Finally Friday Reads: Clash of the Titanides (2024)

Posted: May 17, 2024 | Author: dakinikat | Filed under: MAGA goes after the Rule of Law | Tags: @repeat1968, Ball Kicker Butker, John Buss, Lauren Boebert, MAGA family "values", Marjorie Three Names, Racism, Sarah Huckabee Sanders, Texas' Abbott Pardons convicted murderer |8 Comments

Good Day, Sky Dancers!

Last night was ladies’ night in the Congressional House Oversight Committee meeting. And oh, what a night! The sidewalk display outside the Trump Hush Money Trial wasn’t much better. And then there was the Kansas City Ball Kicker who gave a commencement speech at a small Benedictine College in Atchison, Kansas. It’s been a sad week for women in leadership positions or those who strive for leadership positions. It’s been a week of sexism and misogyny unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

I’m going to start with the Ball Kicker. This analysis is from Vox, written by Li Zhou. “The controversy over Harrison Butker’s misogynistic commencement speech, explained.Butker’s address was a textbook case of conservative sexism and hom*ophobia.”

NFL kicker Harrison Butker is facing widespread backlash aftergiving a college commencement speechthat casually dabbled in misogyny and hom*ophobia.

Butker, who has won three Super Bowls with the Kansas City Chiefs in recent years, delivered the address at Benedictine College, a private Catholic institution in Kansas, on May 11. In it, he criticizes everything from women prioritizing professional careers to Pride Month toabortionaccess.

An outspoken conservative who is close with leading right-wing figures including Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), Butker’s speech closely echoed Republican rhetoric and fixated on issues that have been popular fodder for conservatives as they try to mobilize their voters ahead of the2024 election.

“I think it is you, the women who have had the most diabolical lies told to you,” Butker said in his speech. “Some of you may go on to lead successful careers in the world, but I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world.”

The Chiefs have not commented on Butker’s remarks and the NFL league office distanced itself from them. “His views are not those of the NFL as an organization. The NFL is steadfast in our commitment to inclusion, which only makes our league stronger,” Jonathan Beane, the NFL’s senior vice president and chief diversity and inclusion officer,told People.

Butker’s speech advances the same agenda that the GOP has been pushing not only in its rhetoric but through policy.At least 21 Republican-led statelegislatures have approved laws that ban or restrict abortion access andat least 20 have approved billsthat curb access to gender-affirming care for minors. Butker’s remarks — which emphasized people “staying in [their] lane” — are the latest attempt to weaponizereligionto achieve the same goals.

Butker’s speech is being characterized by the usual suspects as just “expressing unpopular opinions.” It’s more than that.

Below are some of the lowlights:

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• On women’s careers:One of the sections getting the most attention is Butker’s comments about the importance of women’s roles in the home. Singling out the women in the audience, he argued that they’re likely more eager to become wives and mothers than to have successful careers.

“I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say her life truly started when she started living her vocation as a wife and as a mother,” he said.

In addition to speaking on women’s behalf, Butker also reduced the primary goal of their lives to one biological function. Being a homemaker is an important role that should be celebrated, but it’s far from the only one a woman can choose — a key reason his remarks spurred such backlash. Butker also described women’s roles very differently than he described men’s: While he touted the virtues of being a present father, he did not say that being a dad was likely the primary goal of a man’s life.

These last 10 years have taught us that we may have come a long way from not being able to vote, but the party of Troglydites can send us right back to being chattel and slaves in a matter of years. Women, the GLBT community, immigrant populations, and America’s black community are having basic rights stripped from them daily. The sh*t show in front of the Manhattan Courthouse yesterday was appalling. “MAGA Rage at Trump’s Trial Just Got Darker and More Dangerous.Republicans aren’t just showing “loyalty to Trump.” They’re saying that Trump is more important than the rule of law.” This is from Greg Sargent writing for The New Republic.

In recent days, a parade of Republicans have shown up at the Manhattan courthouse where Donald Trump faces criminal charges related to the hush-money scheme he concocted to deceive American voters during the 2016 election. The goal of those MAGA allies is simple: to make it unimpeachably clear that their primary fealty is to Donald Trump over the rule of law.

Unfortunately, some of media coverage has obscured these fundamentals. Some accounts describe these Republicans as “currying favor” with Trump or showing “loyalty” to him, as if they are just demonstrating personal support for him at a trying moment. Others havenotedthat some making this pilgrimage—none moreodiouslythan Ohio Senator J.D. Vance—are really vying to be his running mate, which might be true but reduces all this to a form of political jockeying that seems fairly conventional.

