A Fake Democrat Just Said What About Her?

Ever heard of Kendall Jones? She's the former Texas Tech cheerleader known as a "big-game hunter" — somebody who shoots and kills rare creatures of the African wilds to bring home trophies. But even the most problematic people can be made sympathetic when someone worse comes along, and that's what's happened since Virginia "Democrat" Mike Dickinson offered $100,000 for a sex tape of Jones.

Those "Democrat" scare quotes are for a reason — Dickinson's desire to expose and embarrass Jones, motivated by so-called disgust for her hunting, is now being used by some conservatives as a response to claims of a GOP "War on Women" — there are sleazy Democrats too, see? But, as Slate's Dave Weigel points out, Dickinson is not a real candidate.

Now, he's had an online presence for a while, and has been booked on Fox News under the title "Mike Dickinson (D-VA)," but he hasn't filed the necessary candidacy forms to actually run, and he won't appear on any ballot in November. In simple terms, it's as if I changed my Twitter bio to "Chris Tognotti (CA-D)," and start making outlandish comments that the Democratic Party would have to answer for.

This much is obvious — Mike Dickinson is not a candidate in good faith, and his call for salacious material about Jones is seriously sleazy. Also just weird.

Dickinson condemned Jones in this tweet from Wednesday, the first real shot in a slew of vehement attacks to come. Later the same day, Dickinson tweeted the same image of Jones, squatting next to a dead leopard, with the message: "100k bounty for nude photos or videos of #KendallJones expose this lowlife scum. She hunts animals, let's hunt her."

Since then, he's checked in periodically to stoke the flames resulting from his unsavory offer. Some of them, as you'd expect, have been pretty personal. From Thursday:

And, even Friday, amid all the swirling controversy, he hasn't backed off his call.

So, to recap:

• Mike Dickinson is a faux-candidate who (seemingly deliberately) stokes fires on Twitter to gain attention, followers, and donations. Also, a glance at his OpenSecrets.org page throws the sincerity of his offered reward into serious question — he only has a little over $1,000 in campaign cash on hand, and over $2,000 in debt.
• Kendall Jones is a hunter who prizes animal corpses as personal trophies, and explicitly seeks out rare and esoteric creatures to snap post-kill pics with.
• Jones has provoked a ton of public outcry, including a Facebook page expressing a desire to kill her, which has since been taken down. She's also taken to posting photos of herself with live animals to try to mend fences, which, yeah, not really working.
• Dickinson is not representative of a Democratic "War on Women," as he isn't an elected lawmaker, or even a credible candidate for public office. He's just a glorified twitter troll, with casual misogyny running throughout some of his other tweets, as well.

Basically, don't hold your breath about Dickinson's totally sincere, serious effort to defeat David Brat in the race to replace House Majority Leader Eric Cantor this November. And try to hold two conflicting realities in your mind at the same time — you can be angry at Kendall Jones, and digusted at Mike Dickinson, and that's okay. They both deserve it.

Image: Kendall Jones/Facebook