Dwain Northey (Gen X)

Ah, behold: the Republican right’s Olympic sport of Limbo—How Low Can the Bar Go? Every week, just when you think the bar has drilled itself so far into the Earth’s mantle that it’s now legally a subterranean fossil, someone on cable news grabs a shovel and says, “Hold my beer, I can get it lower.”

Enter the latest rhetorical masterpiece from a certain flavor of Fox-style commentary—the kind that treats outrage like oxygen and logic like an optional upgrade. In this bold new frontier of moral reinterpretation, we’re treated to the astonishing argument that, apparently, you “can’t really” consider Epstein a pedophile if the girls were “going through puberty.”

Ah yes. Because nothing screams family values like re-defining universally understood crimes according to a middle-school biology chapter. Truly, Aristotle himself would weep with envy at such intellectual rigor.

It takes a special kind of world—no, a special kind of universe—to argue that the problem with Epstein wasn’t the abuse, or the exploitation, or the trafficking, but a technicality involving hormone charts. We’re expected to believe that the line between moral horror and “I mean, technically…” is drawn not by law, ethics, or basic human decency—but by whether the victim had hit a specific point on the puberty timeline. What’s next? A flowchart? A smartphone app? “Congratulations, your moral responsibility begins in 3…2…1!”

And the hypocrisy! These are the same voices who have, for decades, lectured the nation about purity culture, chastity, protecting children, defending innocence, and the collapse of moral fiber. But suddenly, when the topic is someone orbiting their own political universe? Well then, apparently the vocabulary gets rewritten, the definitions get hazy, and crimes become “complicated.” Funny how that works.

Imagine the mental gymnastics required here. Simone Biles couldn’t flip through this kind of logical contortion without spraining at least three vertebrae. It’s a full-body, gold-medal-worthy performance in Hypocrisy Floor Routine, complete with the dismount of: “Who’s to say what words even mean, really?”

In any sane world—any morally consistent world—there would be one and only one acceptable reaction to the systemic abuse of minors: condemnation so swift and so absolute it leaves skid marks. But in this alternate universe of partisan gravitational distortion, morality becomes a buffet line. Take the outrage when it’s politically convenient, skip the responsibility when it’s not.

And so, with great fanfare, the bar sinks lower yet again. Somewhere deep underground, it has now achieved perfect geological harmony with the fossilized remains of common sense, empathy, and basic human shame.

Truly, a remarkable achievement.