Matt Birk played center for the Minnesota Vikings and Baltimore Ravens for 14 years. I used a picture from his playing days to verify that he wore a helmet while playing in the NFL. That doesn’t square with some of his recent statements as a GOP candidate for Lt. Governor in Minnesota. And that is why Matt Birk is malaka of the week.

Matt Birk is proof positive that one can attend Harvard and still be a blithering idiot. In New Orleans, many people take where one went to high school quite seriously. I don’t know if that’s the case in the Twin Cities, but the name of Birk’s alma mater could provide a clue to his malakatude, Cretin-Derham Hall. Cretin? Really? That was Harvard man Major/Doctor Winchester of MASH fame’s favorite epithet for dumbassery and dipshittery.

You’re probably wondering what the man mountain of malakatude did to deserve this week’s honor. He put his very large foot in his big fat bazoo, that’s what. Here’s an extended quote from Vanity Fair’s The Hive:

“Speaking at an antiabortion convention, Birk told the audience: “It’s not over. Our culture loudly but also stealthily, promotes abortion. Telling women they should look a certain way, have careers, all these things.” VF snark: Would Birk prefer women be sent back to the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant? Sure sounds like it!

 

Naturally, he went on: “Rape is obviously a horrible thing,” Birk said. “But an abortion is not going to heal the wounds of that. Two wrongs, it’s not going to make it right…. One of the arguments that I saw probably 20 times online today was about rape. And you know, obviously, they always want to go to the rape card.” VF snark: Ah yes, the old “rape card,” that thing people “go to” when, after experiencing a horrific act of violence, they decide they don’t want to be forced to carry their attacker’s child to term and then coparent with them.

 

But wait, there’s more: “Rape is obviously a horrible thing,” Birk repeated, before deploying perhaps one of the most bizarre non sequiturs in history. “Shortly after we won the Super bowl—did I mention I won the Super Bowl?… They said, well, abortion’s legal. And it was kind of an easy out for a lot of people…. A lot of things have been legal before that we’ve changed, right. We always hear about, I’m sure you’ve heard—I know I’m talking to a bunch of pro-life warriors here—you know slavery used to be legal, right. Which is an interesting comparison to make, because really the way that the other side treats an unborn child is basically that the unborn child is the property of the mother. Other laws, you know, women used to not be able to vote in our country. Now we let ’em drive. I mean, I have three teenager daughters that drive, I don’t know if that’s a good law or not. Just kidding. Sorry, kidding, kidding to all the women out there. And don’t tell my wife I used that joke, she hates that joke.”

Thank you, Henny Youngman Birk.

As they used to say in the Catskills, that joke is so old it has whiskers on it.

I left Bess Levin of Vanity Fair’s snark in the quote because she nails Harvard Boy’s head to the table like Dinsdale Piranha of Monty Python fame. Like his brother Doug, I prefer sarcasm as my weapon of choice.

All kidding aside, did Malaka Matt really use the term rape card? In other times, I’d say that comment would land like this card:

That’s the Suicide King. In the Trumpified GOP, this unhinged speech may be a political plus. The right-to-lifers love a good slavery-abortion analogy however inapposite it seems to normal, rational people.

Malaka Matt’s deeply stupid comments are a symptom, not the disease. For the last fifty years, many supporters of abortion rights have been squeamish about mounting a full-throated defense of the right to choose. I hope that the Dobbs disaster perpetrated by Sam the Sham Alito and the Federalist Society Pharaohs will end the squeamishness. In the words of the old song, Ain’t Nobody’s Business:

I mentioned New Orleanians and high schools earlier. James Booker attended Xavier Prep on Magazine Street, which is a mere 4 blocks from Adrastos World HQ. In its current incarnation as St. Katherine Drexel, it’s where we’ve voted since Katrina and the federal flood. End of hyper local digression.

Speaking of local matters, Malaka Matt was once so popular that there was a burger named for him at a local eatery. Make that used to be:

That bites. That should upset even a man mountain of malakatude like Matt Birk, which rhymes with jerk. One could even say that this former NFL player tackled himself.

The good news is that incumbent Lt. Gov Peggy Flanagan is likely to keep her job; in part because of the abortion rights issue. Flanagan responded to another dumbass comment by Malaka Matt: “Comparing a survivor who chooses to end a pregnancy from sexual assault to the rapist, the criminal who assaulted her, is wrong, and it is cruel” 

The cruelty is the point.

That concludes this edition of GOP candidates say the darndest things. And that is why the man mountain of malakatude Matt Birk is malaka of the week.

Since Birk the jerk played the rape card card, the last word goes to Dave Alvin with his brilliant cover of this Garcia-Hunter poker song: