Parker: That special place in hell sure is getting crowded

This would seem to have disqualified a raft of current and aspiring officeholders but was clearly aimed at Moore, who has said that the country was better off before the last 17 constitutional amendments, which, among other things, gave women and African-Americans the right to vote.

While Bannon railed, and Alabamans voted, the president tweeted. This time, Trump even outdid himself by insulting a female U.S. senator with sexual innuendo. Apparently miffed that Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., had called for his resignation because of the multiple charges of sexual misconduct against him, Trump tweeted that Gillibrand “would do anything” when she previously had come to him “begging” for campaign contributions.

One doesn’t need a translator or a dirty mind to understand that he was suggesting that Gillibrand would have exchanged sexual services for cash. It was, as we say, a cultural moment.

The tweet heard ’round a world already agog about events in Alabama launched yet another cultural moment, at least along the Washington-New York corridor. On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” co-anchor Mika Brzezinski launched a soliloquy of scold at Ivanka Trump and other White House women.

It was her own version of a special place in hell for women, even a daughter, who persist in supporting Donald Trump.

Do the right thing

It wasn’t always thus, Mr. Irony interrupts. For months during the campaign, Brzezinski and her now-fiance, Joe Scarborough, gave Trump free rein on their show. “Morning Trump,” some dubbed it. In recent months, perhaps in penance for helping Trump get elected with free airtime, the couple has become his morning nightmare.

Perhaps, too, Trump’s personal insults of Brzezinski have turned her into a feminist avenger. On Tuesday, she peered piercingly into the camera, singeing the cameraman with her gaze, and schooled press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders.

“Today is your day” (to stop supporting the president), she told Sanders, who wasn’t present or anywhere listening, as far as anyone knew. “This has got to stop. Do the right thing.”

If Trump in his strange way had hoped for such a reaction, Alabamans likely enjoyed the distraction. Media attention has been intense not only because of the tawdriness of the campaign but because the stakes were so high. Would Alabama go backward or forward?

This shouldn’t have been a tough choice, but Team Bannon, Trump and Moore have effectively convinced voters that what is true is false and what is false is true. There is surely a special place in hell for such as these.