It’s about the “little girl fundy voice”

The Perfect Republican, “Christian” Wife: In the kitchen; showing a bit of cleavage; cross necklace; and speaking in a little girl’s breathless, submissive voice, alternately smiling and looking sad. This is sick, sick, sick.

I wasn’t going to watch the Republican response to President Biden’s State of the Union speech. But then social media posts started popping up: “What am I seeing?” “This porn sucks.” “Who is this?”

It was irresistable. I only caught the last half, but Oh My Goodness. I’ve watched the whole thing since then.

What we were seeing were worlds in collision. The folks I follow on social media were aware of a separate culture of evangelical Christians, Southerners, MAGAs. We had read articles about their culture from those who had ventured forth anthropologically or escaped. Hmm interesting, but reading about and actually seeing are two different things. We had been in a bubble.

Conversely, a United States Senator who presents herself with a dipping blouse neckline showing a gleaming stone-encrusted cross, speaking in a breathy childlike voice from a darkened and apparently unused kitchen was in a bubble of her own, along with a Republican Party that thought this would be appealing.

Speaker of the House of Representatives Mike Johnson could smirk and shake his head and refuse to applaud through the State of the Union because he lives in that bubble too. But let’s talk about Senator Katie Britt’s highly gendered performance.

For those who know (numbers now increasing), that bizarre voice is called “fundy baby voice.” It is cultivated by women in what let’s call the fundy bubble, which includes both more and less than MAGA or the Republican Party. It is explicitly taught to them, and they use it deliberately to signal that they belong to that bubble and all it implies about women – submissive to men, stays in the home, and certainly no attempt to control the relationship of sex to pregnancy. We want more children, Britt breathed as she endorsed IVF.

Her emotional presentation was also bizarre, with much too much smiling as she spoke about rape and household finances. But women are supposed to smile – men thought Hillary Clinton and Elizabeth Warren should smile more. We’ve all been told more than once to smile more. Here was a woman who is willing to smile more, before our very eyes. And also to choke up her voice as if she was about to cry, to show us how very sensitive she is to others’ plights.

Tia Levings explains this. Yes, there are large numbers of people for whom this is expected and normal behavion, even as they know it is artificial. They even have a reference book to tell them how to do it: Fascinating Womanhood, by Helen Andelin, a contemporaneous reaction to second-wave feminism. It was first published in 1963, shortly after Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique.

Fascinating Womanhood codified a set of behaviors that women had been exposed to as an expected norm. They were to be submissive to men and responsive to men’s desires. But they also were to understand that those behaviors could be used to mask their ambition, as long as that ambition was compatible with conning the men into compliance with it. There were limits to what was acceptable.

According to Levings, Fascinating Womanhood has never ceased to be popular within the fundy bubble. It is now in its sixth print run. I can’t recall if I bought it back in 1963. I do recall reading a bit of it, recognizing what it was, and not finishing it. Carly Simon recorded a song that referred to the ideas ironically in 1971 in “The Girl You Think You See.”

Simon’s emotional range, starting with that fundy breathiness, foreshadows Britt’s performance.  And yes, it’s about sex, but I’ll leave that for another post.

I hadn’t thought about Fascinating Womanhood for a very long time. That’s my bubble. That was the shock of hearing that childish voice and histrionic delivery. Reading about the fundy bubble was different from seeing it in action. Reactions cited The Stepford Wives and The Handmaid’s Tale.

Senator Katie Britt of Alabama is a LIAR. Through and through, a LIAR.

During her response to President Biden’s State of the Union message, Senator Katie Britt (Liar, AL) told the story of a 12-yr-old girl who was raped.  Britt tied President Biden to this story.  SHE LIED.  The girl was forced TWENTY YEARS AGO to work in a Mexican brothel.  And here’s the rest of the story.

This is what Britt said.  “We know that President Biden didn’t just create this border crisis. He invited it with 94 executive actions in his first 100 days. When I took office, I took a different approach. I traveled to the Del Rio sector of Texas. That’s where I spoke to a woman who shared her story with me. She had been sex trafficked by the cartels starting at the age of 12. She told me not just that she was raped every day, but how many times a day she was raped. The cartels put her on a mattress in a shoe box of a room, and they sent men through that door over and over again for hours and hours on end. We wouldn’t be okay with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it. President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.”

 

And here are the facts.

If you were watching Britt’s speech on Thursday night, you likely would have thought she was talking about a recent victim of sex trafficking who was abused in the United States and suffered because of President Biden’s policies.

Britt’s account of Romero’s experience was a centerpiece of her rebuttal to Biden’s address. The way Britt sets up the story, there is no indication that she is talking about a woman who was working in brothels in Mexico during the George W. Bush administration. This is how the passage unfolds.

  • She first blames Biden for the surge of migrants at the border.
  • Then she says she visited the border shortly after she took office. That would be 2023.
  • At length, she details the story of an unnamed victim that she says she met on her trip. The implication is that the woman recently crossed the border — because of “sex trafficking by the cartels.”
  • She strongly suggests that her abuse took place in the United States: “We wouldn’t be okay with this happening in a Third World country. This is the United States of America, and it is past time, in my opinion, that we start acting like it.”
  • She ends by reinforcing that such alleged trafficking is Biden’s fault: “President Biden’s border policies are a disgrace.”

