Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Ron DeSantis, the grand wizard, oops, governor of FL.

Even though I know this is a bad idea, I’m off to do it anyway!

Donald Trump, welcome to your everything, everywhere, all at once.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

White supremacy is terrorism.

There are some who say that there are too many strawmen arguments on this blog.

Roe isn’t about choice, it’s about freedom.

Hey Washington Post, “Democracy Dies in Darkness” is supposed to be a warning, not a mission statement.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

I was confident that someone would point it out and thought why not me.

Too often we confuse noise with substance. too often we confuse setbacks with defeat.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

They love authoritarianism, but only when they get to be the authoritarians.

fuckem (in honor of the late great efgoldman)

It looks like winning debates is a black job!

The fundamental promise of conservatism all over the world is a return to an idealized past that never existed.

Why is it so hard for them to condemn hate?

That’s my take and I am available for criticism at this time.

DeSantis transforming Florida into 1930s Germany with gators and theme parks.

They traffic in fear. it is their only currency. if we are fearful, they are winning.

Trump makes a mockery of the legal system and cowardly judges just sit back and let him.

“But what about the lurkers?”

The rest of the comments were smacking Boebert like she was a piñata.

If West Virginia and San Francisco had a love child.

You are here: Home / Elections 2024 / Grim Dawn Open Thread: Another Angle on GOP’s Katie Britt ‘Rebuttal’

Grim Dawn Open Thread: Another Angle on GOP’s Katie Britt ‘Rebuttal’

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Some hours before Britt’s State of the Union ‘rebuttal’, Puck‘s journamalistic botfly Tara Palmeri posted “Mar-a-Lago V.P. Soul-Searching”:

Among the first to arrive at Mar-a-Lago on Super Tuesday was Marjorie Taylor Greene, dressed in all black, at 4:30 p.m., when there were still just a handful of other people in the gilded ballroom. Within hours, of course, the royal court of Donald Trump had filled with red-hatted men and bleached blond women in sequins and leopard prints, who cheered as Trump pulled off a sweep (sans Vermont), essentially securing his coronation as the G.O.P.’s 2024 standard-bearer…

Greene then enumerated the reasons why rising star Katie Britt—the youngest Republican woman ever elected to the Senate, charged with delivering the rebuttal to Biden’s State of the Union address—isn’t MAGA enough to be Trump’s vice president. “Katie Britt, she’s a fairly new senator,” she told me, citing Britt’s underwhelming Heritage Action score (81) from memory. “Not as strong of a conservative as the base would like to see.” Perhaps there was another candidate Greene had in mind? “Of course, I’ll serve in any role that President Trump asks me to,” she said.

Trump himself spent most of the evening out on the patio, away from the applause and well-wishers, buttonholing high-dollar donors to help ease his financial troubles: a $41 million cash disadvantage relative to Biden and the D.N.C.; a deluge of campaign ads from well-funded Democratic groups; his tens of millions of dollars in legal fees, and hundreds of millions more in civil penalties. (Between the $83.3 million due to E. Jean Carroll for defamation, and $355 million plus interest owed to the state of New York, he’s on the hook for nearly half a billion dollars.) Perhaps that’s why the former president didn’t seem jubilant, exactly, when he sauntered onto the stage to deliver another “American Carnage”-style speech…

So while Greene seems to think that Trump will select his vice president based on their appeal to MAGA voters, the emerging consensus among campaign insiders is that his choice will come down to who can perform best with wealthy donors—the Republican constituency that still needs the most convincing before getting comfortable with another four years of Trump.

Indeed, people in Trump’s orbit have said as much, telling me that his V.P. choice will likely be a donor play, not a voter tickle. And he may have to make the selection soon: Waiting until the week before the Republican National Convention, in July, might be cutting it close in a race where the candidates and their parties are expected to spend $2.7 billion on advertising between them. “They are worried, they are calling around,” said a source…

But the donor heartthrob du jour is Britt, the 42-year-old former Senate staffer. The Alabama senator has fans in the A.O.A., a group of G.O.P. megadonors that includes Ken Griffin and Paul Singer, who have thus far refused to line Trump’s coffers—but might be convinced to capitulate if they see a young and normalizing rising star on the ticket. The billionaire Ricketts family, which also sat out the primary and remains an influential part of the A.O.A. network, also has a strong affection for Britt. Warren Stephens, who gave to Asa Hutchinson in the primary, likes Britt, too. But the group, which rarely comes out in support of a candidate, has yet to endorse Trump…

So… was Britt shoved into a role she was manifestly unready for because the big money donors liked her, or because the actual Freedom Carcass legislators don’t? Possibly both! My opinion: LET.THEM.FIGHT.

Professional pessimist Tom Nichols, gradually backing away from his original (low) opinion…

But then, so did the NYTimes!

With a sunny, inviting smile, Senator Katie Britt of Alabama welcomed Americans into her kitchen on Thursday night.

Many soon backed away nervously.

