At a rally in North Carolina this afternoon, Trump took his supporters on a stroll through the litany of sexual assault allegations against him, suggesting his accusers are lying and seeking fame and so forth. But his coup de grace came at the end when he addressed Jessica Leeds, who claims Trump groped her on an airplane 30-some years ago. “She would not be my first choice,” he said.

It’s hard to predict how “I reserve unwanted sexual advances for women I think are hot” works as a get-out-the-vote message, but we’re about to find out.

According to The Huffington Post, Donald Trump criticized Khloe Kardashian’s weight during a 2009 taping of Celebrity Apprentice, before firing her from the show. He described her as a “piglet” and wondered aloud why the show couldn’t “get the hot one” (presumably a reference to Kim Kardashian West). Unfortunately, feelings about someone’s looks are not grounds for firing them, prompting Trump to ask his staff: “What’s the reason we can get her off [the show]?”

It’s the latest in what seems to be a never-ending nightmare of the ways Trump perpetuates and participates in a culture of misogyny. And it appears the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. Yesterday, BuzzFeed reported that Donald Trump, Jr. suggested in 2013 that women who couldn’t deal with workplace harassment did not belong in the workplace to begin with. “If you can’t handle some of the basic stuff that’s become a problem in the workforce today, then you don’t belong in the workforce,” he said.

Seeming to forget that sexual harassment is, in fact, against the law, Trump, Jr. proceeded to make a joke about how women who report sexual harassment were merely involved in a get-rich quick scheme. If this sounds familiar, it’s because it is. This week, in response to the four women who came forward about being sexually assaulted by Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate and his camp were quick to question their motives. “Any reasonable woman would have come forward and said something at the time,” senior Trump adviser A.J. Delgado said on MSNBC’s All In with Chris Hayes.

Trump has a long, and increasingly well-documented, history of misogyny. His comments should not continue to surprise. What’s important here is that his son, the person he raised, holds these very same beliefs. This is an example of how sexism, if left unchecked, spreads. Trump, Jr.’s beliefs were not formed in a vacuum; they come from years of being taught that women are less valuable than men. As First Lady Michelle Obama said yesterday in her inspiring speech, it’s time that we, as a nation, have a serious conversation about what it actually means to be a woman in America.

The story coming out of Carson’s unhinged Morning Joe interview will almost certainly be that he demanded that the microphone being used by journalist Katty Kay, who was interviewing him, be turned off. And that should be the story! Carson was either confused—and thought that Kay was a fellow panelist and not a journalist—or he was insisting that a member of the press be silenced.

But for maybe the first time ever, he publicly showed a side of himself that wasn’t “sleepy.” Carson was mad. He pointed his finger wildly, and shouted, “Stop, stop stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop, stop stop!” And why was Carson mad?

Kay asked Carson if the women who have accused Donald Trump of sexual assault are lying. Carson didn’t address the question—instead he tried to go back to the idea being pushed by the Trump campaign, that sexual assault is impossible in first-class cabins because of armrests and stewardesses. And he claimed—as he tends to do when he is being less than truthful—that this was “common sense.” As Kay correctly pointed out, the subtext of that defense is that the women are lying, but Carson wouldn’t go there. Instead, he just got mad.

Trump has struggled to respond to the recent rash of allegations that he sexually assaulted a number of women over the last four decades—instead he has lashed out at the media and the women themselves. But The Wall Street Journal reports that as early as Friday, Trump will unveil a new defense: “Donald Trump will broaden his attack against the media to hit globalism and the Clinton Foundation by charging that Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim is part of a biased coalition working in collusion with the Clinton campaign and its supporters to generate news reports of decades-old allegations from several women.”

This is insane, but it also feels inevitable. Trump has no defense to the numerous allegations that have been leveled against him, so he responds by doing what he does every time he’s backed into a corner: Gaslighting and lashing out wildly. This theory combines two of his (and his movement’s) favored targets—Mexico and the Clinton Foundation—into a Spectre-ish cabal bent on the destruction of Donald Trump (and, by extension, America). Trump hasn’t yet attacked the Clintons for trying to create a one world government to benefit a coterie of wealthy elites, but that’s more or less where he seems to be going.

For the record, Carlos Slim has denied that he is working in secret with the Clinton Foundation to bring down Donald Trump. But then again, of course he would.

At a rally on Thursday afternoon in Manchester, New Hampshire, the first lady candidly addressed the implications of Trump’s attitudes about women and sexual assault.

“I can’t believe that I am saying that a candidate for president of the United States has bragged about sexually assaulting women,” she said. “And I have to tell you that I can’t stop thinking about this. It has shaken me to my core in a way that I couldn’t have predicted.”

During her powerful speech, Obama rebuked Trump’s language in the infamous “grab ‘em by the pussy” tape unearthed by The Washington Post last Friday. She called his comments abnormal, disgraceful, and intolerable.

“This is not something that we can ignore, it is not something we can sweep under the rug as just another disturbing footnote in a sad election season,” she said. “Because this was not a lewd conversation, this was not just locker room banter. This was a powerful individual, speaking freely and openly about sexually predatory behavior.”

