Vice President Kamala Harris has been in the news quite a lot lately. On one hand, that’s not a surprise: she’s the VP, she’s the first female VP, she’s the first Black VP, and she’s the first Asian VP. And if you’re a regular reader, you know that that’s not where I’m going with this.
Over the last few months there has been a bunch of articles published that take cheap shots at Harris. Over the weekend the Washington Post ran a story about how Harris is so mean that everyone is leaving and it’s terrible and we should be outraged! But if you read the story, instead of the tweets about it or the New York Post story which shamefully regurgitated the worst out of context quotes for clicks, you won’t find your promised outrage.
The people complaining about Harris are either anonymous, worked for her prior to her becoming VP, or in what is supposed to be damning criticism against her, worked for her for 5 months…8 years ago. The article notes that 4 people are leaving. One of them is her spokesperson, Symone Sanders, who is leaving after 3 years together to…plan her wedding and get married.
The piece makes a lot of hay out of how many former White House people from the Obama administration now work for Biden, and how she doesn’t have any. Huh? Also, “many people” are upset that Harris was assigned the task of fixing the voting system and after “a year” she hasn’t made any progress.
The reaction I saw to it was really disappointing. A lot of white liberals, progressives, and non-Trump independents/conservatives took it as red meat and as permission to advance the same tired sexist and racist tropes that have dogged Harris since she was named as VP.
Then on Monday Politico published a story about how Harris is “Bluetoothphobic”…because of security concerns she won’t use a wireless headset for her phone. It literally included this line:
But still, should someone who travels with the nuclear football be spending time untangling her headphone wires? The American people deserve answers!
This idiotic piece also suggests that Harris is “paranoid” for preferring texts over email, and in the past insisting that people arriving for appointments wait outside her office if she wasn’t there. Remember the piece about Amy Klobuchar that tried to paint her as a monster because she got upset that her staffer didn’t bring her a fork for her lunch? This is the reality for women running for public office.
I honestly don’t think Harris is going to run for president after the disgusting and uncalled for sexist and racist backlash to her short tenure as VP. I don’t think there will be a female president anytime soon, and there might not ever be a Black female president in my lifetime. And Harris wasn’t even my candidate during the primaries–I’m just so disheartened by all of this.
Between this and the open assault on women’s bodily autonomy, it’s a really tough time to be a woman in the United States.
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I agree with every point you make. I too read the WAPO article, and thought it was very heavy-handed. I also read another article by another blogger – from Africa no less – who also made the observation that not only America, but many countries around the globe, seem to have declared a war against women. Very disheartening indeed.
i have seen it in other countries, but never thought it would ever be so openly embraced even by people that I thought were allies here.
https://twitter.com/briantylercohen/status/1468490783837720578
Democrats in general can’t get a break from the Washington media insiders, but the abuse Harris isi absorbing is on a level of its own and speaks not only to bullshit writers but also to bullshit editors. Somebody on the desk needs to be asking simple questions like “Is Bluetooth encrypted? No?” and that’s not happening.
the Bluetooth nonsense came from Politico, and i have no doubt the editors green-lit that story with no problem. Politico isn’t a news outlet–it exists to prop up Republicans.