Courage?
Just found The New Republic‘s profile of Gisele Fetterman. The the Brazilian-born wife of the newest senator from Pennsylvania has, of course, drawn fire from the right:
“The right-wing hates women. They especially hate strong women, and I think that’s what you’re seeing,” said Gisele of the ceaseless ridicule she’s gotten from conservative media operatives looking to define her as self-serving and suspicious. “The fact that a spouse of a senator-elect has been attacked nonstop for the past 24 hours and everyone’s OK with it, and everyone thinks it’s normal.… It’s not normal,” said Gisele after her first day on Capitol Hill.
Correct on both counts. About the right’s view of women and about people accepting the attacks as normal. But it’s AOC’s quote that puts an exclamation point on it.
Gisele Fetterman is not the first Democratic woman of color to get “the Fox News treatment.” Representative Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez has been a national obsession in conservative media since she began her freshman term four years ago. “I think that it’s very important that she doesn’t have to handle that by herself and on her own,” Ocasio-Cortez told The New Republic when asked what advice she’d give Gisele about her new life in the toxic political inferno of congressional politics.
“It’s very important that the party sticks up for people. They haven’t done a good job in the past,” added Ocasio-Cortez.
The best bosses during my life as a cubicle-dweller — ones I admired — were those who interposed themselves between us and the suits. They took any incoming fire so we could keep doing our jobs. Democrats need to do better. But it may be too late.
Speaker Nancy Pelosi in July instructed the House Sergeant at Arms to give members $10,000 each to upgrade security at their homes. But it is not enough, members complained, in a time when threats against members have more than doubled since Donald Trump won the presidency in 2016.
“If you put out hate into the world, it’s going to turn into action … and that’s what we’ve seen with Paul Pelosi,” said Gisele, referring to the October 28 assault by David DePape, who broke into House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s San Francisco home and attacked her husband with a hammer. Last week, the speaker said she would step aside from Democratic leadership.
Does anyone think it will get better with Rep. Kevin McCarthy as Speaker?