The junior senator for AlabaMAGA tries to “Win one for the Grifter…”
Oh boy! Sen. Katie from AlabaMAGA (al-a- BAM- aga) just made Saturday Night Live must-watch TV again this weekend. Her breathless, dry-teared exposition of Republican womanhood only lacked a PB&J-stained apron to bring home her point that the GOP will use any trope, stoop to any low, and plumb any depth to abuse the image of 21st-century women.
No doubt Katie B. is an accomplished mother, and wife (we know, Wesley is her baby daddy and his pronouns are HE, HIM, Grrr…) but her speech was so practiced and forced, that it would likely cost her the lead in her high school play. Worst of all, she allowed herself to be trotted out long past prime time to defend the very issues she was not allowed to mention. Perhaps her greatest gaffe beyond the mawkish delivery was the embrace of the party leader’s American Carnage meme.
In Biden’s speech, the line that will resonate throughout the campaign will be, “You can’t love America only when you win!” It is a sentiment that cannot be rationally refuted. You simply can’t love something you claim to hate. Katie Britt managed to step into the trap set by Biden as if she hadn’t listened to his speech that she was responding to. Her response included a healthy dose of American Carnage intimating she and her party were happy to hate America whether they won or lost. Other than when he mugged an American flag on stage one night, Trump never spoke in soaring terms about the greatness of America and its potential to become even greater. No, he referenced a time when America was great for people like him when men mattered and women not so much- when the right skin color bestowed an exclusive social, economic, and political birthright.
I was especially attracted to her story of the poor gas station attendant she encountered and the fake conversation she shared:
“I’ll never forget stopping at a gas station in Chilton County one evening. The gentleman working the counter told me that after retiring, he had to pick up that job in his 70s so he didn’t have to choose between going hungry or going without his medication. He said, “I did everything right, everything I was told to do — I worked hard, I saved, I was responsible.”
- Sen. Britt
Ignored in her retelling is the fact that the state she represents in the Senate does not have a minimum wage law and is, along with Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Tennessee, among only five states that do not have a state minimum wage. Their wages are unaffected by state law which relies on the Federal minimum wage of $7.25 which she and her party refuse to raise. Alabama is a predatory wage state for workers in which the gas station attendant is at the mercy of his employer. If his job doesn’t fall under theFair Labor Standards Act, no minimum constrains employers. Katie fails to mention that Alabama ranks 44th out of the 50 states economically, 44th in economic opportunity, and 47th in public health. That’s not Joe Biden’s fault. It is also ranked 40th in “Equality” which is fitting considering the smug complaints about her nation from a privileged, educated, white, business-class family in a state where a Republican legislature just passed (March 7) the Anti-Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Bill. Britt ignores that her state ranks 44th in education at the pre-school and higher ed. levels even as she, in her role as the state’s senator has yet to cast a vote that would improve any of those damning statistics. As a result of the red-state agenda that prefers denying rights rather than promoting them, Alabama ranks below the national average in:
- cost of living index (88.1 v. 100.0),
- median income ($53,913 v. $69,717),
and well above the national average in
We need no lectures from the junior senator from Alabama on how to fix our nation.
But what was perhaps the most distressing passage in her speech was the part where she wants us to remember when we were better and why- and who should take credit:
Never forget, we’re steeped in the blood of patriots who overthrew the most powerful empire in the world.
We walk in the footsteps of pioneers who tamed the wild.
We now carry forward the same flame of freedom as the liberators of an oppressed Europe.
We draw courage from those who bent the moral arc of the universe.
And when we gaze upon the heavens, never forget that our DNA contains the same ingenuity that put man on the Moon.
Is she kidding? The intransigence of her party and folks in her neck of the woods during the time she claims the moral arc of the friggin’ universe was bent were responsible for it needing bending. All the talk about “the blood of patriots “ and “overthrowing the most powerful empire” uncomfortably echoes what her favorite presidential candidate caused on January 6. The line about the freeing of Europe and the ingenuity behind placing a man on the moon were plucked from FDR and JFK/LBJ administrations. Here is what Republicans were saying at the time when JFK proposed his moon shot:
Her “gazing upon the heavens” would better have tapped into the DNA that desecrated government during the Nixon administration and reappeared in the insurrection movement that was a plot against democracy. Both Nixon and Trump sought ways to game the system to retain power. Katie’s toothy smile misrepresents history and promotes the very disinformation so attached to the Trump brand.
It would be easy to compare Alabama’s junior senator to a Stepford wife, but that would be an injustice to Ira Levin’s women who were forced into submission, robotized by men afraid of losing control. The men feared that their wives were becoming too independent and Levin’s feminist horror novel is a warning to women. Katie Britt is not from Stepford, she is from Yesterday when women were most comfortable speaking from scripts written by men. She is moved by ambition and her liege is not an idea or a principle, he is a controlling grifter who, like the Stepford Men’s Club, requires submission. Unlike their wives, Ms. Britt has freely given her consent.
She is destined to be used and discarded like so many other Republican women who choose ambition over principle and become symbols. Remember Sarah Palin, think Ginni Thomas, Lauren Boebert, and Marjorie Taylor Green- a cast of characters who would remind one of rejects from a casting call for a motorcycle club production of Lady Macbeth, bless their cold, hard hearts.
Katie Britt, the junior senator from AlabaMAGA gave the speech of her life and managed to say… nothing:
“Our history has been written with the grit of men and women who got knocked down. But we know their stories because they did not stay down. We are here because they stood back up.”
- Katie Britt
Speechwriter!!!!
Originally published at https://www.dailykos.com on March 9, 2024.