But Biden has nothing to do with Romero’s story. As she testified nine years ago, her mother threw her out of her house at age 12 and she “fell prey to a professional pimp.” She says she then spent the next four years in brothels before a regular client helped her escape when she was 16 years old. There is no indication in her story that drug cartels were involved, though Britt said that in the State of the Union response and has made a similar claim on at least one other occasion. Romero was never trafficked to the United States; instead, she says many men who paid to have sex with her were “foreigners visiting my city looking to have sexual interactions with minors like me.”

CONCLUSION:  SENATOR BRITT OF ALABAMA IS A LIAR.

Thank you, Bernie Sanders

This is big news–but it didn’t just happen by chance.

Bernie Sanders @SenSanders 31m
After our investigation into the outrageously high cost of inhalers in the U.S., Boehringer Ingelheim agreed to reduce the cost of its inhalers to $35, bringing financial relief to Americans who need these inhalers to breathe.

Now the other inhaler companies must follow suit.

More Perfect Union @MorePerfectUS
BREAKING: Pharma giant Boehringer Ingelheim will bring down the cost of inhalers from $525 to $35 a month for most patients. They’re one of the four major inhaler makers. This move, which could help millions, comes after massive public pressure and a federal lawsuit.

Elizabeth Warren @SenWarren
This is big news—but it didn’t just happen by chance.

Democrats in Congress pressed Big Pharma to lower costs.

@POTUS Biden capped the cost of insulin at $35 a month for seniors with diabetes.

Now inhaler costs are coming down.

@GSK, @AstraZeneca, & @TevaUSA need to step up!

THANKS BERNIE!!!

Trump trials, RNC dying, you have lost your daughters

Here’s how you know the GOP is absolutely full of it on protecting IVF

When in doubt, Republicans find a way to cover their asses.

The Trump trial the Supreme Court can’t stop

Trump just keeps making history, this time for being the first current or former president facing a criminal trial.

West Virginia’s schools might be forced to pay for ‘In God We Trust’ signage

And it seems the schools will also have to trust in God to find the money to finance those signs.

Cartoon: Mitch McConnell passes the torch

When democracy is on fire …

Shocker! Trump’s Truth Social co-founders say he’s screwing them over

Throw another Trump lawsuit on the pile!

Poll: A majority of Republicans identify as Christian nationalists

Be it Donald Trump or Jesus Christ, more than half of Republicans would like one of these individuals to lead us to the land of milk, honey, and unchecked grift.

Your daughters are abandoning you over abortion, Republicans

It turns out that nothing is more divisive than abortion.

Trump is encouraging threats to judges. And it’s no accident

Trump doesn’t need to spell things out for his followers to understand his code.

Mitt Romney says what other Republicans won’t: He’s not voting Trump

Why is it so difficult to take the smallest stand against a tyrant?

“Moms for Liberty” founders appear on 60 Minutes. It does not go well for them

Over the weekend, “60 Minutes” aired a piece on Moms for Liberty, the conservative “watchdog” group that has inspired absurd book bans across the country. Two of the founders of the group, Tiffany Justice and Tina Descovich, sat for an interview with reporter Scott Pelley and had a difficult time answering pretty simple and direct questions.

“We love teachers. My children have had the best teachers. I’ve had the greatest teachers that have influenced and impact me. But there are rogue teachers in America’s classrooms right now,” Descovich told Pelley. Justice added, “Parents send their children to school to be educated, not indoctrinated into ideology.”

Pelley asked, “What ideology are they being indoctrinated into?” Whether something short-circuited inside Descovich’s brain is hard to say, but after taking a breath and swallowing, she slowly answered, “Let’s just say … children in America cannot read.” Huh?

Pelley repeatedly pointed out that the two were being “evasive,” and when Justice attempted to pivot to a handful of books with sexual content that may be inappropriate for certain age groups, his report was quick to point out that “Most people wouldn’t want them in a lower school. But in a tactic of outrage politics, Moms for Liberty takes a kernel of truth and concludes: These examples are not rare mistakes, but a plot to sexualize children.”

There’s a reason these women don’t want to give clear answers to questions about their real positions on education: They aren’t popular opinions among most Americans. The midterm elections bore that out when the overwhelming majority of the group’s endorsed candidates failed to win school board races across the country.

The report touched on missing co-founder Bridget Ziegler (who left the group) and the ongoing (and very un-Christian-conservative-like) sex scandal involving herself, her husband, and another woman. But Ziegler and her moral hypocrisy were clearly not a topic cleared to be discussed at length by Pelley with the Moms for Liberty ladies.

The two women also denied theirs is an anti-LGBTQ+ organization—a position that the historical record does not support. They admit the group’s social media accounts are managed by Justice, but when pressed by Pelley on repeated social media posts attacking librarians and others for being “groomers,” a term that right-wing extremists use as a blaring horn of an anti-gay dog whistle, Justice’s nonsensical response was, “Parents want to to partner with their children’s schools, but we do not co-parent with the government.”

