By Tom
You know what this blog hasn’t talked about yet? Abortion! Which is kind of incredible because this country cannot stop talking about it.
To give you a brief recap of various facts and events, abortion is a) a human right and b) preventative healthcare. The topic has been a hot button issue for centuries in the United States, but most people attribute modern abortion with the Supreme Court’s 1973 ruling Roe v. Wade that guaranteed right of privacy and abortion at a federal level. The ruling prohibited states from outright abortion bans, which was pretty common in the US–30 states, for example, banned the procedure outright prior to Roe.
Since then, the pro-life and pro-choice movements have been at political war with one another, with the pro-life movement rooted in theocratic conservatism and the pro-choice advocates generally of the liberal variety. It’s almost as a rite of passage on which political camp you fall into.
Conservatives have played the long game in working toward revoking Roe v. Wade. In 1992’s Planned Parenthood v. Casey Pennsylvania conservatives tried to establish waiting periods and spousal notice–this was ultimately shot down. In 2003 a more conservative Supreme Court upheld The Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 which punished physicians for performing second trimester abortions with jail time; the law was upheld four years later under Gonzales v. Carhart. The 2000 case June Medical Services, LLC v. Russo saw the Supreme Court in a 5-4 decision strike down a Louisiana law that would have limited abortion services to one doctor per state. John Roberts broke the tie in the decision, however following the death of liberal justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg in 2020 and the appointment of fundamentalist Amy Coney Barrett in her place, Roberts’s conservative moderation and duty to precedent would be null.
This past year, the US Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, a case stemming from a 2018 Mississippi state law that banned most abortion operations after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. It took about 40 years, but social conservatives now had the judicial firepower to overturn Roe, which they did. Despite assurances from appointed conservative justices like Brett Kavanaugh and Barrett that Roe v. Wade would remain set in stone, they lied and reversed course, and ruled that the US Constitution did not guarantee the right to abortion–you might be thinking how shaky this ruling is, because the US Constitution doesn’t grant the right to many things but there are still laws to protect citizens. Immediately following the decision, trigger laws in conservative dominated states greatly reduced or outright banned abortion. As of writing this, 13 states have restricted abortion entirely, including this writer’s state of Missouri, who enacted the ban in late June. If this didn’t redden your ass enough, remember that the current ownership group of your St. Louis Cardinals, donates millions of dollars annually to back conservative causes that support abortion bans.
There’s more to abortion rights in America than the judicial cases notated above. Much more. There are more cases at both the Supreme Court and district level, but mainly there’s more violence and pain for the women affected by this. And there will continue to be more violence–especially since Dobbs v. Jackson, where Clarence Thomas has said that the Court should examine other laws pertaining to gay marriage, contraceptives, and sexual privacy. Take an organization like Planned Parenthood who conducts cancer screenings for women, eliminating these facilities also eliminates another avenue in preventative healthcare.
But now that you’re caught up, Herschel Walker is best known for his ability to play football. He’s enshrined in the college football Hall of Fame and won the 1982 Heisman Trophy. He played in the United States Football League (USFL) for three seasons before a failed attempt to merge with the NFL eliminated the league in 1986. After that he hopped over to the NFL for 12 seasons earning two pro-bowl selections and racking up a respectable 8,225 rushing yards. Herschel Walker knows ball.
He had interests outside of football. Herschel was a real renaissance man. He competed in the 1992 Winter Olympics on the US bobsleigh team. Following his retirement he appeared on a mixed martial arts reality TV show and even signed a contract with Strikeforce where he participated in two fights winning both by TKO. His brief stint in MMA almost convinced Walker to fulfill a comeback to the NFL at the age of 48.
Those are the kind of interesting things about Herschel Walker you say when drinking beer with your friends and say, “Hey, that guy on TV used to do this.” Those are neat facts, little tid-bits. But Herschel Walker is far more interesting than that, and not for the right reasons.
Herschel Walker is a bit of a mess. It’s easy to point to brain injury, or his dissociative identity disorder. But it kinda robs him of his agency and paternalizes him.
