*ick face* “Because as big a deal as you’ve become… you’re still a broad - here’s some draws.”

Love, Joe

That couldn’t be Arpaio. Someone had to be spoofing him. I mean, c’mon, no one’s that weird.

That’s very sexual-harassy. Does he not like Sarah Palin?

Jesus Christ.

Reminder that Joe Arpaio is a sadistic authoritarian who allows his deputies to beat pretrial detainees to death with impunity, forces women to give birth in shackles and arrests his political opponents.

Small government!!!

Ew.  I guess Palin is just another convict in need of being put in her girly place to him, eh?

Oh yeah here’s some citations and stuff:

http://reidscones.com/prison/arpaio.html
http://www.phoenixnewtimes.com/2009-10-22/news/pregnant-latina-says-she-was-forced-to-give-birth-to-her-baby-in-shackles-after-one-of-arpaio-s-deputies-racially-profiled-her/
http://www.azcentral.com/news/election/azelections/articles/2010/08/12/20100812sheriff-joe-arpaio-investigation-documents-released-thursday.html
http://newamericamedia.org/2010/09/arpaio-accused-of-misspending-80-million-in-taxpayer-funds.php
http://www.arpaio.com/blood-on-hands/2.php

Todd Palin may need to send a forcefully worded, misspelled e-mail.

Thanks a lot.

Now I’ve got to rinse the vomit out of my mouth, I just threw up in it a little.

Oh, come on.  It’s not as if he jerked off in them before giving them to her.

It’s probably not as if, anyhow.

Why would someone want or give a piece of prison-issue garb?  I don’t get it.  I know it’s not hard to make everything pink, the dye isn’t that expensive, and helps cover stains.  But… Sheesh.  A gift of panties?  WTF.

What a fucking creep.

While Arpaio is most certainly a creep and an absolute embarrassment as a Sheriff, this might not be quite as weird/gross as it sounds. Arpaio has sold the pink boxers as fundraisers at malls in Maricopa County for years, and the souvenir pink underwear wasn’t actually the same as the actual inmates’ underwear. (My grandfather, who was a big-time Sheriff Joe supporter, had a pair of pink boxers that he had hanging on his wall.) IIRC, the souvenir boxers weren’t even really usable as underwear, just as regular shorts. I’m not even sure if the female inmates’ underwear is pink at all—Arpaio got a lot of notoriety about fifteen years ago for dyeing all the male inmates’ underwear pink, supposedly to cut down on black market sales of the things.

Joe Arpaio is about the creepiest person on the planet.  He’s also a lousy sheriff, since the only way he’d ever catch a real criminal is if one showed up at one of his press conferences or campaign stops.

“While Arpaio is most certainly a creep and an absolute embarrassment as a Sheriff, this might not be quite as weird/gross as it sounds.”

...um, it sure seems to be about as weird and gross as it sounds, at least to me. 

Imagine how unglued wingnuttia would be if Arpaio was a political lefty and, let’s say, he gave Hillary Clinton a pair of pink undies.  We wouldn’t hear the end of it for weeks…

MikeEss, I’m certainly not apologizing for Arpaio—I’ve lived in Maricopa County for twenty years and I hate the guy and have done GOTV for his opponents the last two times he’s been up for re-election. I’m just saying this probably doesn’t have the nasty sexual overtones that it appears. The souvenir boxers that I’ve seen for sale at the malls are really just pink shorts with an elastic waistband, and Arpaio gives them to every Republican politician who visits him, and has done so for years. It’s not like he singled Palin out or gave her lingerie from Victoria’s Secret. The dude’s an asshole, no question. I just don’t think this is really as nefarious as it sounds.

This is normal for him. And you can buy your own pair too at www.pinkunderwear.com. Just $15 and in children’s sizes.

I vote against him every election.  He’s an embarrassment to Arizona, who believes he is a law unto himself.

Arclandia, that web site is awesome.  At least he could never be accused of being obsessed with self-promotion… *eye roll*

He should have given her a vibrator.  [There are too many follow-up lines to choose just one.]

@baddesignhurts at 13: No. It is every bit as weird and gross as it sounds, whether he spent an hour picking them out at Penney’s or stole them from the fundraising shop.

Thanks Jesse, I just threw up a little in my mouth.  I’m not kidding.