In the Republican Party’s official response to President Biden’s State of the Union address, Ms. Britt delivered a jarring speech that toggled between an increasingly strained cheerfulness and a fierce glare as she gave ominous warnings about illegal immigration…

Her comments were in line with messages Republicans have increasingly used to criticize Mr. Biden at the start of the election year, but her 17-minute speech seemed likely to be remembered more for her disconcerting performance. She spoke in grim detail about a child victim of sex trafficking by drug cartels and the recent killing of a Georgia nursing student in which a Venezuelan migrant has been charged.

“That could’ve been my daughter,” Ms. Britt said. “It could’ve been yours.”

Previous State of the Union rebuttals have been delivered from behind a lectern in official settings, but Ms. Britt chose a domestic backdrop, trying to underscore her argument that Mr. Biden represents a threat to prosperity for American families.

But the scene seemed to confuse viewers on social media, where Ms. Britt was mocked by some for using a dramatic, breathy voice to deliver critiques of the president…

Earlier on Thursday, Ms. Britt’s team distributed talking points that promoted her speech by comparing it to some of the most famous oratory in the nation’s history and urging fellow Republicans to praise the Alabama senator for coming across “like America’s mom.”

“His speech was tone deaf,” the talking points declared, before either Mr. Biden or Ms. Britt had spoken. “Hers was the perfect pitch.”

[sad trombone klaxon]

Of course, Trump could still award Britt the VP rose — because some donor offers a big enough bribe, or because she tickles his perverse fancies (maybe she’ll bleach her hair blonde?), or just because he thinks it’ll piss off his myriad enemies. But she’s already spoiled her ‘new, fresh, rising star’ image…

Reader Interactions

178Comments

  2. 2.

    Baud

    I’m disappointed to hear that Biden didn’t look at the Supreme Court justices and say “Immunize this. Mofos.”

  4. 4.

    mrmoshpotato

    Imagine you’re sleeping over at a friend’s house and you get up in the middle of the night to pee and you hear a weird sound so you follow it to the kitchen, where your friend’s mom is drunk, crying, and rambling about the national debt.

     

    Those are the vibes from Katie Britt rn.

    LMAO!  Excellent.

    Sounds like I don’t have to (shouldn’t) follow the President’s SOTU address with this “rebuttal.”

  7. 7.

    Baud

    Reposted from downstairs

    I read the transcript of the SOTU. The line that stood out in the reading was this

    My God, what freedoms will you take away next?

  9. 9.

    dmsilev

    I didn’t catch either speech. How did she rate on the Marco Rubio hydration scale?

  11. 11.

    Waspuppet

    Nichols is right. “Biden made my neighbor’s semi-hot wife cry” is now the unofficial rallying cry of the Trump campaign.

  12. 12.

    NotMax

    Jesus Johnson’s work on his poker face apparently was in vain.

    He did applaud some of the more anodyne lines though, although surreptitiously under the desk (still caught on camera in some shots).

    What a wuss.

    MTG wearing a red MAGA hat inside the chamber during the SOTU was grotesque. That Jesus Johnson allowed it speaks volumes.

  15. 15.

    lowtechcyclist

    Perhaps there was another candidate Greene had in mind? “Of course, I’ll serve in any role that President Trump asks me to,” she said.

    Including horizontal, I’m sure. But in the words of Rod Stewart, “The mornin’ sun when it’s in your face really shows your age.”

  18. 18.

    RevRick

    @NotMax: GOP SOTU rebuttals: is the one who draws the short straw the one who is shoved before the camera?
    Because, time and again, it’s a way to kill a career.

  20. 20.

    SFAW

    @lowtechcyclist:

    But in the words of Rod Stewart, “The mornin’ sun when it’s in your face really shows your age.”

    “But that don’t worry me none,

    In your eyes I’m everything” ?

  21. 21.

    Another Scott

    @Baud: They’ll add freedoms!  Like the freedom to stone blasphemers!  Like the freedom to sell your daughters into slavery!  Just like it says in the Constitution!!1

    Don’t you like freedom??!!

    Why do you hate America so much??!!ONE

    🙈🙉🙊

    [sigh]

    Have a good Friday, everyone.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  22. 22.

    Greg

    Those that want the VP slot so bad are doing so because they don’t think that Trump will finish out his term. They know that they don’t have a shot at the Oval on their own. I wonder how much Trump worries that his VP choice will try to usurp him? I know he didn’t want to go under a general anesthetic because he would have to give up power, and he was worried that he wouldn’t get it back.

    Interesting line of “attack”: “does [random VP candidate] want to replace Trump?”. Make Trump paranoid over any of his potential VP choices.

  23. 23.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    The Tim Miller crack:

    This makes Bobby Jindal’s response look like the Finest Hour speech.

    is akin to an observation I made yesterday. Put a “rising star” in that spot and watch em fall on their face.

    That twitter thread is full of good ones:

    Somewhere, Marco Rubio is taking a drink of water in relief.
    Is a reverse mortgage pitch coming next?
    Maybe a “please don’t choose me for VP” speech?
    It’s giving Christine O’Donnell! #NotaWitch!