If we are going to treat this as a story about loyalty signaling, let’s frame the question this way: Loyalty to what, exactly? Not just loyalty to Trump. This episode—and others like it, such as the stampede of Republicansbacking Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting the 2024 election results—is better seen as a statement of ultimate fealty to Trumpover and above our institutions, as a declaration that he is paramount and they are thoroughly dispensable.

“This trial is a scam and a sham, and it shouldn’t happen,” Trumpragedon Thursday at the court, with Representative Matt Gaetz and other Republicansstanding behind him. Gaetzproudly posteda picture of himself “standing back and standing by” for Trump at the courthouse, deliberatelyechoing the languageTrump used about his paramilitary goons in the first 2020 debate.

This comes after House Speaker Mike Johnson descended on the courthouse this week andattackedpresiding Judge Juan Merchan’s daughter, who fundraised for Democrats, blasting the proceedings as a “sham.” Vance and Florida Senator Rick Scottsimilarly attackedMerchan’s daughter. Many Republicansblasted the credibilityof Michael Cohen, the former Trump fixer and chief prosecution witness. Still othersslammedthe lead prosecutor, based onan absurd, convoluted theoryabout his previous work at the Justice Department, as a tool of President Biden.

If Republicans were merely criticizing the prosecution on the facts and the law in substantive terms, it would be one thing. But here they are attacking the judge, his family, the witnesses, and the line prosecutors as actors in a fundamentally illegitimate proceeding.

Those are things thegag orderon Trump prohibits him from doing, which has some commentators asking whether he is surreptitiously inducing his boosters to carry out those attacks to circumvent it. There issome evidenceof this, butas Brian Beutler writes, that question misses the point: Either way, the surrogates wouldn’t be doing any of it if Trump didn’t want them to, and they are echoing Trump’s own precise language and claims.

To grasp the real force of this, it’s worth recalling the reason we don’t want proceedings like these subjected to demonization campaigns in the first place: It threatens to sabotage public confidence in the justice system’s integrity and makes it harder for good-faith actors to play their roles in it without fear or favor. And so, the whole point of these GOP depravities is to dramatize, in the form of spectacle, that their fealty is to Trump over and above those rules and norms, the ones that make the system work at the most fundamental level.

“Matt Gaetz evokes ‘standing by’ language adopted by Proud Boys as he attends court with Donald Trump.” They all basically helped Trump avoid his gag order. If they were ordered by Donald to do it, they are all in trouble. Boebert also made a huge fool of herself and, once again, showed her “family values.” This is from Business Insider. “Lauren Boebert skipped Congress to support Trump’s trial, but didn’t show up to her own son’s hearings: reports.”

Rep. Lauren Boebert made headlines with her show of support at former President Donald Trump’s hush-money trial on Thursday, but has been conspicuously absent for her own son’s court appearances, according to multiple reports.

The Colorado congresswoman joineda gaggle of Freedom Caucus loyalistsat the Manhattan criminal court on Thursday,writing on X:“I’ll never stop standing up for President Trump, even if I’m the last one standing.”

Speaking at a makeshift press conference outside the court, Boebert was heckled with chants of “Beetlejuice” — a reference to when she wasthrown out of a Denver theatershowing the film after vaping and apparently groping a male companion.

While Trump is facing criminal charges of falsifying business records in relation to a hush-money scheme to silence p*rn actor Stormy Daniels, Boebert’s 19-year-old son Tyler has also had court dates.

Tyler Boebert wasarrested in Februaryon multiple felony charges including the criminal possession of identity documents, criminal trespass, and possession of a financial device.

He’s had two court hearings to date — one on April 11 and another on May 9.

During the April hearing, Boebert was in Congress voting against the passage of the Sea Turtle Rescue Assistance and Rehabilitation Act,records show.

Trump took advantage of the photo op and whining in court by appearing at Barron’s graduation today. He’s headed off for a fundraiser tonight in the Twin Cities. He’s probably airborne, as I write. Another MAGA governor is getting slammed for being more interested in appearances than Governing. They’re the most emotionally abusive group of misfits I’ve ever seen or read about. “‘A Governor Who Doesn’t Seem to Have Much Interest in Governing Arkansas.’ Sarah Huckabee Sanders’ increasing number of critics think she’s too worried about her national profile.” This is in Politico and reported by Dana Liebelson. If she was that worried about her profile, you would think she’d stop wearing outfits suggesting she’s about to board a Prarie Schooner to Oregon. Still, I can’t see this kind of coverage of Jeff Landry, our governor, down here in Lousyana.

Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders assumed a podium on a recent spring morning in Arkansas, her familiar voice instantly evoking her pugnacious press conferences under Donald Trump. That day, there were no reporters to spar with, nor culture wars to wage, only a few dozen Arkansans who’d come to applaud millions in ongoing state grants for playgrounds and parks. “When my kids were younger, we could plan a huge trip just to find out that our kids would prefer to actually play on a jungle gym or a swing set,” she said. The 41-year-old governor wore an above-the-knee metallic skirt and pumps, a millennial-friendly outfit that matched her refreshed brand as the youngest governor in the country. She reminisced about her husband, Bryan, planning outdoor adventures with their three children, “some of which I am glad that I went on.” The crowd, which included Bryan, laughed.

Sanders was a long way from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner in 2018, when she sat silently, a rictus fixed on her face, as comedienne Michelle Wolf joked about her burning facts and using the ash “to create a perfect smoky eye.” The former White House press secretary made her name defending Trump’s version of reality, while whittling down the actual press briefing. To her supporters, she played the outsider in Washington who couldn’t be corrupted by the D.C. establishment.

Now that she’s returned home, they say she still puts Arkansas first. In a close-knit state where some of Sanders’ colleagues have known her since college or younger, they insist her time with Trump didn’t fundamentally change her. Washington was one of her adventures, some of which she’s glad she went on. And many people in Arkansas love her for the same reason her national audience does: “She’s a fighter, an amazing communicator, and people connect to her,” Chris Caldwell, her 2022 campaign manager, told me.

But she has brought her experience in Trump’s Washington back with her. She shows little trust in the media. She cruises between events in a black SUV with tinted windows, accompanied by a state police detail in suits and a comms director who worked for Trump and his 2020 presidential campaign. At open-press events, she takes so few questions, Arkansas reporters are fatalistic about the idea of asking many. Instead, as befits a national figure with national ambitions — she’s shown up on lists as apossible running mate for Trump— she reaches her audience on her terms, including on Fox News, or Instagram and Elon Musk’s X, where she has over 2.3 million collective followers. At times, she seems to govern for the latter. Arkansas may not share a border with Mexico, but she has traveled to Eagle Pass, Texas, and talked about the border crisis onFox & Friends. And sent down the Arkansas National Guard. Arkansas has long allowed gender-neutral IDs, of which there are afew hundredissued, but she justified banning them in the state, using the same playbook from the Republican war on trans rights.

All of Donald’s hack seem more interested in jetting around and doing performance art than they are doing anything that represents sound policy. As far as I can tell, they all are fixated on their view of morality, which comes from some playbook other than the Bible. This brings me to what all men in the world are likely calling a catfight today. This is the report from NBC News. “Body shaming, IQ insults, and cross-talk: House committee meeting devolves into chaos amid personal insults. The hearing was derailed when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., responded to a question from Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, by saying, “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”

Criticism of a member’s “fake eyelashes” and another’s intelligence. A question about discussing a member’s “bleach blond, bad-built butch body.”

A House Oversight Committee meeting Thursday night devolved into chaos amid personal attacks and partisan bickering in a rare evening session that was supposed to center on a resolution recommending Attorney General Merrick Garland beheld in contemptof Congress.

The already tense hearing was derailed when Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., responded to a question from Rep. Jasmine Crockett, D-Texas, by saying, “I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading.”

Democrats, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, immediately moved to strike Greene’s words from the record and make her apologize to Crockett.

“That is absolutely unacceptable,” Ocasio-Cortez said over cross talk. “How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person?”

Greene taunted Ocasio-Cortez, asking, “Are your feelings hurt?”

“Oh, girl? Baby girl,” Ocasio-Cortez shot back. “Don’t even play.”

Greene attacked a second member just minutes after she criticized Crockett, asserting that Ocasio-Cortez did not have “enough intelligence” for a debate.

Greene had asked Ocasio-Cortez, “Why don’t you debate me?”

Ocasio-Cortez responded that she thought “it’s pretty self-evident.”

“You don’t have enough intelligence,” Greene said as members of Congress audibly groaned at her attack.

Greene agreed to strike her comments toward Crockett but vehemently refused to apologize for the evening’s attacks, declaring, “You will never get an apology out of me.”

Green asked if any member of the Democrat party was employing Judge Marchand’s daughter, which had nothing to do with the committee topic, which was supposed to be about AG Merrick Garland.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on all of this because I’m “hopping mad,” as my mother would say. It seemed to be an equal opportunity week to discuss why women should return to the kitchen and nursery. Sometimes, I’d like to be wherever David and Warren are, packing my guitars and piano with me and ignoring this world for a while.

I have one thing to bring to your attention. This is from the Texas Monthly. “Why Did Greg Abbott Pardon a Racist Murderer? The governor didn’t offer much of a rationale in granting clemency to Daniel Perry, who killed a Black Lives Matter protester in 2020, but apparently the enemy of his enemy is his friend.” It was written by Christopher Hooks. May all the wisdom beings protect every living thing and person in a red state.

What’s on your reading and blogging list today?