should.

Now, when Donald Trump calls somebody a twat, let me know. In public, I mean. And I'll show a brief flutter of outrage. In private, they're all free to call each other twats. And pricks. Because I'm for gender equality.

Bonus George Carlin joke: "Yes, you can prick your finger, but don't finger your prick. No, no."

And by the way, this post gets the civility bullshit tag. I hope you understand the restrictive use of the civility bullshit tag. It's for political speech calling for more civility. My working theory is it's always bullshit. In this case, with Rubio, it obviously is. I'm also giving this my using children in politics tag. I don't like it.

Who knew the word "pussy" would come back so strong?

How is Rubio handling the new pussy controversy, which is so much worse than the one that got him expressing outrage — replete with father-and-sons angst — last February? Rubio is running for reelection in Florida, and his Democratic opponent Patrick Murphy is naturally trying to wring Rubio's neck with Trump's "pussy."

In a morning call with reporters, Murphy said Rubio needs to do more to “stand up to Trump” instead of “silently standing by” while Trump “boasts about sexually assaulting women.” He repeated his challenge to Rubio, urging him to either “withdraw his support for Trump or withdraw from the race. "Florida women and families deserve better than a tweet,” Murphy said.

Rubio's tweet was: "Donald's comments were vulgar, egregious & impossible to justify. No one should ever talk about any woman in those terms, even in private."

“Rubio offers up meaningless rhetoric when he has to and stays completely silent when he can get away with it," said Murphy. "That’s not leadership; that’s cowardice.... It’s Marco Rubio’s silence that is once again proving no matter what the issue.... Marco Rubio will always put his political ambition above Florida families."