J.D. Vance will, very likely, until the end of his days, hear people snicker something under their breath when he enters a restaurant or passes a couch.
I hope not, but this is the reality of the post-truth society in which we live. Stephen Colbert famously called it “Truthiness.” Many people decide what’s true based on how they feel about it. Does it seem true? Then, the post-truth thinking goes, it probably is. Plus, once something like that is in mass consciousness, it does a twist in many brains and lodges long-term in the synapses.
The wild accusation about Vance now making the rounds first appeared in a tweet by user @wunderbra666, a little-followed self-proclaimed member of the resistance, on July 17, two days after former President Trump named the 39-year-old Ohio senator as his running mate: “On pages 179-81 Hillbilly Elegy, J.D. Vance talks about fucking an inside out latex glove between two couch cushions. I’m so glad that this is coming from the guy who claims he’s all about family values.” What makes the claim believable is its specificity — page numbers and all — and the fact Vance’s memoir was lauded as a heartfelt, unvarnished coming-of-age tell-all about his hardscrabble Appalachian childhood.
It was easily disproved, though, since, no, there is no such account in the best-selling book. (The only couch referenced in the memoir is the one Vance hides behind to escape his warring parents.) The tweet’s earnest accusation of hypocrisy indicates this wasn’t some nihilistic edgelord joke, but a plain fabrication. A lie! On the internet!
But attempts to debunk the rumor have failed to kill it and only made it stronger as thousands of gleeful memes have proliferated across social media and beyond, outstripping interest even in the attempted assassination of Trump, according to Google Trends. For those who care, The Associated Press deleted its “Vance did not have sex with a couch” story because it “didn’t go through the wire service’s standard editing process.” It could be, as some have speculated, that the AP realized it is nearly impossible to prove a negative — that Vance did not boink a piece of furniture. While there is no evidence he did, there is also no evidence in the thousands of days and nights of Vance’s sexual maturity that he did not climax into a hastily arranged substitute for genitalia.
A key to this is that, let’s face it, it’s possible! But more than that, even you, I bet, got a chuckle out of it. Why? Try this test. Stand Vance next to a random assortment of men, let’s say a few of Kamala Harris’ vice presidential contenders: Mark Kelly, Roy Cooper and Josh Shapiro. Of the four, who to your eye is the most likely to be turned on by a tight, plump sectional? Is it something in the chin, the beard, the soft eyes? Obviously, this is ridiculous, and no one should be judged on their looks. But that is the problem with post-truth. It’s not about truth. It’s all about perception, snap-judgments, and — as Mr. Trump and his followers know — defining your opponent so convincingly and outrageously in the public mind that they can never undo the perception no matter how false. Just this week, MAGA Twitter is flooded with internet sleuths claiming Joe Biden is in fact dead, his Oval Office address notwithstanding.
There is every reason to assume the Vance couch story will endure alongside other ineradicable, sexually tinged urban legends about celebrities. The singer who removed a rib so he could auto-fellate. The actor with a rodent problem. The Oscar-winning actress who is supposedly a hermaphrodite. The endless parade of male action stars who are allegedly in the closet. For Vance’s sake, I hope it does not. He should be judged as fit or unfit for the job of vice president by what is true about him.
The pervasiveness of this rumor is helped along by popular stereotypes about two communities that are rarely grouped together: poor Appalachians and Hollywood cultural elites, both of which are regarded in some corners of America as drug-addled perverts with poor impulse control. (Touché.) That perception, and the un-disprovable urban legends it has spawned, have haunted Hollywood and hillbillies for more than a century.
Vance’s predicament recalls that of Roscoe Arbuckle. Known by the nickname Fatty, the popular silent film actor was accused of rape and manslaughter in 1921 after the death of a starlet following a party at a San Francisco hotel. This led to three trials, which attracted sensationalized newspaper attention. Among the unconfirmed events was the story that Arbuckle had used an icicle from an ice sculpture to penetrate the victim. Despite the three trials, Arbuckle was acquitted, and the third jury gave him a written statement of apology for the way the judicial system had treated him. But his career never recovered. He died at the age of 46.
If you look at a photo of Arbuckle, he did seem awfully creepy, a sly wide smile and gleaming eyes. That’s probably why he was a star, his memorable face. It’s not fair. None of this is.
Nor has the bile expressed toward the media in the past three presidential campaigns been fair. Some, generally on the MAGA side, are hostile to diligent news outlets that have the gall to report facts that go against what some people want to be true — crowd sizes, vote tallies, events in the dressing room of a Manhattan department store.
What some the most tenacious rumors — including those about Vance and Arbuckle — have in common is a focus on sexual perversity. And that’s why I fear Vance may never put the couch rumor toothpaste back in the tube.
Will sofa sales rise this month? Is the couch manufacturers association up in arms about this purported violation of comfortable household seating? We’ll have to wait to see. But that’s not the point, is it? This is about power — and demeaning someone sexually is a pure and evil expression.
I hope you have managed to avoid the abhorrent faked pornographic images of Kamala Harris purporting to depict how she made her way up in California politics. It turns out you can’t block everyone on the internet.
History says such legends never die.
Long before the urban legend that a handsome movie star allegedly showed up at a hospital in the 1980s with an animal lodged in his rear that he’d inserted for sexual pleasure, there were versions of a similar story passed along through oral traditions and ancient texts.
The 1972 book Korean Sex Jokes in Traditional Times: How the Mouse Got Trapped in the Widow’s Vagina and Other Stories describes a thousand-year-old folktale about the pleasurable effects a wandering rodent caused by its movements.
Try forgetting that!
Allen Salkin is a journalist who has written about pop culture, media and sex for three decades.