Here’s an appetizer. Herschel Walker created Renaissance Man Food Services, a company that distributes chicken products. There’s a whole lot of nonsense about what exactly Walker’s company is, but for brevity’s sake it’s Renaissance Man Food Services, a very real and legitimate business that Walker put together. He has routinely lied about the success of this company, saying it was “the largest minority-owned chicken business in the United States” with “over 600 employees” which wasn’t true, so two years later he corrected that statement by saying the number was “about 800” which also wasn’t true. In fact Walker applied for Covid-19 relief under the Paycheck Protection Program and received $182,000 for only 8 employees. He also claimed that his business raked in about $70 to $80 million annually, but a review of his public records by the Associated Press revealed that his company’s annual profits between 2008 and 2017 were $1.5 million.
This is just the veneer of Herschel Walker. The man has made a career personifying himself as more than meets the eye. As Skip Bayless–I know–wrote in his ‘96 piece for Sports Illustrated:
“Walker has become a victim of superhuman expectations he helped create. Beginning during his college days at Georgia, he turned himself into almost a cartoon superhero: a world-class sprinter who had a black belt, performed in a ballet, made the Olympic bobsled team, chased criminals and even scored touchdowns in his spare time…he is more interested in befriending owners, enhancing his image and making money than in winning games.”
Walker manifested an image of himself more pristine than what was underneath. His teammates fretted when he told them that he “did 1,000 push-ups and 2,500 sit-ups, and that he ate one meal a day.” He professed his relationship with Jesus Christ, stated that he only slept with two women; he stated he graduated at the top of his class from college, personally helped 4,500 to 5,000 veterans a year; in speeches he gave throughout the 2010s, he bragged about receiving training at Quantico and had FBI clearance. The only person who has accomplished as much as Herschel Walker is Steven Seagal.
Here’s the ugly stuff now, the shit that should make sure your stomach churn. Herschel Walker branded himself as someone more than human, he embodied a persona of excellence and personal achievement. He is the perfect token for a reactionary republican party aiming to take back a Georgia Senate seat they lost two years ago.
This won’t surprise you but everything I mentioned a couple paragraphs ago: the push-ups, the fidelity, the law enforcement training, etc. it’s all a fucking lie. I didn’t make it up, Herschel Walker did.
Walker’s teammates at Georgia and in the pros didn’t believe his push-up and sit-up claim, one that Walker would relax to say that the actual number was 750 and 2,000, a number still too high to be believable. We’ve all exaggerated a story before, it feels good to tell a good one and sometimes embellishment is necessary. Herschel Walker never graduated from the University of Georgia, the USFL had a clause that college players could leave after their junior season–the NFL requires three years removed from high school or the complete use of their college eligibility, although they may grant some exceptions as long as the first criteria is met–Herschel didn’t personally help that many veterans a year, a remark he would later retract and clarify that he was merely a spokesperson for a Universal Health Services’ Patriot Support Program, a for-profit veterans organization that had a massive civil suit brought against it from the DOJ and 12 other states for defrauding the government, a suit that Universal Health Services–a private healthcare chain–paid a $122 million settlement for. Herschel falsely claimed that he was co-founder for Patriot Support on Hugh Hewitt’s program, only for that to be revealed as a lie and that United Health Services formed the foundation 11 years prior to hiring Walker as their spokesperson, which they paid him a $331,000 salary to do.
We’re not done, pups. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution inquired about many of these claims, but the main one they found was that Herschel Walker was never involved in law enforcement, despite Herschel’s claims that he had “FBI clearance” and was a “certified police officer.” These claims were proven to be fallacious, and when his campaign was challenged on the matter they stated that Walker was an honorary deputy for Cobb County, which was also proved to be a fucking lie when the paper contacted Cobb County Sheriff’s Department. The latest defense Walker’s senatorial campaign has mustered is that Walker majored in criminal justice during his three years at Georgia.
We’re coming up on the real ugly shit if this hasn’t begun to churn your stomach, and really will call into question his other claim that he is a devout and faithful Christian. Herschel Walker has been fairly open about his mental struggles, detailing them in his 2008 book Breaking Free: My Life with Dissociative Identity Disorder. Being open and vulnerable about overcoming mental health struggles is a good thing, however Walker’s identity disorder produced incredibly violent and extreme acts of behavior, as detailed with his ex-wife.
