“Or, as an alternative, you could try not sleeping with people who aren’t your spouse” – The top comment on a Sunday afternoon Fox News article headlined “What is ketamine therapy? Mormon reality stars tout controversial treatment – Doctors speak about alternative therapy in ‘The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives,'” filed under “Health” and written by a “lifestyle production assistant.”
The post’s like a relic of a bygone era of 15 or 20 years ago, where there’d be some article on CNN or Yahoo News about a celebrity or a reality TV show star partying too hard and/or acting sexually profligate, under which inevitably there’d be at least one right wing user chiming in about how Lindsey Lohan or Paris Hilton were harbingers of a wider cultural degeneracy. Sure it was hollow and cast the first stone-y even back then given the publicly-revealed indiscretions of elected Republican politicians like Newt Gingrich, Mark Foley, and Larry Craig as well as Evangelical figures such as Ted Haggard and Jimmy Swaggart, not to mention media propagandists like Bill O’Reilly. And then Rush Limbaugh with the Oxycontin. Apparently he took so much of that shit he almost went deaf.
But back then drug use was still associated with the left – the legalization movement sure as hell didn’t start in Arkansas – as was sexual profligacy – Bill Clinton’s history of it sure as hell did start in Arkansas. For all the growing number of stains on what was presented as a gleaming white tower of conservative Christian moral superiority, Republican voters in that era could at least, and factually so, say that they’d never been led by a president who’d been publicly exposed as a philandering sex pest at best, an outright predator at worst. Your median Fox News viewer could still feel like they were on Team Morality, and wayward souls like hooker-loving Louisiana Senator David Vitter as outliers who failed to uphold the deal while drugs were for leftist San Francisco potheads.
Muscle memory’s hard to unlearn, but it’s been quite a while for that commenter to still be hanging onto a vestigial affinity for sexual modesty and abstinence from drugs given that his party’s leadership has long ago gotten a pass on both. Pound for pound, Bill Clinton getting impeached for his fucking around simply doesn’t hold a cigar to Donald Trump getting adjudicated as a rapist, then convicted of 34 felonies because he had two minutes of sex with a porn star who felt cornered into it, then hired a serial impregnator who couldn’t pass a drug test to become a federal employee to make the executive branch run more “efficiently.” If fucking around and doing ketamine aren’t a dealbreaker for you politically then why’s it a sin for some reality show cast members?
Fox News seems to get this. There might’ve been in another timeline a version of this article that has the very same headline and casts a very judgmental tone on both Mormon swinging and ketamine use. Yet the words “Dangerous new trend” that you’d see if this was about kids huffing freon do not appear. There is some qualified caution at the end, and this is where the payola becomes obvious:
While ketamine IV therapy could be an alternative option if other treatments haven’t been effective for mental health conditions, experts urge caution.
“People may see celebrities like Jen Affleck make claims that ketamine therapy saved her marriage, but if it’s shown as a quick fix to solve all of your problems rather than a step toward healing, that’s when it can be dangerous,” [Dr Rolando] Larice cautioned.
It is important for the IV treatment to be monitored by medical professionals in case dangerous side effects occur, he said.
Translation: Don’t buy ketamine from your cousin’s friend Nick who can also get you some pretty good molly but you have to meet him in that really sketchy parking lot behind the Carvel across from Lowe’s after his shift working the paint mixing station there. Only a real doctor who has lots of Keta-Joy™ pens and mousepads in their office can decide if Keta-Joy™ treatment is right for you.
And the “Jen Affleck” in that part of the article isn’t a typo. She’s the Utah Mormon swinger ketamine patient, married to Zac Affleck, the Utah Mormon swinger distant cousin of the Gigli star.
Which is the other questionable product Fox News is promoting here:
So this crew of under-30 Mormon housewives in the Salt Lake City suburbs started this group called “MomTok” where they would dance for the camera and then post video clips of it on TikTok. Then one of them recorded a TikTok where she revealed that they had all been swinging amongst each other, fucking their friends’ husbands. It was a BIG scandal in the world of under-30 Mormon housewives in the Salt Lake City suburbs, especially because the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints was founded on the principle that a man must have at least three wives to enter into Heaven. He can’t just fuck two of his wife’s friends and expect a place in the Celestial Kingdom.
And yeah, that’s The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives in a nutshell, the show’s content even more lurid and sacrilegious than its title even suggests. It’s not clear if the scorn of their fellow Mormons over their hedonistic ways is the reason why Zac and Jen’s marriage was so troubled that they needed ketamine therapy to fix it but God help you if you feel compelled enough to watch it and find out.
Which, along with “Ketamine might be right for you,” seems to be Fox News’s game here and fuck you if you’re a longtime Republican voter offended by such “lifestyle” and “health” choices. Get with the program bro. Trump nails other women, Elon Musk does ketamine, and neither should embarrass you anymore. And if you’re one of those Moms for Liberty types always looking to get outraged over inappropriate content and behavior by role models then just pretend this ketamine/Mormon swinging informercial didn’t happen. It’s the only way to remain true to conservative values these days.