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PaperclipPerfector  11d ago (text post)   28334 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of April 6, 2026

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To be clear, the "pee tape" was not a supposed tape of Trump having a woman pee on him. It was a tape of Trump watching Russian prostitutes pee on a bed that Obama had slept in, to, like dishonour Obama or something. People took this extremely seriously, at the time. Nowadays, though, things have changed, media reporting is very trustworthy, and no nonsense that ludicrous would ever be printed again, I'm sure.

I am also extremely confident that Trump has never slept with a minor - according to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, the FDA prohibits the use of silicone breast implants in patients under the age of 22.

Not because Trump wouldn’t have sex with an escort in a Russian hotel room, but because wanting to be peed on is a weird fetish thing, and for the kind of person who whose idea of good sex is fucking his friends’ wives to get off on being ‘the man’, that is the fetish, the woman and what you do with or to her or what she does to you aren’t, except in the most perfunctory way to say that you did. Okay, I’m explaining this badly, but I mean that this is someone for whom sex is about what it means, about power, about who and whom. What simply isn’t important to that kind of thing.

While I agree with you that the pee tape stuff is almost certainly fake, I don't think your argument here actually does a good job dismissing it.

Five minutes on the right part of Deviant Art will show that many seemingly unrelated fetishes can all be enjoyed by the same person. Sure, most people gravitate to just one or two, but some "lucky" people seem to be interested in a wide variety of fetishes. Cucking other guys, and watersports can all be enjoyed by the same person.

The better argument is just that the "pee tape" was salacious nonsense from the Steele Dossier, and people have always loved salacious rumors about the rich and powerful, from Justinian and his wife, to Elagabalus, Nero or Caligula. Some of those rumors might have actually been true, but the fact that humanity seems to love such rumors so much they made it into the historical record should make us highly suspicious of whether they are true or false whenever we hear a new claim in that style.

The real argument against the pee tape is that we actually know where it came from - 4chan's /pol/ board. One of the more prominent Nevertrump conservatives, Rick Wilson, was relentlessly bullied over his son's memoirs which detailed his watersports fetish. Somebody on 4chan made up a bunch of salacious stories and sent them to Rick Wilson, because he wanted to see how desperate they were for dirt on Trump - and then he saw that information showing up in the dossier.

to be fair this is 4chan and twitter users so they could just be pursuing stolen valor. but the claim that 4chan users made the claim definitely checks out: https://www.ibtimes.co.uk/4chan-pranksters-we-trolled-cia-by-making-trump-golden-shower-story-1600501

Weren't most of those rumours probably true? Theodora really was a prostitute, Nero and Caligula's shenanigans probably actually happened, Elegabalus actually was something faggy and weird.

Roman political invective wasn't so much "is it true?" as it was "can we get people to talk about this accusation?"

It does make entertaining reading, which is why such stories have endured over the centuries. We all like gossip, and if it's salacious and titillating even better!

I chose Suetonius' Twelve Caesars (in English translation, natch) as a school prize, and everyone except the Latin teacher wanted to squee about how intellectual and committed to classical scholarship I was. He had recommended the book, and knew exactly what a tween boy was hoping to get out of it.

He had recommended the book, and knew exactly what a tween boy was hoping to get out of it.

You mean, of course, the likes of this 😁:

He rode a very remarkable horse, with feet almost like those of a man, the hoofs being divided in such a manner as to have some resemblance to toes. This horse he had bred himself, and the soothsayers having interpreted these circumstances into an omen that its owner would be master of the world, he brought him up with particular care, and broke him in himself, as the horse would suffer no one else to mount him. A statue of this horse was afterwards erected by Caesar’s order before the temple of Venus Genitrix.

Well, no. Everybody wants this kind of gossip:

The only stain upon his chastity was his having cohabited with Nicomedes; and that indeed stuck to him all the days of his life, and exposed him to much bitter raillery. I will not dwell upon those well-known verses of Calvus Licinius:

Whate’er Bithynia and her lord possess’d,
Her lord who Caesar in his lust caress’d.