Walker’s battle with DID brings on many personas, which he refers to as alters. Some are good and some are bad. One of the symptoms with these personality changes are blackouts, and during these blackouts Walker would get extremely violent. Hearing the man tell it, you sense some of the fantastical elements we’re used to hearing, like the time he’d go and play Russian roulette in the 90s, but it wasn’t until his football career ended that things got really bad; when he thought of killing a man for delivering a car late. Walker sought help after that.
His ex-wife Cindy Grossman describes Walker threatening to “blow her fucking brains out” with a pistol, waking up to having a straight ravor to her throat. He threatened her on more occasions than that with guns and knives. One occasion he choked her unconscious. Even after their divorce, Grossman sought a protective order against Walker after he repeatedly threatened to kill her and her boyfriend. The girlfriends he’s had after the divorce also faced his wrath, like Myka Dean who filed a police report in 2012 that Walker would “blow her head off.”
It shouldn’t surprise you that there are questions about all this. Activists have stated this kind of behavior demands accountability, so what has Herschel Walker done to be accountable? His doctor, Jerry Mungadze, has been scrutinized for his unorthodox methods for treating DID. It’s worth noting that Jerry is not a medical doctor, but a licensed professional counselor. According to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, “Mental illness, [Mungadze] has said, can sometimes be confused with demonic possession.” His 2000 mental health questionnaire asks patients, “Have they willingly, under any circumstances vowed to follow Satan?” Walker’s doctor draws from his educational and ministerial background; Mungadze bachelors and masters degrees were in Bible Studies, his doctorate coming in counselor education where he wrote his thesis on demonic possession among people in Zimbabwe–where he’s from.
Because the Atlanta Journal-Constitution is the gift that keeps on giving, Mungadze appears to have no training in neurology, instead the method he created was asking patients to color in a drawing of the human brain. Those who are engaged in witchcraft and the occult chose dark colors. It’s worth noting that Mungadze is color-blind, and also that this method has been completely dismissed by the scientific community. Okay just one more, he says his treatment erases homosexuality. It’s okay to laugh, it is very very tragic.
We’re at this point now where you know a little, maybe too much, about Herschel Walker. And all this expose into the man has to serve a purpose for what was mentioned earlier, and that this is a blog about abortion. And Herschel Walker is not a fan of abortion.
Walker is a Republican. He has endorsed candidates Jack Kingston, Brian Kemp, and Kelly Loeffler in Georgia. He supported Donald Trump in 2016 and 2020, even being appointed by Trump to The President’s Council on Sports, Fitness, and Nutrition. While new to the game, Walker has been chummy with the GOP in just under a decade; if there’s one thing we’ve learned so far is that Herschel Walker is very sensitive to what people think of him.
Walker’s positions are largely indecipherable or unintelligible. He has said incoherent shit about climate change–“Since we don’t control the air, our good air decided to float over to China’s bad air…”–and offered this salient response after 19 children were murdered at Robb Elementary. When a reporter asked him what he thought about gun laws his response was, “what I like to do is see it and everything and stuff.” The man has the political charisma of an interstate pile up.
Or better yet he fits the mold of a political climate that rewards identity. This is not necessarily a bad thing, such as activists turned representatives like Cori Bush. The difference between Cori and Herschel is that Cori is authentic in her platform and experiences, and Herschel Walker is, at best, an exploited token wheeled out by the GOP. Criticism levied against Walker has the Republicans suddenly caring about listening to the voices of POCs, as they attempt to use racial hypocrisy to defend the shitty candidate they’ve trotted up.
Conservative strategists feared Walker’s candidacy because of all the lies and misinformation he’s constructed. His inability to formulate a nuanced and cohesive statement could be overcome if he just kept his nose clean and walked the straight and narrow. But outlets like GPB, Associated Press, AJC, etc. kneecapped his campaign by asking simple questions like “is this true?” “does this sound like bullshit?”
Walker is staunchly anti-gay and anti-trans. In September during a rally in Calhoun, Georgia, he said, in reference to trans swimmer Lia Thomas, “They’re trying to tell you right now that this is normal. But I’m here to tell you this is not normal…Let’s get men out of women’s sports.” Walker has fallen back on his Christian values, saying that same-sex marriage is against his beliefs and that Congress and states should be free to decide the legality of gay marriage.
