Politics

RuPaul Casually Admitted He’s Fracking On His Rural Ranch, And It’s Tipped Us All Over The Edge

Next week's episode of RuPaul's Drag Race is *literally* a climate-crisis design challenge. It's official, the simulation is broken.

by Jared Richards  17 March 2020
RuPaul's Drag Race: RuPaul admits to fracking on farm, and no one can cope

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Amid promotion for RuPaul’s Drag Race‘s twelfth season, RuPaul has off-handly mentioned he engages in some light fracking on his Wyoming ranch.

As the internet struggles to process this, we shouldn’t be surprised: after all, her most famous aphorism is “How the hell you going to love money if you can’t destroy the environment yourself, can I get an amen?”

In a new interview with NPR‘s Terry Gross, RuPaul chatted with the radio legend about her career, life philosophy, Judy Garland and everything in-between. At one point, Gross asks what it’s like living rurally as a former city queen, and audibly gaffs when she corrects Gross, who thinks RuPaul and her husband have a 60 acre property. It’s actually 60,000 acres.

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“That’s like a national park,” Gross says. “What are you doing with them? I mean – that came out a little weird.”

“[Well] a modern ranch, 21st century ranch, is really land management,” RuPaul says. “It is – you lease the mineral rights to oil companies. And you sell water to oil companies. And then you lease the grazing rights to different ranchers. So it’s land management. Yeah.”

RuPaul is describing, in part, fracking —  the process of drilling into the ground via high-pressure gas to uncover minerals and fossil fuels, potentially contaminating groundwater sources with carcinogenic chemicals in the process. And creating tremors and Earthquakes too (you can read more here).

All-in-all, fracking is a contentious topic — especially in the US, where as it continues to grow, leading democractic primary candidates have both (as of today, thanks Biden) adopted anti-fracking policies.

In short, the fact that RuPaul is fracking is both absolutely wild, and very in-keeping with the shrewd bills-bills-bills orientated capitalist-above-all queen we know her to be.

But Gross didn’t press her on it in the moment, prompting listener Rory Solomon to tweet out the tidbit, attaching a map which shows just how prolific fracking is on RuPaul’s ranch. It, of course, went viral.

Beyond disappointment, people expressed their bewilderment at the news — it’s seemingly just a little to much to deal with, given, you know, that whole COVID-19 thing. It’s absolutely proof our simulation is broken, alongside with an Elizabeth Warren campaign volunteer getting a commemorative tattoo that resembled concentration camp tattoos.

Once the shocks subsided, everyone essentially made the same RuPaul’s Frack Race jokes. They’re very good: humour is simply all we have! Someone call the frack destroyers.

RuPaul’s Drag Race is really trying to get cancelled this season, huh? Read our recaps as we wade through the murky waters.

Next week, the show’s challenge, no joke, is a climate crisis-themed design ball. Frack it up!