This is comical, any way you cut it. I think our job here is to figure out which of these options is actually the more hilarious and the most probable. Mitch McConnell picked Katie Britt to do the SOTU rebuttal. So we can reasonably infer that McConnell knows who and what she is. And what she is, is a breed of Christian who uses the “fundie baby voice” which is what we heard last night. She had her cross on, she was sitting in her kitchen, and she had The Voice — not The Voice of the Bene Gesserit, the sisterhood of witches in Dune, used to control — but another voice, used to dupe.
Here is a tremendous article which you should read in full. The writer starts out saying that she heard the voice last night on TV, which she calls the fundie baby voice, and it made her uncomfortable because she recognized it. I had the same reaction. Except I wasn’t relating it to church pot lucks, I was relating it to Miss America pageants or school teachers or any group of women who used this voice and who represented The Female Ideal and it was an ideal I knew I could never achieve because I’m wired too differently. Obedience and subservience are the key elements of this voice.
It’s a voice which American girls of my era (I was born in the 50’s) were encouraged to use early on because it symbolizes “I understand that I am here to submit to men in power, and I certainly don’t question that. That’s the natural order of the universe.” It’s a voice that makes me want to tear my phuquing hair out, because it symbolizes the era I was born in, when outspoken, intelligent girls were told, “You should have been born a boy,” and “you’re too smart for your own good.” I was told those things and then I was told I better start behaving like the Katie Britts if I knew what was good for me.
That’s what I heard last night when I tuned in ten minutes into Britt’s performance and hearing that voice along with the Miss America smile made me wonder immediately, “What the hell am I looking at?” a line that was voiced in living rooms nationwide, apparently.
Back to Sen Katie Britt and the Republican response to the State of the Union speech; it was filled with Fundamentalist ideology and the fundie baby voice. The setting was her kitchen—that is not by accident. It is likely that she thinks this is where most women should spend their time. She’s wearing a modest shirt, opened just far enough to see her cross necklace. She started her speech by indicating that she’s “just a mom” mentioning her children’s names to assure other fundamentalist Christians that she understands her role in society.
Her face says as much as her voice in fundie culture—that hyperbolic wince that she performed each time she said “Biden.” It means, “I’m going to say something here that isn’t very nice, but y’all know I’m going to keep it sweet.”
The bless your heart effect.
The breathless speech, the incongruent facial movements and smiles. The cadence of condescension. I am better than you, and here are the ways. I have children. They are perfect. I have a marriage. It is perfect. I am pretty and well-educated. I am a Christian—I am god fearing and I prove it by holding hands with my family and praying for the rest of you. I am better than you.
Not only “am I better than you,” but “I am your ideal. I am what a woman SHOULD be.” And to fundie men, like Mitch McConnell, Britt probably is. To a woman like myself, or the gal who penned the article you just read excerpts of, no freaking flaming way in a million years do we want to be that.
Which gets us to the question of our thesis here: Did Mitch put this dummy on her kitchen set, with her cross and her fundie voice because he honestly has bought into it himself and he believes that that’s an attractive package to sell to America of what the Republican party thinks being a woman is? Because that, using Occam’s Razor, is the logical conclusion to reach.
Or, is McConnell, cunning old bastard that he is, throwing a monkey wrench into Trump’s reelection plans? He won’t do so overtly. He said he would vote for Trump and he will. If Trump shows up on live TV tomorrow and sets fire to puppies, and then urinates on them to put it out, McConnell will still vote for him. Of that you may rest assured.
But remember during his resignation speech how McConnell said that no one has ever accused him of misunderstanding politics? He does understand how this game is played as well or better than most anybody who has ever been in it. And on that basis, maybe this is a subtle jab at Trump, a way to take him down.
Britt told her bald faced lie about the woman abused by the cartels — which happened in Mexico when Dubya was in office and has nothing to do with Joe Biden — and depicted a horrendous scene of serial rape. Does it occur to her that Donald Trump is an adjudicated rapist who only just this morning was able to put together a $91M bond to pay off the woman he raped and defamed, pending appeal? And that Trump is credibly accused of the rape and sexual assault of 25 other women, one of them who was a 13-year-old girl tied to a bed, when Jeffrey Epstein served her up to Trump? Does any of that cross the mind of the good Christian Mrs. Britt?
Either McConnell is oblivious to how this is playing to the rest of the country, because he has lost the ability to read this country, or he told us the truth the other day and he understands full well the political situation we’re in right now. And if the latter is the case, then Katie Britt is the stink bomb that McConnell threw as he walked off the field and put down the baton for somebody else to pick up and lead with. So which is it? Is Mitch unconscious or did he just say fuck you to Trump and his campaign?
I think you’re right. McConnell is too smart not to have done it.
It’s “Here’s your party, Donny, good luck with that.”
I shudder when I think of the enormous waste that the Republicans are causing. From the trying to ruin Ukraine for Putin to gobble up to the wasted time and money spent for a Congress that accomplishes nothing. The energy spent on demonizing the new scapegoat. Scapegoat of this election cycle trans people. Gays have already been used to death and before that women and foreigners. They flipped the script on Russians and communists, they love pitins Russia and the communists in North Korea. New evidence points to Putin paying trumps legal bills through the Chubb group. The Chubb group is still operating in Russia. Chubb group is making big money in Russia and Putin or another oligarch can funnel money from Russia to trump and it just looks like the Chubb group is loaning trump money. Very clever but someone will spill the beans sooner or later. Is everyone comfortable having a president owning millions to Putin? Im sure as hell not.