We’ve arrived at the big one though. You know that Herschel Walker is a liar who battled mental illness his entire adult life, and that the methods used to treat his mental illness have been debunked and shunned by the scientific community; you now know that he’s been violent to people he loved and complete strangers; there’s not one iota of shame he can feel whether it’s lying about being a cop or helping veterans or his business schemes or simply if he graduated college, man. Every false statement is immediately followed by a contradiction so boisterous and bombastic, that each falsehood Walker presents should be followed by him sitting on a whoopee cushion.
Herschel Walker is anti-abortion. Monumentally so. He wants a ban on all abortions; cases of rape, incest, threat to life, etc. no exceptions: “There’s no exception in my mind…Like I say, I believe in life. I believe in life.” A man’s gotta have his principles, and Walker’s are rooted in his Christian ideology.
Walker expanded his pro-life defense into, “You never know what a child is going to become…I’ve seen people, they’ve had some tough times, but I always say, ‘No matter what, tough times make tough people.’”
There are obvious pitfalls that he’s failed to consider, or maybe is incapable of considering. The “tough times create tough people” line feels like a pull from the good times makes weak men meme, but I’d be surprised if Walker had the capacity to conduct that much memetic research. Instead, it’s worth correcting that first bit as what it is: fantasy. Pro-lifers often use that line to say that the next great physician, scientist, athlete, politician, general, etc. could have been among those aborted. If that is true so is the opposite, that the next race realist, transphobe, mass murderer, bigot, dictator, fascist, or Ronald Reagan could have been a part of that pool.
In September South Carolina Senator Lindsey Graham proposed a bill that would enact a federal 15 week ban. Graham was skewered by conservative colleagues and strategists, but not Herschel Walker. “I am a proud pro-life Christian,” Herschel said, “I will always stand up for our unborn children. I believe the issue should be decided at the state level, but I WOULD support this policy.”
There’s that one statement from earlier we haven’t gotten around to addressing, and that’s Herschel Walker’s claim of faith to his god and the women in his life. Let’s unravel that.
Reporters and activists have been peeling back the onion of Walker’s personal life. Reporters and activists have pressed him on how many children does he have and if he’s ever paid for, or caused, an abortion. In the past year alone Walker has admitted to having at least 3 children out of wedlock. All four of his children have come from different mothers. One of those women he had a child with, was paid a personal check of $700 enclosed within a get well soon card. Earlier this week Roger Sollenberger of The Daily Beast reported that the very pro-life and anti-abortionist republican candidate paid her for an abortion in 2009. Later that year she’d carry another one of his children.
Walker has since denied the claim, although the signature provided in the card he sent matches looks pretty spot on. This woman, who has remained anonymous, has been in contact with Walker to this day. In fact, Herschel’s campaign had reached out to her as early as last year to vouch for his character. She felt compelled to speak out after the judicial repudiation of Roe v. Wade and Walker’s own Christian hypocrisy, which she criticizes him for “using it when it works for him.” She continues by stating:
“I don’t think there’s anywhere in the Bible where it says ‘Have four kids with four different women while you’re with another woman.’ Or where it praises not being a present parent. Or that an abortion is an OK thing to do when it’s not the right time for you, but a terrible thing for anyone else to do when you are running for Senate. He picks and chooses where it’s convenient for him to use that religious crutch.”
She also states that Walker has never expressed regret for the abortion. “He didn’t express any regret. He said, ‘relax and recover’…He seemed pretty pro-choice to me. He was pro-choice, obviously.”
Walker has, of course, denied the report. Conservative reaction has ranged from dismissive, embrace, or distancing. Lindsey Graham and the RNC have backed Walker since this report came out. Graham tweeted: “This is the way the media world works today for conservative Republicans.” Florida Senator Rick Scott, chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee, backed Herschel by stating, “Democrats will lie, cheat and smear” because Walker is winning against incumbent Raphael Warnock. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell has not commented on the story so far, however his Senate Leadership Fund super PAC has committed more than $39 million to Walker’s senate race so far.
