A Politician Had a Disgusting Reaction to This Cheerleader's Facebook Photo Controversy

The news: A liberal Democrat who claims to be running for Congress in Virginia has launched a bizarre and sexist Twitter assault on cheerleader Kendall Jones, who was most recently in the news after an outcry over pictures of dead and tranquilized animals (some of them endangered) she hunted on her Facebook page.

Mike Dickinson is seeking the House seat that for the time being belongs to Majority Leader Eric Cantor. Dickinson also offered $100,000 for anyone willing to send him "nude photos or video of #kendalljones at Texas tech [sic]." He added that "She deserves to be a target."

The vulgar tirade continued, as Dickinson asked, "Does she enjoy being spanked? We want to know," and claimed, "If any ex boyfriends of #KendallJones are out there we want and will pay for sex stories or info about her."

Jones is only 19. She doesn't deserve this abusive, sexist crap, and it would be hard to find anyone who does. Not. Cool.

Here's the twist, though: Republicans like S.E. Cupp are in arms about this, claiming that if a Republican was spreading the same kind of drivel that it would already be a major news story. But despite being booked on major media networks, Dickinson isn't an actual candidate and appears on no official voting lists. He's actually a huge fraud and submitted exactly zero petitions to be on the ballot. Dave Weigel at Slate reports:

One problem: Dickinson is not a Democratic candidate for Congress. The media slowly figured this out after February, when Dickinson started tweeting insults at Fox News and was booked on the network as "Mike Dickinson (D-VA)." He had to be set up like a punching bag one more time before Mediaite noticed that was not actually going to be a Democratic candidate in the fall. Dickinson failed to make time between TV appearances to file any candidate forms. His candidacy lives online, where he takes advantage of umbrage culture by soliciting donations — grifting, basically.

Of course, that doesn't excuse Dickinson's horrible statements. But once you realize the dude is essentially a huge narcissistic scam artist with no legitimate political ambitions, it's pretty hard to blame the Virginia Democratic Party for this jerk. So no, this is not the left's Todd Akin. He's really more like Tea Party candidate Tim Murray, who after losing his run for Rep. Frank Lucas' (R-Okla.) seat claimed that the results were invalid because Lucas was killed before the election and replaced by a body double.

Republicans will probably have to wait a bit for the Democrats to screw up Akin-style.