I pass over the speeches of Dolabella, and Curio, the father, in which the former calls him “the queen’s rival, and the inner-side of the royal couch,” and the latter, “the brothel of Nicomedes, and the Bithynian stew.” I would likewise say nothing of the edicts of Bibulus, in which he proclaimed his colleague under the name of “the queen of Bithynia;” adding, that “he had formerly been in love with a king, but now coveted a kingdom.” At which time, as Marcus Brutus relates, one Octavius, a man of a crazy brain, and therefore the more free in his raillery, after he had in a crowded assembly saluted Pompey by the title of king, addressed Caesar by that of queen. Caius Memmius likewise upbraided him with serving the king at table, among the rest of his catamites, in the presence of a large company, in which were some merchants from Rome, the names of whom he mentions. But Cicero was not content with writing in some of his letters, that he was conducted by the royal attendants into the king’s bed-chamber, lay upon a bed of gold with a covering of purple, and that the youthful bloom of this scion of Venus had been tainted in Bithynia—but upon Caesar’s pleading the cause of Nysa, the daughter of Nicomedes before the senate, and recounting the king’s kindnesses to him, replied, “Pray tell us no more of that; for it is well known what he gave you, and you gave him.” To conclude, his soldiers in the Gallic triumph, amongst other verses, such as they jocularly sung on those occasions, following the general’s chariot, recited these, which since that time have become extremely common:

The Gauls to Caesar yield, Caesar to Nicomede,
Lo! Caesar triumphs for his glorious deed,
But Caesar’s conqueror gains no victor’s meed.

It is admitted by all that he was much addicted to women, as well as very expensive in his intrigues with them, and that he debauched many ladies of the highest quality; among whom were Posthumia, the wife of Servius Sulpicius; Lollia, the wife of Aulus Gabinius; Tertulla, the wife of Marcus Crassus; and Mucia, the wife of Cneius Pompey. For it is certain that the Curios, both father and son, and many others, made it a reproach to Pompey, “That to gratify his ambition, he married the daughter of a man, upon whose account he had divorced his wife, after having had three children by her; and whom he used, with a deep sigh, to call Aegisthus.” But the mistress he most loved, was Servilia, the mother of Marcus Brutus, for whom he purchased, in his first consulship after the commencement of their intrigue, a pearl which cost him six millions of sesterces; and in the civil war, besides other presents, assigned to her, for a trifling consideration, some valuable farms when they were exposed to public auction. Many persons expressing their surprise at the lowness of the price, Cicero wittily remarked, “To let you know the real value of the purchase, between ourselves, Tertia was deducted:” for Servilia was supposed to have prostituted her daughter Tertia to Caesar.

That he had intrigues likewise with married women in the provinces, appears from this distich, which was as much repeated in the Gallic Triumph as the former:—

Watch well your wives, ye cits, we bring a blade,
A bald-pate master of the wenching trade.
Thy gold was spent on many a Gallic w—-e;
Exhausted now, thou com’st to borrow more.

"I pass over", says he, relating the meat of the matter.

A man for every woman and a woman for every man, no less. Also one of many johnny foreigners the Brits sent packing, although not in the schoolboy history. (Sellars and Yateman in 1066 and All That say that British schoolboys remembered that Julius Caesar conquered Britain in 55BC. I remember being taught that Caesar's expedititions to Britain in 55BC and 54BC were failures and that Britain was conquered by Claudius in 43AD). Not to mention a world conqueror, possibly a God, and an author of remarkably clear Latin prose that makes his memoir good material for students.

Eh, Theodora was an actress, which was synonymous with "prostitute" back then, but:

For she had an especially quick and biting wit, and soon became a star feature of the show. There was no shame at all in her, and no one ever saw her embarrassed. She would provide shameful services without the slightest hesitation and was of such a sort that if someone slapped her or even punched her full in the face she would crack a joke about it and then burst out laughing.

This is from Procopius, who hated Justinian and Theodora. Does that not seem just a wee bit over the top?

It strikes me as much like Pliny's story of Messalina (Claudius's wife) having a fucking contest with the city's prostitutes (which she won, naturally).

The Romans definitely got up to some shit, but the hit jobs written by their political enemies should be taken with the same grain of salt as stories about Trump's pee tapes and Melania being introduced to him by Epstein.

She would provide shameful services without the slightest hesitation and was of such a sort that if someone slapped her or even punched her full in the face she would crack a joke about it and then burst out laughing.

Given this, is it any surprise then that she became the wife of a man who came up through the legions?

20th century US Marines marrying stripper who has a sense of humor. 4th century Roman Legionaries marrying the actress who can take a punch. You know The Office meme.

That is my favorite scene from I Claudius

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