A FORMAL APOLOGY

We need to correct the record.

When we compared Stephen Miller to a defective buttplug, we meant no offense whatsoever to defective buttplugs. In retrospect, the comparison was reckless, unfair, and potentially damaging to the reputation of an entire category of consumer products that, despite occasional manufacturing deficiencies, generally enter the world hoping to provide some measure of happiness.

A defective buttplug did not choose to be defective. Perhaps there was a problem at the factory. Perhaps quality control was having an off day. Perhaps somebody at the silicone plant was distracted. Whatever happened, the defective buttplug remains fundamentally innocent. It has no political ideology. It has never advocated mass deportations. It has never stood behind a podium and announced that human beings it dislikes look “deformed.” It has never gone on television to speculate about another man’s testosterone levels. It has never attempted to determine who belongs in America. It is simply a poorly manufactured object trying to make its way through an unforgiving world.

We must also address another comparison that has appeared in these pages: that Stephen Miller looks like what would happen if you buried a dildo in a Pet Sematary and it crawled out of the ground three nights later wearing a suit and demanding to see everyone’s immigration papers.

Again, we got carried away.

We meant no disrespect to dildos.

Dildos have been loyal companions to humanity for thousands of years. They ask remarkably little of us. They do not develop immigration policy. They do not accuse Senate candidates of producing soy milk instead of blood. Most importantly, they generally understand that if nobody wants them around, they should not force themselves into the situation.

That alone represents a level of respect for consent and personal boundaries that makes comparison with Stephen Miller difficult to defend.

We also owe an apology to pet cemeteries.

A pet cemetery is a solemn place where people bury creatures they loved. Even the fictional Pet Sematary, despite its unfortunate record of reanimating the dead, cannot reasonably be blamed for Stephen Miller. Frankly, accusing a supernatural burial ground invented by Stephen King of producing Stephen Miller feels like assigning it responsibility for something far beyond the horrors contemplated in the original novel.

The dead came back wrong in Pet Sematary.

They did not come back as White House deputy chiefs of staff.

There are limits.

So we regret the comparisons. Defective buttplugs deserve better. Dildos deserve better. Pet cemeteries deserve better. The entire sex-toy industry deserves better. Somewhere right now, an irregularly molded piece of clearance-bin silicone is sitting quietly on a warehouse shelf, having harmed absolutely nobody, wondering what the fuck it ever did to deserve being mentioned in the same paragraph as Stephen Miller.

Nothing.

It did nothing.

And we apologize.

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