  24. 24.

    TS

    Why is any working woman allowing herself to be filmed in the kitchen? She is a United States Senator. She has an important role in the government of the US and no doubt has a housekeeper and someone to mind the kids – given she is away from home whenever the Senate is in Session.

    Perhaps she wants the “do as I say not as I do” to be the image to the women of the US – or perhaps she is simply a useless Senator who should be voted out for not recognizing the job that she has.

  27. 27.

    SFAW

    @TS:

    Why is any working woman allowing herself to be filmed in the kitchen?

    Maybe because she’s pushing the “wimmins (outside of me) belong in the kitchen” line which the RWMFs adore.

  28. 28.

    Kay

    The breathy theatrical “baby” voice is recognized as how evangelical women are taught to speak. There’s a whole group of young women on social media who have left fundamentalist Christian groups and explain the culture and mannerisms to the rest of us. Just fascinating. Anyway!
    I think the GOP has lost ground among moderate and independent women so have to pump up their evangelical vote – they’ll go with someone who energizes that base (like Pence did). It worked for them once before.

  29. 29.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    The breathy theatrical “baby” voice is recognized as how evangelical women are taught to speak

     

    Someone, maybe you, said the same thing about the Speaker’s Wife.

  30. 30.

    SFAW

    @NotMax: ​

    Can’t spell rebuttal without b-u-t-t.

    FSM (and jackals) may smite me for this, but I swear the first thing that came to mind when reading this was one of the oldies:

    “Sir, your wife has acute angina”
    “I’ll say! And her butt’s pretty nice, too.”

  32. 32.

    Kay

    Tom Nichols is the most annoying of the Never Trumpers, IMO. He’s always lecturing us. Tim Miller is genuinely funny though – I’m glad to have him.

  33. 33.

    lowtechcyclist

    I’m just starting to watch the SOTU. A few people have tags reading ‘153’ pinned to their jackets. Any idea what that’s about?

  34. 34.

    MagdaInBlack

    @Baud: There’s a tik tok from “Piper from Missouri” comparing the speakers wife voice to Michelle Dugger speaking. It’s the same non-threatening baby voice. Its a real thing, annoying as it is.

  37. 37.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Anne Romney too. There are a lot of former evangelical women on social media, but there are probably MORE evangelical Christian “mommy” or “tradwife” accounts and it’s really true – they do all talk like that.

    Republicans always run the risk of becoming too hard Right on social issues because of their evangelical base. That’s a much bigger danger to them now that they’ve lost a whole group of moderate, less religious women. But no one in media talks about it, because only Democratic challenges are worthy of coverage.

  39. 39.

    Another Scott

    @Kay: One of the jarring things about visiting Japan for the first time was going into a fast food place in Tokyo and hearing women staff behind the counter talking in a very high, loud, actually painfully screechy voice.  And they seemed unhappy about it.

    There too, it seems to be a conservative cultural thing to keep women in their place below men.

    The food was great.  But we didn’t go back.

    :⁠-⁠(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  42. 42.

    Kay

    @Another Scott:

    It’s funny to read the responses from young women to “tradwife” accounts – “why is she whispering? So weird!”

    The voice thing becomes really distinctive – a marker- there are lots and lots of far Right religious women on social media and they all use it.

  43. 43.

    gene108

    Britt’s constant forced smiling was very unnerving for me. I don’t know but sometimes smiling comes across as threatening or insincere. It’s a hard expression to pull off, if it’s not spontaneous.

  45. 45.

    Baud

    @Kay:

    The business end of their coalition was always better at communicating with normies. Now that the GOP has put the religious base in the driver’s seat, they are having more problems.

  48. 48.

    Ken

    a $41 million cash disadvantage relative to Biden and the D.N.C.

    his tens of millions of dollars in legal fees

    These two things are not unrelated.

  50. 50.

    lowtechcyclist

    @Kay:

    “Who is she talking to? How does she make her voice do this?”

    -Riffing off Nick Danger

  52. 52.

    jimmiraybob

    @TS:

     “Why is any working woman allowing herself to be filmed in the kitchen?”
    Visual messaging.
    Don’t worry Britt, the ghost of Tammy Fahe Bakker visited me last night and she said you nailed it.

  53. 53.

    hueyplong

    My out of town wife texted me last night during the rebuttal, which I of course was not watching. She said it was the worst ever imitation of a Sally Struthers weeper for abused and abandoned pets.  “For just (sob) 20 cents a day… you can keep Donald Trump’s candidacy alive!”

    It was actually what happens when MAGA, utterly lacking in empathy, attempts to portray it on tv. 

    No doubt they’ll go back to snarling, baring fangs, and threatening violent demises for the roll call of hated demographics, all in the name of family values. Achtung, tranz!

    But, as someone said last night, she’s still the best current Senator from Alabama.

  55. 55.

    Kay

    @gene108:

    The constant smiling is part of it too. I agree. It’s often just weird.

