'Lord help us': Tuberville decries 'furry' culture on the Senate floor

You know the Senate has seen better days when the Chamber of Daniel Webster and John C. Calhoun is being used to debate grown adults dressing up as cartoon animals. But there sat Tommy Tuberville this week, asking aloud, "Lord help us," as he put the furry phenomenon on the record. It was absurd, sure. It was also the most honest thing said on that floor in a long time.

Tuberville isn't exactly known for soaring rhetoric. That's his charm. The former football coach sees a culture that has lost its grip on basic reality and says what any normal person is thinking. The left wants us to treat this as harmless fun. It isn't. A movement that encourages people to identify as animals doesn't stop at the convention hall. It shows up in schools, in libraries, in the military, and now it's creeping into the halls of Congress itself.

The reaction from the usual corners has been predictable. Mockery, eyerolls, lectures about how we shouldn't waste time on "fringe" issues. But that's the trick, isn't it? They call it fringe until it's mainstream. We're supposed to laugh along so we don't notice how much ground has been ceded. Tuberville refuses to do that. He's not scared to look foolish to people who abandoned good sense a long time ago.

Maybe the world's greatest deliberative body should be talking about debt ceilings and foreign policy. Tuberville would probably agree. But when the culture is busy normalizing the abnormal, somebody has to stand up and say it's nuts. We've got a senator willing to be that somebody. If that's the new standard for political courage, God help us all.