And Arpaio of all people?

“The souvenir boxers that I’ve seen for sale at the malls are really just pink shorts with an elastic waistband, and Arpaio gives them to every Republican politician who visits him, and has done so for years.”

Does he then tweet about it, though?  Also, re: the incident in general: Oh, for fuck’s sake.

AJB @7: and don’t forget that Arpaio’s guys seem to have a habit of thumbing their noses at client-attorney confidentiality, right in front of the judge, and very much with Arpaio’s blessing.

Preying Mantis, I know he shamelessly tries to get as much publicity as possible, all the time, though I don’t know if how much he tweets. He’s gotten footage and images of himself shaking hands with other Republicans and giving out those damn shorts all over the local news and papers for years. The man has never met a media outlet he didn’t like. (I don’t like the term “attention whore”, but very few people I can think of fit that description more than Arpaio.) I suspect that this tweet got as much attention as it did because of all the other media attention paid to Palin’s looks, but I think the media attention is more fetishistic of Palin than the fact that he gave her the same stupid, self-aggrandizing souvenir he gives everyone else.

To me, the truly sexist implication of these pink shorts is that Arpaio attempts to humiliate male inmates by dyeing their underwear a stereotypically feminine color. And Arpaio is absolutely abusive to women; he has had pregnant women shackled while in labor, for God’s sake. I don’t want to say too much in a public forum because it’s personal issue, but a friend of my mother’s is actually involved in a lawsuit against the Sheriff’s Office because of mistreatment she suffered when she was in Tent City (one of the outdoor jails Arpaio had set up in the desert) for a DUI. The man’s a monster.

That is about twenty-five levels of clearly delineated ew.

Um, Mr. Arpaio, I’m fairly sure of the two of you Palin would not be the “bitch” in your pink-underwear prison-bitch fantasy…

This is not a thing that is okay.  This is a thing that is NOT okay.

Just…no.

NO.

I don’t want to know this.

There’s a psychosexual undercurrent to this form of authoritarianism.  Some of them like to make POWs get naked and wear dog collars while being laughed at by women.  And they kink on the pictures.

Arpaio has fetishized the sexual humiliation that prison forces on convicts.  His fans love the pics of big scary ethnic people wearing faggy underwear. 

You know, family values and all.

15: MikeEss - “Imagine how unglued wingnuttia would be if Arpaio was a political lefty and, let’s say, he gave Hillary Clinton a pair of pink undies.  We wouldn’t hear the end of it for weeks…”

I got the impression that was the intent of the linked article and some others I’m seeing on the Google. It’s awkwardly worded to make Palin the subject. “Sarah Palin gets gift…”

Also interesting is Arpaio’s making male prisoners wear pink boxers is often reported at the top of his list of abuses. Compared to a lot of what Arpaio subjects prisoners to, the pink boxers are akin to comfy chair torture, but they get the most attention. It’s like the panties-on-head torture at Abu Ghraib. Forget the rape and the car batteries and the dogs and the sleep deprivation. They forced them to come into contact with ladies undergarments! Oh the humanity!

@snobographer

Because apparently the ugh induced by this post wasn’t enough for me, I googled Palin and Arpaio with panties instead of underwear.  It was a quick and dirty (really, really, really dirty) way of finding how many of the responses to this story were the typical misogynistic sexual response to this type of thing.  There were so many, which is to be expected, and was most likely part of the appeal of Arpaio’s tweet.

I agree there’s definitely something really fucked up about the way the Right treats its women (seriously, does anyone even on the Right think Christine O’Donnell is good for anything except winning Julia Louis-Dreyfus lookalike contests? Heaven forbid they should push someone like Kay Bailey Hutchison who is both attractive AND competent.), but there’s nothing terribly weird about this IMHO. The pink underwear is just sort of Arpaio’s thing, so for me it’s just a big pile of “Yeah, yeah, whatever, now how do we get this putz to actually obey the law for once?” Hell, for all we know, Palin might have explicitly asked for them. Arpaio’s such a hero to that crowd that if nothing else, it probably sounded like a hell of a photo op.

snobographer:

Come to think of it, that is strange. Hell, compared with some of the other issues, it actually seems like a smart inventory management tool. I guess machismo will peek out no matter what…

tlauf:

Bingo. No different in kind from homophobic closet cases really.