    There are women on social media who think the “trad wife” and “mommy” accounts are deliberately political – a coordinated effort on the Right. I think it’s possible.

  56. 56.

    NotMax

    OT.

    Just finished Marlowe on Prime. (Tried it because Liam Neeson.)

    My take: skip it. All the window dressing, none of the merchandise.

  57. 57.

    Suzanne

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: I just made the same observation: Republicans always massively bomb the SotU response and I don’t know why anyone who cares about their career agrees to do it!

    Bobby Jindal, Marco Rubio…. like, I still laugh at these moments.

    Katie Britt gives me Crazy-Eyes Bachmann vibes.

  58. 58.

    Betty Cracker

    I missed all the speech brouhaha because I’m in the fucking hospital.* But when being wheeled back to my room after a torturous ordeal, I caught part of Britt’s speech and posted my hissy kitty comment. My god, she was awful!

    *More on this later but please not now? I need one place where everything is still normal, and this can be that place.

  59. 59.

    Geminid

    Ragip Soylu reported that Ukrainian President Zelenskyy will visit Turkiye today and meet with President Erdogan in Istanbul. A shipyard visit is on the schedule, so maybe Zelenskyy will take delivery of the corvette Hetman Ivan Mazepa. His wife attended the Mazepa’s launch and christening in October of 2022, and the ship has been undergoing fitting-out and sea trials since then.

  62. 62.

    Doug

    The authors of the longer pieces seem to be laboring under the delusion that Trump will be listening to anyone when it comes to choosing a running mate. Where have they been for the last eight years?

    Also, he‘ll choose a white guy in late middle age, because that‘s what Central Casting would send over for a VP. Probably a governor. If I knew which R gov of that type was most willing to be humiliated, I could probably tell you his choice today.

  63. 63.

    Kay

    @gene108:

    I have to say though, the forced smiling makes me a little sad because I did it as a young woman. It’s part of our training – so we won’t seem threatening and therefore avoid enraging people or something. It took me a long time to stop doing it. I think it’s why (some) women react so negatively to the demand from strange men to “smile!” – that’s where that comes from.

  66. 66.

    dmsilev

    @Betty Cracker: Sorry to hear of the hospital encounter, but I have to say that if this place is your definition of “normal”, you may be in for a bit of a shock when you encounter the wider world.

  68. 68.

    p.a.

    Nube Rethugs.  They forgot the background flag, the eagle-with-a-tear-in-its-eye photo, and an AR-15 diorama.

  70. 70.

    Tony Jay

    Seriously. Whoever gets the next rebuttal should just the whole hog and emerge out of the shadows naked except for a silk wrap and their ‘junior senator’ tucked away between their legs.

    “Would you vote for me? I’d vote for me. I’d vote the hell out of me.”

    Couldn’t be worse than Kitchen Klanwife.

  71. 71.

    Jeffro

    I tend to agree with Nichols: despite what we saw, the MAGA base will think Britt is totes awesome.

    Britt, Noem, or Stefanik are my most likely guesses for trumpov’s VP pick.

  72. 72.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Doug:If I knew which R gov of that type was most willing to be humiliated, I could probably tell you his choice today.

    Ron DeSantis has lots of experience being humiliated. He just finished an 8 month trial run of humiliation.

  74. 74.

    3Sice

    I don’t care
    How many letters they sent
    Morning came and morning went
    Pick up your money
    And pack up your tent
    You ain’t goin’ nowhere….

  75. 75.

    Suzanne

    @OzarkHillbilly:

    Ron DeSantis has lots of experience being humiliated. He just finished an 8 month trial run of humiliation. 

    We could just record him saying, “Thank you, Sir, may I have another” while wearing those white boots and TFG would be SOLD!

  78. 78.

    Jeffro

    @Doug: in 2016 or 2020 a middle-aged white guy might make sense.  But trumpov – and Susie Wiles, his campaign manager – know that he & the GOP are going to have Dobbs issues this time around.

    Rather than change their position, I think it’s much more likely that they’ll try to gloss things over by putting a (need I even say ‘white’) woman on the ticket.  One who can try to blur the issues, pretend like Democrats are the real radicals when it comes to reproductive rights, etc etc.

    We’ll see.

  79. 79.

    Marmot

    … his V.P. choice will likely be a donor play, not a voter tickle.

    Gross and gross. Do political reporters even recognize the distinction between themselves and the people they cover?

    They’ve adopted the jargon completely.

  80. 80.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Jeffro: ​ Good luck with that. Somehow or other I don’t think drawing attention to the fact that you are the reason women are losing their rights is a winning strategy.

    @Marmot: It’s the waters they swim in.

  81. 81.

    Scout211

    @Betty Cracker:

    *More on this later but please not now? I need one place where everything is still normal, and this can be that place.

    Are you new here? Jackals following instructions? Unpossible.  😉

    Wishing you a good outcome and an easy stay in the hospital.

  85. 85.

    gene108

    @Kay:

    I have to say though, the forced smiling makes me a little sad because I did it as a young woman. It’s part of our training – so we won’t seem threatening and therefore avoid enraging people or something.

