People are strange. When you’re a stranger, faces seem ugly when you’re alone. Okay, okay, I was getting into some Jim Morrison there for a second. Far be it for me to judge anyone or any particular kinks and quirks. We all have them. Some might label them as a sin or a vice. Others might label them as what gives each of us our unique personality.

I’m not sure if the J.D. Vance story even qualifies as a fetish. I suppose you do have the “particular object” portion of the definition, so we will go with that for now. In his book, “Hillbilly Elegy,” there is a ton of shall we say fiction in there, Like one might have said about the Holy Roman Empire or the 1980s band the Thompson Twins, none of the words in those titles was true. Of course, you are free to discuss that on your own.

In this particular book, Vance describes what we might call “an erotic experience” with a rubber glove in a couch. People of my generation saw “American Pie”. We are not completely unaware of activity with strange things. So, the bizarre nature of the story only came in the desire to admit it openly or even brag about it. It wasn’t completely dissimilar to Kristi Noem bragging about killing a dog.

Having an intimate moment with a rubber glove certainly is strange, but not particularly wrong per se. The same could be true of killing an animal depending on the circumstances. It is the bragging that is so unnerving. What’s even more unnerving is that the story isn’t true. Vance isn’t the one who really protested all that much. So, he apparently isn’t all that bothered by the story getting out there.

We know a few things about Vance. We know he was raised in a white upper middle class household with two parents that were college educated and worked white collar jobs. We know he attended Yale law school and became Peter Thiel’s boy. Thiel got him nearly every job he had as a venture capitalists and dumped 15 million dollars into his Senate campaign.

That’s why Donald Trump and Vance are so desperate to get you to focus on the so-called “DEI hires” like Kamala Harris. Racist? Sexist? Xenophobic? Yup, it’s all of those things and more. What they don’t want you to focus on is the fact that they are two rather average guys in terms of intelligence and experience (or worse) that got ahead because others picked up the tab. It was daddy in the case of Trump. It was Thiel in the case of Vance.

Vance desperately needs you to believe he was disadvantaged somehow and got ahead based on gumption, sweat, and tears. He desperately wants to identify with people that never had it good and don’t get ahead in spite of their whiteness. He needs their support. The truth is that he has no idea what that life is like. He has never had to worry about how the next meal is going to be paid for.

In fairness, both of Kamala Harris’ parents were professional too. Of course, she is not the one pretending to be poor. She is the one that also made her way through law school, worked as a prosecutor, attorney general, and then senator before becoming vice president. She never had a billionaire paving the way for her. When you have nothing that distinguishes you in terms of talent or accomplishments you make it up. Apparently, that includes the fetishes too.