Here's a sentence for the Year of Our Lord 2018: a congressional candidate accused her opponent of being "a devotee of Bigfoot erotica," and some people on the Internet responded by demanding she not "kink-shame" him. America really has embraced its primal thirst for the decadently absurd, to the point that the race for Virginia's Fifth District seat has devolved into a many-sided war of words over Sasquatch porn.

Behold the tweet from Leslie Cockburn, the Democratic candidate, which kicked the whole thing off:

This content is imported from Twitter. You may be able to find the same content in another format, or you may be able to find more information, at their web site.

My opponent Denver Riggleman, running mate of Corey Stewart, was caught on camera campaigning with a white supremacist. Now he has been exposed as a devotee of Bigfoot erotica. This is not what we need on Capitol Hill. pic.twitter.com/0eBvxFd6sG — Leslie Cockburn (@LeslieCockburn) July 29, 2018

Cockburn was apparently referencing photos from Riggleman's now-private Instagram account, which feature a "censored" nude Bigfoot. According to The Cook Political Report, "that account ... was once peppered with images of what can only be described as Bigfoot-themed erotic art." One features Riggleman's face photoshopped on the mythical forest creature. But The Daily Progress of Charlottesville spoke to Riggleman and heard it was all just a gag:

Cockburn also tweeted another image from Riggleman’s Instagram that depicted a similarly censored nude Bigfoot with Riggleman’s face pasted on the body.

“My ‘buddies’ thought this pic was fitting for my birthday next week and to celebrate my new book release in a month or 2… ‘Mating Habits of Bigfoot and Why Women Want Him...”

However, according to Riggleman the posts do not originate from “Bigfoot erotica,” but are a joke his military friends played on him. When he posted the images, Riggleman said, he never thought they would be used against him politically and described the tweets from Cockburn as “absurd.”

While Riggleman definitely did author one book on Bigfoot—Bigfoot Exterminators Inc. The Partially Cautionary, Mostly True Tale of Monster Hunt 2006—it seems very possible the photos are a joke. Riggleman did delete a Facebook author page, however, where he appeared to promote a self-published book titled The Mating Habits of Bigfoot and Why Women Want Him.

Denver Riggleman Congressional Quarterly AP

(Cockburn, a journalist-turned-politician who is also actress Olivia Wilde's mother, has herself come under fire for previous literary works, having penned a book in 1991 attacking the policies of, and relationship between, the governments of the United States and Israel. Republicans have called Cockburn a "virulent anti-Semite," though according to The New York Times, the district's Jewish community—located mostly in Charlottesville—appears to have largely rejected that charge. It seems most likely to prove effective with the Evangelical populations in the district's rural swathes, who strongly support Israel and its government's policies towards Palestine.)

While you might find Sasquatch porn discussions a bit trivial in a race for federal office, Cockburn's other charge in that initial tweet is nothing of the sort. Local progressive groups have accused Riggleman of campaigning alongside Isaac Smith, who co-founded a group called "Unity and Security for America" alongside Jason Kessler.

Kessler organized the white-supremacist "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville last year, where Neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Confederates, and people who think it's a good idea to march alongside them gathered—many toting weapons and armor—to protest the removal of a statue honoring Robert E. Lee. One white supremacist killed a counter-protester with his car in what Attorney General Jeff Sessions—not exactly an Antifa type—called an act of domestic terrorism.

Chip Somodevilla Getty Images

Riggleman wrote an op-ed denouncing the Unite the Right rally, but he has refused to say whether he supports Corey Stewart, the Republican nominee for Senate from Virginia and a prominent Confederate monument defender. Stewart has a habit of associating with, in the words of The Washington Post, people with "extreme racial views," then disavowing them and claiming he didn't know their beliefs when called on it. That includes Paul Nehlen, a candidate for Paul Ryan's House seat in Wisconsin who published anti-Semitic tweets—including photos of Jewish media executives with Stars of David pasted on their faces—and has shared content from white nationalists, even after Nehlen was outed as a bigot. (Once upon a time, Nehlen was best known for making hokey anti-Ryan campaign ads.)

Corey Stewart The Washington Post Getty Images

But the idea any candidate in a district that encompasses Charlottesville could harbor even a hint of connection to white supremacists after what happened there last summer is stunning. Kessler's rally was a national disgrace, a blast of summer sunshine on the toxic, racist underbelly of American politics and a moment that put to bed, once and for all, the question of whether defense of Confederate monuments is defense of white supremacy. It was disgusting, it was deadly, and the President of the United States suggested, in perhaps his lowest moment in an endless stream of lows, that there were some "very fine people on both sides."

A recent poll had Stewart down eighteen points to incumbent Tim Kaine in his race, a sign that Stewart's ties to the movement have consequences. There doesn't seem to be much polling out of the Fifth District, which President Trump won by eleven points in 2016. But Riggleman's fate could be a bellwether in determining the strength of the backlash to the ascendant white nationalist politics of the moment. Which is to say, don't get distracted when we inevitably learn Riggleman also authored Bigfoot: Women Want Him, Men Want to Be Him. Or do. We could all use a laugh these days.

Jack Holmes Politics Editor Jack Holmes is the Politics Editor at Esquire, where he writes daily and edits the Politics Blog with Charles P Pierce.

This content is created and maintained by a third party, and imported onto this page to help users provide their email addresses. You may be able to find more information about this and similar content at piano.io