    I don’t think I noticed women doing this, but I’m pretty oblivious to this sort of thing.

    I noticed Britt’s forced smiling.

  89. 89.

    Kay

    aflcio

    Joe Biden walks the picket line. Donald Trump crosses them.The AFL-CIO stands shoulder-to-shoulder with @JoeBiden, the most pro-union president in history. It’s time to finish the job.

    True. If labor blows this election, they’ll be right back to where they were, which was “dying”.

  91. 91.

    Kay

    @gene108:

    They do it less than when I was coming up, but it’s still out there in the workplace. We’re taught to be ingratiating. It’s what the whole “she’s shrill and strident!” joke is about.

  93. 93.

    PPCLI

    @mrmoshpotato: One of the most vivid memories of the Mary Tyler Moore show I have is when Betty White as Sue Ann Nivens had to read an actual newscast. I looked for a Youtube clip of it but couldn’t find it. Sue Ann reads of catastrophe after catastrophe with her usual overwhelming forced cheerfulness and 1000-watt wide smile, reporting about a flood that overwhelmed a town.

    It immediately came back to mind when I was watching Britt. I wish I could find it.

  96. 96.

    Geminid

    I missed most of the speech including the parts about Israel and Gaza. A quick look at Axios reporter Barak Ravid’s Twitter feed tells me that the speech is catching a lot of attention  and comment in Israel, and it ought to.

    Ravid made a name with his book about Trump and the so-called “Abraham Accords.” Axios hired him and now he seems to have good sources among officials in Israel and the U.S. alike. He also still writes for his former employer, Walla News. That’s a Hebrew language site but I’m hoping the English translation button works because his story there on the speech should be good.

  97. 97.

    Kay

    @Baud:

    Teamsters are sort of proudly “their own thing”. They were a response to what their leaders see as the timidity of the AFLCIO. It’s funny they’re going Right nationally because they are the most liberal union locally, where I live, with the exception of the IBEW – some of the IBEW leadership is actually Left.

  98. 98.

    Scout211

    Daily Beast (not sure why I didn’t get the paywall this morning)

    The performance was so bad that some Republicans watched the high-profile speech with a grimace. A GOP strategist told The Daily Beast that Britt’s delivery quickly became a gossip item Thursday night among operatives connected to Donald Trump—something that could have potential implications for her consideration as a vice presidential pick for the former president.

    “Everyone’s fucking losing it,” this Republican said, requesting anonymity to discuss private conversations. “It’s one of our biggest disasters ever.”

  99. 99.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @lowtechcyclist:

    It represents that hostages have been held in Gaza for 153 days (as of yesterday’s date).

  100. 100.

    Frankensteinbeck

    Trump himself spent most of the evening out on the patio, away from the applause and well-wishers, buttonholing high-dollar donors to help ease his financial troubles

    Jesus fucking Christ.  Look at that sentence.  Trump skipped out on a party celebrating his winning the nomination for president, skipped out on a crowd of important people telling him he’s the biggest league winner ever, so he could beg for money.  He’s fucked.  He’s financially fucked.  This must be so much worse than we know.

    Getting strong “mommy blogger who’s about to be arrested for child abuse” vibes from this.

    I absolutely guarantee she is a child abuser.

    @TS:

    Why is any working woman allowing herself to be filmed in the kitchen?

    Because she’s a token.  She’s a sidekick.  The message is that she knows she’s not really, actually a Senator, don’t worry!

    @Betty Cracker:

    I need one place where everything is still normal

    Uh…

    Uh…

    Blarg posts full of tweets!  Pie filter!  You don’t have to read if you don’t want to!  Dog photo!  I’M OLD!

  101. 101.

    rikyrah

    @Kay:

    The tradwife debate is strong on TikTok.

    The discarded 40 something former tradwife…

    Their stories are so sad, after they have been . discarded for the younger newer model.

    One that has hit hard, this woman started not one, but two businesses, and had her name on. NOTHING.

    I am way too Black to ever put that much faith in a man. The whole quitting college and getting married thing.

    No..never ever

  102. 102.

    Soprano2

    @TS: They want to make sure all their supporters know that they think their job as a mom and wife is more important than their job as a U.S. Senator. It’s a thing in fundie circles.

  103. 103.

    Ken

    @Scout211: “Everyone’s fucking losing it,” this Republican said, requesting anonymity to discuss private conversations. “It’s one of our biggest disasters ever.”

    Oh, they say that after every Republican SOTU response, but six months later no one remembers it.

    Then at the next one, it’s clear no one learned from it either.

  105. 105.

    hueyplong

    This AM is the first time I’ve seen “tradwife” in print. I want my sheltered life back.

  106. 106.

    sdhays

    Has not occurred to anyone that the Republican rebuttal is designed to eclipse the President’s speech by tricking everyone into talking about how awful the rebuttal was?

    Diabolical!

  107. 107.