Conservative vomitron and pundit Dana Loesch said the quiet part out loud, referring to Walker’s longtime girlfriend as a “skank” and that she didn’t “know if he did it or not. I don’t even care.” Loesch continues to trip over her own asshole when she attempts these mental gymnastics:
“What I’m about to say is in no means a contradiction or a compromise of a principle. And please keep in mind that I am concerned about one thing, and one thing only at this point. I don’t care if Herschel Walker paid to abort endangered baby eagles. I want control of the Senate.”
Walker’s oldest son, Christian, a 22 year-old gay conservative that has been lauded by fellow conservatives and hucksters like Glenn Greenwald, has since turned coat on his father. It’s one thing for a “liberal” media outlet like The Daily Beast to air your dirty laundry, but when the call is now coming from inside the house people start to pay attention.
Christian Walker is another mess in his own right that we don’t need to delve into. But understand this, he and his father have a complicated relationship, and while we have no idea their dynamic, it is a fragile alliance if even that. Christian has come out and said that supporters for his father have begged him to campaign with him more. Christian has said he’s only campaigned with his father once, but has refused to continue further campaigning due to Herschel’s failure to get out in front and be truthful about his sordid past. Christian has also pointed out that he’s held back on sharing his experiences growing up with Herschel stating, “I haven’t told one story about what I experienced with him.”
Christian took to twitter to blast his father further stating, “You’re not a ‘family man’ when you left us to bang a bunch of women, threatened to kill us, and had us move over 6 times in 6 months running from your violence.” This thread continues and you should check it out, but here are some more tasty morsels.
“Every family member of Herschel Walker asked him not to run for office, because we all knew (some of) his past. Every single one. He decided to give us the middle finger and air out all of his dirty laundry in public, while simultaneously lying about it. I’m done.”
Damage control from the Walker camp has featured your expected denial. Walker threatened to file suit against The Daily Beast for publishing the report, but so far hasn’t. Today his campaign fired their political director Taylor Crowe over alleged media leaks. According to the Washington Post, Walker has displayed aggression to staff who question him about details close to matter, accusing them of being democratic plants. Herschel has frustrated his advisors by not being willing to criticize his son.
The latest poll from WXIA-TV has Raphael Warnock ahead by 12 points.
This was a lot, I know. We like to write about things that interest us on this blog, and when someone suggested looking into Herschel Walker this is what came of it.
You’re probably seeing the double standard presented here. Abortion for me but not for thee. I want you to understand that accusing conservatives of hypocrisy, while true, doesn’t move the needle. They don’t care and their base sure as shit doesn’t. Despite the latest poll with Warnock’s lead, pollsters like RCP still project Georgia to flip red. The damage of Walker’s double-life hasn’t bit him in the ass this far in life, why would it now? Instead I want you to understand that people like Herschel Walker–people with money–have a different set of laws that they go by. The working poor in this country have had a right stripped away from them, and instead must carry a fetus to term and then raise that baby with no help or empathy from their elected officials. State enforced pregnancies are the result of a nation that’s failed to address so many problems; material conditions, white supremacy, theocratic patriarchy, Christian nationalism, etc. This is Hell, welcome to it, the rich and renowned–or infamous–will get abortions when convenient for them while the rest of us subsidize their lavish and carefree living.
Herschel Walker has overcome a lot in his life and at a tremendous cost to his own psyche and that of those around him. His strength has always been his perception of strength, that of a self-made man who carried those around him, a cartoonish superhero to his teammates. What has always mattered to Herschel Walker the power of his name–especially in a state like Georgia. His name alone is what attracted the Republicans to campaign for him.
Herschel has run for over 19,000 yards throughout his college and professional career. He has run from linebackers, defensive ends, nose tackles, and defensive backs. He has run from Athens, Georgia to New York to Minneapolis and Dallas. His entire athletic career he’s accrued nearly 11 miles in running on a football field alone, and he’s used that ability and image of himself to run through life without a care for those around him, creating outlandish falsehoods, lies, and exaggerations with little to no accountability for his actions from anyone that mattered; not his family, friends, political proponents or opponents, law enforcement, or medical professionals have been able to stymie the cult of personality that Herschel Walker has spent decades building and presenting to the public, all to come ahead to this moment where he now runs for public office in a must-win senate race for a craven political party, and all of this hard-work and lying and obfuscation now being revealed to the public in its entire ugly glory.
Herschel Walker has outrun everyone and everything but his past.
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