“Laughing loudly”, “Wow”, “Ditjiwhy,” “Honey”, “DEI Vice President.”
It’s a fancy term that the right-wing media has used to satirize Kamala Harris for the past four years. Following President Joe Biden’s disastrous debate performance, the possibility of a Kamala takeover has gone from a conspiracy theory that seems to be running rampant on right-wing broadcasts to a real possibility, sending right-wing media into a tailspin. As journalist Kat Abugazale analyzes in her debut video essay: Mother JonesThe usual misogynistic tactics don’t work, at least not when compared to decades of propaganda masterpieces like Hillary Clinton, the evil empress dowager. Could it be that the usual Fox-type commentators shot themselves in the foot and inadvertently made Kamala more resilient?
“Voters across the country are not ready to turn their backs on her for Pavlovian ease,” Kat explains. “They don’t have trigger phrases like Benghazi or tacky nicknames like Crooked Hillary.”
Yes, Harris endures a ton of racist and sexist bullshit from Fox News and the far-right noise machine. And if there’s one thing to say about the right-wing media, it’s that they can adapt, and they can adapt quickly. But during Harris’s four years as vice president, the right-wing attacks on her as the so-called “DEI vice president” have fallen short of the toxic misogyny that helped Donald Trump win the 2016 election. In this video, Kat explains the right-wing media’s favorite taunts against Harris, how they differ from their endless campaigns against Hillary, and why they’re firing on all cylinders right now to recreate the Kamala story for their audience before it’s too late.
Picture above: Mother Jones; Lawrence Jackson/White House/Planet Pix/Zuma; Fox News; Media Matters for America