    Enhanced Voting Techniques

    Meanwhile, over at the Pitchbot, this one from Mike Midsommer I am calling the winner…

    “Biden’s lack of gaffes (during the State of the Union) make him less relatable”

  108. 108.

    SiubhanDuinne

    @rikyrah:

    Klanned Karenhood!! LOL, how perfect!
    😁😄😂🤣

    Unrelated, but I’m suddenly having to fill in my nym and email for each comment. Haven’t had to do that since we came back from the great disaster two years ago. What’s going on?

  111. 111.

    Soprano2

    @gene108: For some reason she was smiling in places where it was inappropriate, as if she’s been told to smile all the time and took that to heart. No one has yet explained why she told that awful story about the trafficked young woman, since Republicans want to deport her back to wherever she came from. It’s Joe Biden’s fault people are so desperate to come to the U.S. that they’ll pay people like that to bring them here? I don’t think that’s the message she wants to convey.

  113. 113.

    sdhays

    @Frankensteinbeck: Skipping opportunities to bathe in adulation and begging donors for money like a common politician, even letting the highest bidder pick his VP candidate?

    I wonder what extra strain that puts on his malignant narcissism and how that will manifest itself in the coming months.

  114. 114.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I work with a guy who kept telling me to smile when we passed in the hall. Finally one day I asked him why, and he said “Because you look more pleasant when you smile”. I told him something like “you have no idea what’s going on with me, maybe my dog just died or something else bad happened and I’m thinking about it”. He quit saying it after that. I think they just want to see pleasant women’s faces all the time.

    A more scary way to think about these things is that they’re efforts to keep from being abused by their husbands.

  118. 118.

    Soprano2

    @Kay: I had my performance review yesterday. It was “you’re really good at your job but you could be nicer, some of the guys are scared of you and that’s bad”. They’re not wrong, but I find myself resenting the fact that some of how I am would not be seen as bad if I were male. I know that when I get frustrated I get galaxy brain and sometimes lash out when I shouldn’t (like when I find out the accounting people made a big change in July and waited until November to tell me!) I’ve gotten better over the years, but the truth is I’m never going to be able to completely stop doing that.

  121. 121.

    Frankensteinbeck

    @sdhays:

    I wonder what extra strain that puts on his malignant narcissism and how that will manifest itself in the coming months.

    We’ll find out when he goes bankrupt.  Bear in mind, Trump himself has never filed for bankruptcy.  Businesses he owned have gone bankrupt while he walked away with the cash.

  124. 124.

    Ken

    @MazeDancer: Is there some special significance to the names Bennett and Ridgeway? Famous Confederate generals, or KKK grand dragons, perhaps?

    If someone asked, my first guess would be “supermarket chain”, but I doubt she got some sort of sponsorship deal.

  125. 125.

    OzarkHillbilly

    @Soprano2: some of the guys are scared of you and that’s bad”

    I’d have to reply, “They should be. And thanx for the compliment.”

  130. 130.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Steeplejack:

    “Just queue me in an stick a sock in it.”

    That character was brilliantly written (particularly given the time frame) and even more brilliantly done by Betty White.

  131. 131.

    zhena gogolia

    @Ken: Yeah, I’m wondering too. Those don’t sound like any Confederate generals I’ve heard of.

  132. 132.

    Geminid

    @Scout211: Congressional Republicans have only themselves to blame for this clunker. The SOU response amounts to many millions of dollars of free media outreach, and when they picked Britt they should have had her work with professionals on both content and delivery. Her performance last night could have been taped Tuesday, critiqued and improved by a team professionals, and rehearsed several more times before last night. If some company spent $5 million on a Superbowl ad they would never be so careless with its production.

  135. 135.

    artem1s

    @Kay: ​ 

    t there are probably MORE evangelical Christian “mommy” or “tradwife” accounts and it’s really true – they do all talk like that.

    Jeebus, all their sons are going to be monsters when they grow up. every damn one is going to have a violent melt down whenever a woman talks in a normal voice around them. gotta wonder how many of these women got ‘taken to woodshed’ before they ‘learned’ to speak ‘properly’?

  136. 136.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @Soprano2:

    It was “you’re really good at your job but you could be nicer, some of the guys are scared of you and that’s bad”. They’re not wrong, but I find myself resenting the fact that some of how I am would not be seen as bad if I were male.

    This has gotta be one of the most appalling things I’ve seen here in a comment in a long time.  You’re damned right in that if you were male, that statement would have never been uttered.  Jeeeesusfuckingkeeristonabike, I’m stewed.

    Per Baud and OzarkHillbilly, I hope you smiled and retorted (not “replied”, retorted) “Good”.

    And then toss this shit back at your clearly shitty sooopervisor with “well, how about you ‘splain to the specific scaredy cats to get over their shit and speak up.”

    Or, in a more positive team-bullshit approach “Can you tell me which ones said something?  I’d like to reach out to them one-on-one and see if I can’t work on communication with them both ways so that they’ll feel more amenable to approaching me even tho I can scare them from time to time.”  Or something along those lines.

