What if the Standard Left-Wing Position on Trans Issues Was to Support Evidence-Based Care But Skip All the Cultish Bullshit?

Could you IMAGINE?

On Sunday, Jon Stewart trended on Twitter. That sent a chill through my bones; it was unlikely to be for anything good. Best case scenario: He died, thus curtailing his effort to squander all the good will that he earned in the first 25 years of his career. Watching Stewart’s devolution into an unfunny left-wing hack¹ has been painful; he was a major influence on me, so watching his current work feels like watching Dr. Seuss make a late-career foray into rap rock. I applaud Dr. Seuss for not putting me through that; I can still read Green Eggs and Ham without having to recall the years he spent wearing a backwards baseball hat and rapping about poontang.

I was relieved to see that Stewart was trending due to a clip in which I actually thought he did pretty well. Here’s the clip: He’s interviewing Arkansas Attorney General Leslie Rutledge about a bill her state passed that outlaws prescribing hormones or puberty blockers to people under 18.

For what it’s worth, Stewart’s big Vince Carter dunking on some French dude moment — when he calls Rutledge’s 98 percent de-transition number a “made-up figure” — seems to be substantively fair. I cannot find that number anywhere. It’s not in the bill itself, it’s not in the legislative history that Rutledge cites or elsewhere on the Arkansas Legislature’s web page. I could not find that number anywhere on the internet, which is remarkable; one of the defining features of the internet age is the ability to find some crank somewhere spouting whatever number you’d like to cite. But this seems to be the exception to that rule; as far as I can tell, that number was pulled straight from Rutledge’s ass.