Even if it isn’t misogynistic, it is creepy.

@30 - Oh gross. See and somehow she’s held responsible. She get’s the gift. Some kind of feminist! (I wouldn’t call Palin a feminist by any stretch, but that’s unrelated to who gives her what).

I thought they were women’s underpants at first too, until Arclandia linked to Arpaio’s site. That may have been Arpaio’s intention but it’s hard to tell since he calls them “underwear” on his site.

@31 - Yeah the inventory management makes sense. It’s why when I’ve had male roommates, I’d stash my weed in a tampon box or buy the unscented deodorant with the flowery container. Or female construction workers buy the pink tools so nobody will walk off with them. You ever want a car that won’t get stolen, buy a pink one. But then the next logical question that’s never asked is why is any implication of femaleness so repellent.

Joe Arpaio is about the creepiest person on the planet.  He’s also a lousy sheriff, since the only way he’d ever catch a real criminal is if one showed up at one of his press conferences or campaign stops.

Indeed, and yet the majority of citizens who live in the Phoenix metropolitan area keep re-electing him year after year. He’s cost the taxpayers who keep re-electing him tens of millions of dollars in legal settlements for his extrajudicial tactics. Why this guy has so many supporters in Maricopa County, I have no idea.

@36 - I used to live in Maricopa County. It’s racist as hell. People there talk about Mexicans like they’re vermin. That’s why they keep electing him. His use of extrajudicial tactics is just being “tough on crime.” They don’t care about tax dollars being wasted on legal settlements. That’s not a waste to them. Food stamps is a waste of tax dollars to them.

Weirdo!

“Sheriff Joe” already reminded me of “Deputy Duffy” of online fetish-porn fame (Google the name, or that of the author, C. Lakewood).  This is just the sort of thing Deputy Duffy would do.

What would come either before or after a gift of convict undies I leave to your imagination….

snobographer @ 34:
Most female construction workers DO NOT buy the pink tools.  Usually they are not only pink, but tend to be made specifically for women and/or as novelties and so usually not as robust.  After all, no woman would need real tools, would she?  I and those I’ve worked with when I was out on construction went with purple or neon colors usually.

Clean up on #35….
Hasn’t stick run out of word play yet?

By the way, Thick Drool, don’t come to California.

We have a large percentage of Perfectly Legal American Citizens of Latino/Hispanic, Mexican, Central and South American heritage living here.  The ancestors of some of them go back before first Europeans figured out there was a West Coast of North America and decided to take a look at it.

Most of us (aside from the inevitable Reichwing bigots) love our Hispanic neighbors, love the many Spanish names for places, love the many different Hispanic cultural elements incorporated into the general California culture, and appreciate a group of people who aren’t Just More White Bigots (God knows we have plenty already - of course, one is really too many anyway).

Along with lots of Hispanics filling every occupational niche, from minimum wage jobs all the way up to doctors, lawyers, scientists, judges, politicians (just like any other ethnic/cultural group), there are plenty of Hispanic law enforcement officers.

Let some of that ridiculous eliminationist bigotry slip out of your mouth and you just might find yourself going to jail for inciting a riot.  Started by Whites, Blacks, and Asians.  Who are sick and tired of your racism.  And defending the dignity of a major group of California citizens.

We don’t need hateful people here…

but there’s nothing terribly weird about this IMHO. The pink underwear is just sort of Arpaio’s thing

Stop and think about that for a minute.  Don’t you think that having pink underwear or any underwear as “his thing” is weird all by itself?  Yes, I know a lot of wingnuts have obsessions with anything that gets near sex organs, but it’s still weird.

catgirl:

This is true; however, I doubt Sarah Palin being the receiver makes it any more weird.

Another Arizonan here that thinks that this is not so weird.  I mean, Arpaio is pretty much the worst person in the world, he’s a nutcase and a shitty sheriff, but the pink underwear is just kind of an Arizona in-joke.  It’s more of a symbol of how “tough” Arpaio is on crime rather than them having a sexual connotation.

@40: helen w. h - I didn’t mean to imply that most female construction workers buy pink tools. I was just talking about a couple that I know about who have some real tools with pink handles.

They have been doing it for the past 40-50 years… And it has not gone unnoticed.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_I_Want_to_Fuck_Ronald_Reagan