As far as fall traditions go, the renaissance faire is among Cockburn’s favorite. Fair maidens and humble peasants amble around stalls, chewing on turkey legs and spectating jousts as they pretend to be in Auld Europe. Yet in recent years, modern degeneracy has taken hold: now instead of a family day out, renfaire is fun for the whole polycule. Pornified bartenders in Euphoria makeup humiliate horny patrons as they serve them drinks.
The Maryland Renaissance Festival is taking steps to stop the rot. The faire is implementing a new dress code that bans “fursuits.” For the blissfully uninitiated: fursuits are full-body costumes worn by the “furry” subculture, which mean the wearer appears to be an anime-style anthropomorphic animal. Members of the furry community insist it is not a sex thing. Cockburn remains skeptical.
The festival’s general manager told City Cast DC that the change came following customer complaints, with some attendees “feeling uncomfortable by those wearing fursuits,” he wrote.
As a keen student of European history, Cockburn was curious: weren’t the Middle Ages “uncomfortable” times? Surely there must be some precedent for this brand of freakery. He consulted Charles Yost, associate professor of medieval history at Hillsdale College, for greater insight.
“Medieval peasants were not known for their love of diverse lifestyles,” Yost said, after Cockburn sent over a picture of some furries and asked how they’d be received in the European Middle Ages. “My guess is that if you showed up to a village dressed like that, outside of certain specified times such as May revels or Feast of Fools, they would lynch you or burn you.”
“Sometimes medieval people donned animal costumes during occasional seasons of revelry – it was part of a general atmosphere where the ‘normal’ laws binding a hierarchical society were temporarily relaxed (such as the Feast of Fools),” Yost said. “But you wouldn’t ordinarily want to show up in the village dressed like that – especially not like a wolf. Medieval people dreaded wolves and associated them with the Devil.
“There is a well-known lais by the 12th-century poetess Marie de France known as Bisclavret that describes a noble man who undergoes a horrible transformation into a Werewolf. When the guy’s wife finds out, she steals his human clothes (which prevents him from turning back into a man). The Werewolf is doomed to haunt the forests until he is adopted by a kindly king. Later on, he gets the opportunity to take vengeance by biting his former wife’s nose off. The king forces the woman to give back the clothes so that the noble man can resume his human shape. Clearly, for medieval people becoming an anthropomorphic beast is not a desirable outcome or lifestyle choice.”
Best stick to the internet, furries. Woof!
Blind item: a very friendly ambassador
This Trump-appointed ambassador is strongly rumored to bat for the other team… which in and of itself is nothing to write home about. More of note is the suggestion that young men are kept away from his embassy late at night to avoid run-ins with the thirsty emissary.
On our radar
QATAR FORCE ONE President Trump plans to fly his new plane, a gift from the Qataris, on his trip to Ireland next week, despite security concerns.
BOSS OF THE YEAR Former Labor secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer misused government funds and drank on the job, according to an IG report. At one point Chavez-DeRemer encouraged a member of her entourage to “make it rain” over an exotic dancer.
LABOR PARTY The economy added 162,000 in August, with the unemployment rate holding steady at 4.1 percent.
Cockburn cleans up at the White House arcade
The surprise deportation of Milo Yiannopoulos got Cockburn thinking back to the origins of Trumpism a decade ago – and how some strands emerged from the “Gamergate” movement of 2014, where online rightoids started to mobilize against the supposed over-elevation of female video-game programmers and reviewers. Apparently the White House is feeling equally nostalgic: it launched an arcade on its website yesterday.
Five games are available, all of them riffs on arcade classics that plug a specific Trump policy. “Flappy Bill” is a take on “Flappy Bird,” where you can fly a bald eagle between columns on the National Mall. “Build the Wall” is a less fun version of Tetris, where you align falling blocks to “protect the border from the coming horde.” There’s also a MAHA “Supply Line” and “Trump Savings Cartoons.” Cockburn did best at “Rio Grande,” a version of Snake where a (white) border patrol guard gathers up (largely non-white) migrants. Your correspondent got 35. Is that Milo fourth from the back?!
The sinister truth about Abdul El-Sayed
Everyone in political communications seems to think the country is looking for sexy socialists. Yet, Cockburn was aghast when he saw Abdul El-Sayed, the DSA-friendly candidate running for Senate in Michigan, appear in a political ad called “Senate Island” inspired by the reality dating show Love Island this week.
“I love my name. A lot of people don’t know this. It means ‘servant leader,’” he said to the camera, as the video zoomed in and out on a swaggering El-Sayed, striking various poses in a black T-shirt. “So what’s my type? No corporate PAC money. Ready to rock with Medicare-for-All.”
El-Sayed went through a looksmaxxing regime prior to this campaign, only to come out resembling the type of man who sells supplements online. In an X post last weekend, he noted that he “was captain. Football. Wrestling. Lacrosse” – something the likes of Mamdani would never dream of saying. His opponent Mike Rogers has been doing his darndest to portray El-Sayed as a radical Islamist. The reality seems far graver. He appears to be a standard-issue lax-bro douchebag
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