    Fuck, this struck a chord with me.  I guess it comes from living with the only female physicist grad at CU-Boulder in 1984 and watching her deal with so much shit in the workplace back then in school and particularly after graduating.

    Fuck, nothing’s changed and now I’m using fuck like a comma.

  141. 141.

    p.a.

    @Kay: We (CWA & IBEW communications, not electrician) were on strike against NYNEX in 1989.  Teamsters turned out on day 3.  “Who do you want us to fuck up?”
    “Uhhhh… not really necessary.”

    Strike lasted 16 weeks.  Statute of limitations, so… it may have become necessary.  We had some picketers run over.  They had some ladders kicked out from under them.

    Fucking IBEW electric local 99 (maybe others too) scabbed.  After the strike the local comm IBEWs (most of NYNEX: New England Tel & Tel) had a talk with the International, threatened to decertify & join CWA, and pointed to our numbers (over 1,000 employees just here in RI) and the amount of dues $$$ we sent their way.  No more IBEW scabbing after that.

  142. 142.

    artem1s

    @Jeffro: 

    the MAGA base will think Britt is totes awesome.

    Some will be tone deaf to the general public’s negative reaction or just down right in denial about it. But there will be the usual contingent who will blame her for not be the Chosen One’s perfect vessel. They will never admit that the problem isn’t the messenger, it’s their awful message. And it will be same people who put her forward who will admonish her the loudest for having the audacity to think she could speak in public while having a vagina.

  143. 143.

    comrade scotts agenda of rage

    @p.a.: ​
     

    We (CWA & IBEW communications, not electrician) were on strike against NYNEX in 1989. Teamsters turned out on day 3. “Who do you want us to fuck up?”

    I realize that was 1989 but that’s so awesome.

  144. 144.

    geg6

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: ​
     
    All women in the workplace put up with this shit every. single. day. I’ve put up with it all my life. I am also told I’m intimidating to men and wouldn’t be if I just smiled more and didn’t talk so assertively. It’s infuriating and I use that energy to show them that I am awesome and they suck.

  145. 145.

    Soprano2

    @comrade scotts agenda of rage: Thanks for defending me, but I can admit that they’re not completely wrong. I can get impatient with people when I think they’re being stupid, so sometimes I snap at them when I shouldn’t. We all have our faults, that’s one of mine. What I do resent is that sometimes it seems like the expectation for a woman is that we’re never supposed to get irritated or angry no matter what happens (like them not telling you they  made a sudden change, so now you’re seeing things and you have no idea why or where they came from). One of their criticisms was that I closed a service request in a software we were only using for night and weekend calls, when I didn’t know it had been opened by someone else for a reason. Well, they suddenly made the change that they were doing that and they didn’t tell me about it! So I was used to only seeing night/weekend calls on that web site, and now suddenly there was other stuff and I had no idea what to do or who to ask about it. I did defend myself over that, I think it was an unwarranted criticism.

  146. 146.

    artem1s

    @Baud: ​

    some of the guys are scared of you
    I hope you smiled when they got to that part.

    I hope she thanked him for the complement.

  147. 147.

    Soprano2

    @geg6: Hey, you can come and sit by me! I’ve been hearing that all my life too. OTOH, we had a male supervisor here who was a HUGE ASSHOLE, and he was accommodated left and right. My current boss, who is a female engineer, tried to talk to him about an issue I brought up to her (this was a couple of years ago). He said to her “How dare you talk to me like that, get out of my office and don’t talk to me again”, maybe not those exact words but close. And what did his boss do about that? He told my boss not to talk to that man anymore, if she wanted to tell him something she was supposed to tell his boss and then he would tell this man what she wanted. I could not BELIEVE this happened, but it did!. Both of those people are gone now, swept out in the housecleaning we had a year ago.

  148. 148.

    stinger

    @geg6: It’s just hit me, thanks to your comment: Maybe that’s why I’m loving retirement so much. The icing on the retirement cake, at least.

  149. 149.

    Ken

    Popehat’s take (or rather, one of several):

    Like I’m sorry Katie but no that kitchen table isn’t just like that one because my kitchen doesn’t look like something from a Twilight Zone episode where you wake up in an unfamiliar house and gradually come to realize you’re being kept as a pet

  150. 150.

    H.E.Wolf

    @zhena gogolia: ​Those don’t sound like any Confederate generals I’ve heard of.

     Me either; and I Googled.

    Reminds me of the line from To Kill a Mockingbird:

    “Atticus said naming people after Confederate generals made slow steady drinkers.”

  151. 151.

    Peke Daddy

    In the immortal words of Shrub after hearing Trump’s inaugural address, “That was some weird shit.” Affect and message were a strange combination to me, says this unfrozen caveman secularist. Guess it reinforced the Christianist vote, but that’s marginal improvement these days.

  154. 154.

    Bugboy

    @Ken: They are certainly related if Dump convinces the RNC to pay his legal bills.  Which is precisely what he’s doing.

  156. 156.

