Ratfucking is an American slang term for behind the scenes (covert) political sabotage or dirty tricks, particularly pertaining to elections. It was brought to public attention by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein in All the President’s Men (1974), the book that chronicled their investigative reporting of the Watergate scandal.(Wikipedia)

A few weeks ago, during my daily miles-long walk around my Louisville neighborhood, I came across the above billboard on Crittenden Drive at the I-65 intersection, less than two miles north of Muhammad Ali International Airport.

Vehicles heading north on the interstate are most likely to see it, but (fortunately?) that part of the highway has been closed for more than a month as decaying bridges are being replaced, meaning millions of drivers have been spared the visual assault.

My first thought was, “What scumbag paid for this?”

My second thought: “some ratfucker affiliated with the GOP U.S. Senate campaign of the racist, sexist, homophobic low-life Andy Barr.”

For those of you who don’t know, Barr represents Kentucky 6th congressional district, which covers Lexington and its surrounding area. He’s the Republican candidate for the seat now held by Schroedinger’s senator, Mitch McConnell.

Barr’s campaign has been the most hateful and bigoted political runs I have ever seen, and I’m saying this a someone who has worked in Republican politics and who has written or edited a shit ton of political stories here in Louisville and with major media organizations in New York, California and Washington, D.C.

He is a gun nut who has attacked minorities, is obsessed with the trans community, wants women to stay in their place (preferably the kitchen and the maternity ward) and of course is a total butt-boy for the Orange Menace in the White House. That’s not me speaking as a commie, leftist, DEI-loving radical. That’s his whole political platform. Here’s the link.

But here’s the sad part: Barr knows that a significant majority of Whites in Kentucky strongly support every one of his hateful platforms and, when they see and hear his message, bark like trained seals when fish are brought out at feeding time at the zoo.

Every action Barr has taken as a congressman has only made the lives of those Whites (who make up 84% of the state’s population) and everybody else in the commonwealth worse. His votes have stripped funding from healthcare, education and environmental protection, things that improve every Kentuckian’s quality of life. Instead, the money is going to billionaire bank accounts and to the genocide in Gaza.

So, what does this have to do with the assassinated (by someone on his side of the political aisle) community-college dropout whose grift was to visit college campuses talking about White Oppression (in this world: “the Black man is keeping the White man down”), debate students who hadn’t fully formed their political views, post those debates on social media (making sure to not include anything that showed his ass being kicked by a coed) and suck funding out of the teats of mega billionaires who ARE what’s wrong with America?

Barr is running against a Black man: Charles Booker.

Booker (so far) isn’t fully running on the Democratic Socialist line that is spreading through the country and gaining millions of supporters daily. That messaging would never go over in Kentucky since a lot of people here who are on Social Security and Medicare and get SNAP benefits to buy food don’t even know what socialism means and is (i.e.: Social Security, Medicare, SNAP benefits).

The ratfuck is this: Barr wants our local newspaper (a once highly respected member of the journalism community now a shell of itself, because it was sold to a soulless corporation by a family that found personal gain more important than community responsibility) or another news organization, or a Barr plant pretending to be a journalist to ask Booker about the Charlie Kirk billboard.

Anything the Democrat says about the billboard will be twisted by Barr and his minions into a “Booker hates White people. Look at what he said about our patron saint, Charlie Kirk.” meme closer to the election.

Andy Barr expects bigotry to carry him into the U.S. Senate. Every decent Kentuckian has to be aware of that.

Meantime, what ratfucker paid for the billboard? Kentucky media organizations should be looking into this. I’m not holding my breath.