Pelley pressed further, observing that “Grooming does not seem like a word that you want to take on?” Justice’s response was, “We did some polling” about “parental rights,” instead of owning up to her own inflammatory use of specific words.

The full segment focused on Beaufort, South Carolina, where two people’s complaints led to threats and a review of 97 books. Moms for Liberty, which is designated an “extremist” group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, is one of the main groups behind the so-called parental rights movement that manufactures rage about inappropriate literature being used in schools beset by “woke” ideology.

According to Pelley’s report, after a long, drawn-out process, only five of the 97 books ended up being banned (and it was discovered that one of the books being attacked had never appeared on a school shelf in the first place) while a few other books were moved up to middle school and high school libraries.

Enjoy the clear cowardice of two people who claim they want parents to have the right to choose what their children learn, but clearly want to control what  other people’s children should learn.

Democrats will win in November . . . IF YOU GET OUT AND VOTE AND TAKE FRIENDS WITH YOU

There’s an old military adage that says:  “When you go to war, you want lots of friends to go with you and bring their guns.”

Democrats are poised to win in November — win big — White House, Senate, House PROVIDED WE TAKE OUR FRIENDS WITH US AND THEY BRING THEIR VOTES WITH THEM.

Official White House photo

In November, Joe Biden will win a second term as president. Democrats will win the House of Representatives. The Senate will be very close, but  a Democratic trifecta is likely.

It’s not all bad that so much of the coverage seems to point to a Donald Trump win or a close contest. That keeps us on our toes to prevent the worst from happening. But it’s time to do the other side.

Caveat: I recognize that there is a hardcore 27% who will vote for Trump if he is dead and decaying before their eyes. I am not talking about them. There is a persuadable middle that makes the difference. I am talking about them.

Caveat: This is a vibes-based prediction. Everyone’s predictions at this point are vibe-based. The difference is that I am honest about that.

Polls are not reliable eight months before the election. A meme making the rounds reminds us that Michael Dukakis had a 10-point lead over George H. W. Bush at this point. Most people are barely aware that there will be an election this year. Fewer are aware that Biden and Donald Trump will be the presidential candidates.

Polls have underpredicted Democratic strength and overpredicted Trump strength over the past couple of years. None of the pollsters has publicly addressed this bias. I think assuming that the polls are tilted toward Republicans is reasonable.

The Republican Party is weak — dying. Heather Cox Richardson, historian of political parties, says it looks to her like other collapses of political parties.

Behind the horse race–type coverage of the contest for presidential nominations, a major realignment is underway in United States politics. The Republican Party is dying as Trump and his supporters take it over, but there is a larger story behind that crash. This moment looks much like the other times in our history when a formerly stable two-party system has fallen apart and Americans reevaluated what they want out of their government.

While Trump attempts to put his daughter-in-law into the Republican leadership, state Republican parties are running out of money. Trump is likely to try to get the Party to pay for his legal expenses. All that sets up potential infighting, along with various issues peculiar to individual states, like an ongoing fight in Michigan. In contrast, the Democrats are bringing in money, and Joe Biden is not spending his time in court.

Nikki Haley is not giving up her campaign, and, while Trump is winning most primaries, around 40% of Republican voters are willing to vote for a not-Trump.

I maintain that the reaction to Dobbs, primarily among women but far from absent in men, accounts for most of the error in the polls. The fallout from Dobbs will continue through the summer. Women with horrendous complications of pregnancy will be denied treatment. A Supreme Court decision on the availability of mifepristone will be handed down this summer. And a great many people are angry enough that they don’t need to be reminded.

The incoherence of the Dobbs decision and the forced-pregnancy legislation in various states is splitting Republicans. The insistence on fetal personhood put forth by the Alabama Supreme Court cannot be reconciled with the use of IVF for people who want children but are having difficulties with the basic route.

Trump is losing his court cases. There is much more to come in this area.

Kevin Drum also thinks Biden will win. He’s coming at it a little differently, but I don’t disagree.

  • Right now the race is basically a tossup.
  • But it’s still very early. The vast majority of swing voters aren’t paying attention yet—and won’t until after the conventions.
  • As voter attention shifts to the campaign it will hurt Trump. Historically, the more people hear from Trump, the less they like him.
  • Trump has a lower ceiling than Biden. There are just too many people who flatly won’t vote for him. Biden has more upside.
  • Many of the people who say they won’t vote for Biden will come around later in the year. As always, the prospect of a Republican winning—especially Trump—will overcome their early doubts.
  • Biden hasn’t even begun to campaign yet. He has a lot of money, and when the ads start running they’ll hurt Trump a lot.
  • Biden has minor problems with his physical condition, which means he’s old.  But his mental condition is fine. Trump, by contrast, shows signs of serious mental deterioration. This hasn’t gotten a lot of attention yet, but it will.
  • Trump has a big potential downside from all his trials. His MAGA fans might not care, but centrist voters do, and it could spell big problems if prosecutors are getting headlines for Trump’s misdeeds when October rolls around.

Another person to follow is Simon Rosenberg.