    Citizen Alan

    @Another Scott: It’s fascinating to think that around the world women are taught from a young age to speak in a certain way that men if that culture find pleasing. I used to frequent an indian restaurant in mississippi which constantly played bollywood music videos in the background. Both the men and the women had noticeable Indian accents that to my ears  sounded basically the same. But when they sang comma the men just sounded like men singing in a foreign language but otherwise tonally like what I would expect from an american male singer. The women, meanwhile, sang in an unnaturally high pitched voice that I found physically painful to hear.

  157. 157.

    Citizen Alan

    @p.a.: It would have been hilarious if she’d had a flag and an AR 15 mounted on the wall of her pristine all-white kitchen.

  158. 158.

    Citizen Alan

    @Soprano2:

    The thing I hate most about republicans, out of a long list of things to hate them for, is the fact that no Republican will ever truly care about any loss of human life unless that loss of life can somehow be used to slander democrats. Britt neither knows nor cares how many women were murdered in the last year. But she knows that at least one such murder was allegedly committed by a foreign migrant worker and therefore the murder was really the fault of joe biden and the democratic party.

  159. 159.

    Ken

    @Citizen Alan: One of the responses in that Popehat thread I linked was along those lines, let me find it…

    @midnightplat.bsky.social
    I can see the confusion because of the sink island, but this is a basement armory. Every long door has a rifle behind it; and ammo, magazines, cleaning kits, and range gear are stored behind all the smaller doors. The table is for cleaning weapons, and reviewing the household firing positions plan

  160. 160.

    Citizen Alan

    @geg6:

    The most frequent comment made about my mother after her passing was that she “told it like it was.” And yes, I always knew what that was code for. She would never have described herself as a feminist, But she was one of the first women in Mississippi to do electrical work for AT&T after they were forced to open up those high paying jobs to women after a consent decree in 1971. She would just shrug and say “the pay was good because it had pteviously been a ‘man’s job,’ so I just learned to do it.

  162. 162.

    hitchhiker

    @Kay:

    Nichols is annoying, but the very worst is Charlie Sykes. He embodies the word, “patronizing.”

  163. 163.

    Shalimar

    @NotMax: Not sure about America’s, but my mom was a lot more verbally abusive and didn’t even know where the kitchen was.

  164. 164.

    Doug

    @OzarkHillbilly: Good idea! But I think for having the temerity to oppose TFG openly, Trump‘s reaction is “Fuck that guy.“

    Plus isn‘t he a little short to be from Central Casting?

  165. 165.

    Shalimar

    @Ken: Cornelius Bennett was an all-pro linebacker who graduated from Alabama when future Alabama player Wesley Britt would have been around 5 or 6, so that would be my guess for the girl.  There was also a Danny Ridgeway that played for Alabama in the early ’70s, but I can’t imagine how Britt would have known him.

  166. 166.

    Roberto el oso

    For a good laugh check out Wonkette’s post on the rebuttal: “My Name Is Katie Britt, And I Am Singing ‘Tomorrow’ From ‘Annie’ In The Style Of ‘Birth Of A Nation'”

  167. 167.

    Roberto el oso

    Regarding the comments suggesting that Trump’s VP pick will be someone who pleases the big money donors, might we see the return of Kevin McCarthy? Despite his, er, troubles with the Speakership, McCarthy and Trump remain on good terms, it seems (the pilgrimage to grovel in the driveway at Mar-A-Lago provided some redemption). And McCarthy always gets mentioned as a real whizz at fundraising.

  168. 168.

    Roberto el oso

    @Shalimar: I’m sticking with my instinct that Britt is a fan of Jane Austen and the Korean War, hence the kids’ names.

  171. 171.

    cain

    @artem1s: it’s not being promoted by Fox so I think it’s a safe bet that the response was bad enough that it’s going to be brushed under the rug.

    Also if she is a rising star she must be all kinds of nuts doing that response because if she kills it, no way Trump will pick someone who would outshine him. If she blows it like she has now .. she has loser stink on her and Trump won’t pick her because of that.

    She is young so she probably could ride it out for a few years. But now she screwed herself.

    In the end they have nothing to sell but FUD.

  173. 173.

    Paul in KY

    @Ken: Mathew Ridgeway was an Army General in WWII and after.

    ‘Bennett’ is just one of those guyish names they seem to give girls now. I think you should just go all-in and name the girl ‘Larry’ or ‘Jeff’.

  174. 174.

    Jeffro

    @Shalimar: thanks for digging it up!  Britt’s husband is an ex-NFL player (and perhaps ex-Alabama football?) so it might work that way.

    I’m just glad her kids aren’t named “Walker” and “Texas Ranger” 🤣

  176. 176.

    Geminid

    @Jeffro: Yes, Mr. Britt played at Alabama and that’s where he met his wife Katie. Britt made 1st Team All-SEC his senior year and I think was a 5th round pick. He played in preseason and on taxi squads including for the Patriots but was never activated. My guess is that Britt wasn’t quick enough to play at the next level.

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