Because of all the noise at the top of the news, a weekend column from Frank Bruni in The New York Times hasn't received nearly as much attention as it deserves. We note it here because it involves Senator Tom Cotton, the bobble-throated pen-pal of the mullahs from the state of Arkansas, who is somebody at the top of everyone's list of potential Republican saviors if the Trumpageddon really does befall the party.

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Some people are ideologues. Some people are charlatans. Some people are opportunists. And some people are simply raging, flaming holes of pure ass. As Bruni's column makes clear, at least in the case of Tom Cotton, these categories are far from mutually exclusive.

The column tells the story of a woman named Cassandra Butts, who recently passed away from leukemia at the age of 50. In 2014, prior to her diagnosis, the president proposed to name Butts the U.S. ambassador to the Bahamas—which sounds to these ears anyway to be a pretty sweet gig. That was when the nonsense began. First, Tailgunner Ted Cruz put a hold on all nominations because he was upset with the deal the president cut with Iran, and because the Tailgunner is an unlikable algae of a human being. Later, our man Cotton jumped in and slapped a hold on Butts and a couple of other nominees for ambassadorships.

Let's let Bruni tell the tale from there. From the Times:

[Cotton] had a legitimate gripe with the Obama administration over a Secret Service leak of private information about a fellow member of Congress, and he was trying to pressure Obama to take punitive action. But that issue was unrelated to Butts and the Bahamas. Cotton eventually released the two other holds, but not the one on Butts. She told me that she once went to see him about it, and he explained that he knew that she was a close friend of Obama's—the two first encountered each other on a line for financial-aid forms at Harvard Law School, where they were classmates—and that blocking her was a way to inflict special pain on the president.

(By the way, according to Bruni, Cotton's office basically confirmed Butts's account of their meeting, but the coatholders also made sure Bruni knew that Cotton "had enormous respect for her and her career." Yeah, blow me, Gomer.)

Tom Cotton weaponized a dying woman's final days in order to "inflict special pain" on the president. Tom Cotton is a petty, sadistic swine who has the basic conscience of a cholera outbreak. He should be shamed from office, and he should be shunned by decent people.

God, I hope there's a hell, and that it's as advertised by Dante.

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