The way the Trump campaign tried to spin the controversy was telling. It played the comments off as just another example of Trump’s antics—“locker room talk,” “just words”—and ignored the actual subjects of Trump’s conversation: women. Obama’s speech is a much needed wake-up call, not just about this election, but how women are treated in this country.

Throughout her remarks, Obama called for us to remember and exercise basic human decency. “The belief that you can do anything you want to a woman. It is cruel. It is frightening and the truth is it hurts,” she said.

It was only a few days ago, at Sunday’s town hall–style presidential debate, that a nerdy, undecided voter in a red sweater became a meme-ified Twitter heartthrob after asking a wonky question about energy policy, jobs, and climate change (and later taking pictures with a disposable camera—with flash, no less). Bone was “the undisputed winner” of the debate, a “normcore” “internet hero” who “gives Americans hope” while also solving their Halloween costume conundrums. Also: LOL that surname.

But now Ken Bone is leveraging his fame for profit...

...and the meme police on Twitter will have none of it.

Now, a few relevant facts about Bone:

• He is 34 years old.
• He has a 12-year-old son.
• He is an operator at a coal power plant.
• He is auctioning his red sweater for charity.

Wrong. Twitter did.

No one has ever known what to do with Dylan, not really. For whatever reason—and maybe it’s because he pioneered the breed—“songwriter” never seemed like it was enough. So, for the last 50 years, people have been embarrassing themselves by throwing all manner of descriptors at Dylan to capture what he does. “Poet” is the one that’s been most overused, but he’s been called a “bard” and a “troubadour,” and probably much worse—though it’s hard to imagine what’s worse than being called a “troubadour.”

That people have such a hard time labeling Dylan is not just funny, it’s anachronistic. The “Dylan is a poet” idea started in the 1960s, when there was still doubt that songwriting—particularly pop songwriting—was an art. There’s no doubt about that now, and we have Dylan (among many others) to thank for that. But it’s silly to see this get re-litigated just because Dylan won the Nobel Prize in Literature. The prize has gone to playwrights and Winston Churchill (Winston Churchill!).

Of course, the problem with giving the Nobel Prize to Dylan is that it’s unclear what the Swedish Academy is giving it to him for. By comparing him to Sappho and Homer, they seem to be suggesting it’s mostly for the lyrics, but that would be a mistake—a point proven by this tweet, which the Nobel Prize sent out after Dylan won.

This is a funny tweet for a lot of reasons. The biggest being that the lyrics come from “Pretty Saro,” which is a traditional song, though Dylan certainly puts his own spin on it. The video they link to, however, is “Thunder on the Mountain,” in which Dylan sings about wanting to bone Alicia Keys. But, if we stick with “Pretty Saro,” the point is made. Those lyrics aren’t very good—they read like a 19th-century Hallmark card. But my god, the song itself is stunning. For decades people have been devoting way too much attention to Dylan’s lyrics, and not enough to his songwriting and even his production (and “Pretty Saro” is a subtle masterpiece on this count).

My colleague Ryu Spaeth is right insofar as giving the Nobel to Dylan is a departure—there isn’t really a comparable Laureate, except maybe Churchill, and only then because he’s the exception to the rule. But Dylan is also exemplary—comparing Philip Roth to him on this count is not fair to either, but Dylan is certainly the more important artist. And he’s a worthy Nobel Laureate.

The primary colors of art are music, painting, and poetry. There are overlaps and offshoots, but these are the fundamental media, traveling via sound, sight, and language to reside in that numinous inner place that we could roughly translate as the soul. To award Bob Dylan the Nobel Prize in Literature—“for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition,” according to the Swedish Academy—is, in the most basic sense, a category error. However you might feel about Dylan’s prowess as a wordsmith and poet, there is no denying that the emotional heft of his work comes not from language, but from music. His one great achievement as a writer—his memoir Chronicles—isn’t even cited by the Swedish Academy.

While some will celebrate the fact that an American has finally won this coveted prize after a decades-long drought, I read it as a troll of the American writers and poets who could actually lay claim to the award. Everyone has their preferred American Nobel Laureate—from William H. Gass to Marilynne Robinson to John Ashbery to, yes, Philip Roth—all of whom have been disrespected by the Academy this morning.

Finally, there are two kinds of Nobel Prizes in Literature. One bestows the ultimate literary honor on a writer with a substantial body of work who is universally respected and admired—think Gabriel Garcia Marquez or Toni Morrison or Derek Walcott or Samuel Beckett. The other rewards a great writer who has gone largely unnoticed: Svetlana Alexievich and Imre Kertesz fall into this category. Dylan cannot be put into either, and it’s hard to see what point there is in awarding this prize to someone as famous as Dylan.

Actually, there is a third category of Nobel Prize: the farce. Every so often the Academy embarrasses itself (see: Dario Fo), a good reminder that we should not take the business of award-giving seriously at all.