Looks like dirty money to me. CHUBB is getting sued, it looks like over their losses in Russia. May be a little more complicated, but let us just say they came into existence in 2016.
If McConnell is a “fundie” man, he sure as all get out married the wrong woman-Elaine Chao has been a professional woman, and a well-educated one at that, all her adult life. No kids either which makes her kind of anathema to the con xtians–by choice or just can’t, I’ve no idea.
I agree tho’, I think yertle is flipping former guy the bird. One last hurrah I guess.
OK, what you asked is completely understandable, but first you must put aside your morality and think like an “Ethical Egoist” who makes every moral choice based upon what benefits ME, not “US”, ME. McConnell got his three daughters from his first wife. Who is the first wife? From Google, “Sherrill Lynn Redmon is Mitch McConnell’s ex-wife. The retired feminist scholar was a progressive activist for women’s rights and empowerment. The lives of millions of women in the US have improved due to Sherrill Redmon’s feminist ideas, initiatives, and projects.” They were married from 1968 to 1980. Perhaps he loved her? Perhaps, however remember, an Ethical Egoist makes all moral choices based upon what benefits ME, so something about that marriage must have benefited Moscow Mitch or he wouldn’t have married a PROGRESSIVE WOMAN’S ACTIVIST. Perhaps she was too young to realize at that time she had power and didn’t have to be tied to HIM? Who knows? Ms. Redmon is listed as having a net worth of about $2 million. The second Mrs Moscow Mitch is Elaine Chow, a Taiwanese-American who has a net worth of $30 million, which benefits the sh!t out of Moscow Mitch, even though he enriched the hell out himself through the insider trading and self dealing he committed in his decades in political office. So, he marries a woman a decade his junior who is WELL connected financially and politically, who then is shoe horned into a Cabinet level position so she can then funnel political and financial benefit to her family and its interests. He married the first vessel for children. The second one seems to be heavily power and financial based. There could have been “love”, perhaps, but they’re both “conservatives” and they DO make moral choices based upon what benefits ME, so their marriages really aren’t that difficult to understand. What would attract a fairly attractive, younger woman to HIM? POLITICAL POWER. Perhaps she found him “attractive”? (ew) Who knows? But, with her family and her millions, marrying him would provide them a perfect opportunity to self deal at the highest levels. Difficult to understand? Only if you can’t set aside your morality and think like THEM.
You only made one mistake. Just remove the “ethical” and you have Mitch dead to.rights.
If Britt believes a woman’s place is in her home, being subservient to her husband, what the hell is she doing as an elected Senator?
That’s easy. She’s a plant to help push through that agenda and force it upon everyone else.
Her husband probably tells her to vote, just like ACB’s husband probably tells her how to decide cases.
She is a “special woman” which makes it okay
Let us not forget, do as I say, not as I do, Phyllis Schlafly, galloped around the United States telling women to stay at home.
Welcome to being bludgeoned by the Bible toting christo-fascists. I wonder if she or any of them realize the Romans didn’t use that shape to crucify anyone. They used an X shape and if not tied but nailed, they drove them through the ankle and wrist bones to support the weight of the dying person. The point was to make death as slow as possible. Of course, they live in a world devoid of facts, except one they can only deny for a limited time…every day they come closer to their own time on the cross.
Actually as often as not, they just nailed their wrists to a post – it saved the effort of making a cross bar. The saltire cross wasn’t used that often (problems in keeping it vertical without additional support)
Yeah, but they also think Jesus was a tall, emaciated blonde with blue eyes. A Palestinian carpenter with only hand tools.
Yeah, these “good Christian women” who talk about how their “real job” is being a wife and mother NEVER seem to get the idea that they’re NOT doing that “real job” when they’re sitting in DC, serving as a member of Congress. (And we ALL know how well being a “good Christian mom” has worked out for “Granny” Lauren Boebert.) Britt’s only been married 16 years (and she’s only 42) so it’s not like her 2 kids are out of the house, attending college (and, based on her Wiki page, she’s had a VERY full out-of-the-house work schedule–she got her JD in 2013 and worked at a couple of law firms for a couple of years before working for Richard Shelby’s 2016 reelection campaign and becoming Shelby’s chief of staff before then becoming the first female president of the Business Council of Alabama in Dec of 2018 from which she resigned in 2021 to run for the Senate).
I mean, as much as I loathed that hag, Phyllis Schlafly, at least she waited until her kids were well out of the house before going back to school and getting a degree and beginning her career as an anti-feminist gadfly. The one thing you could say about that real wicked witch of the Midwest is that, while she may have advocated for the “traditional family,” she waited until HER “traditional family” didn’t really “need” her any more. (One of the reasons I so despise Kay Ivey is that the woman has been married and divorced twice and produced NO children, but she seems to be of that mindset where a woman should ONLY “want” to be a wife to only one man and a mother of many children with no real interests beyond her marriage and family.)
“THE BLESS YOUR HEART EFFECT.”
Ursula, how right you are. Southern born and raised, I understand all the subtleties of the utterance of “Bless your heart.” The moment I heard Britt’s first few words, I immediately pictured the 1958 Miss America competition and winner Mary Ann Mobley’s sweet Mississippi voice answering her final question. You know, God, Family, Country, Sweet Potato pie, bless her heart.
However, I heard something in that whiny presentation, quite aptly described in Florence King’s fabulous magnum opus if Southern Culture, SOUTHERN LADIES AND GENTLEMEN.” One chapter immediately comes to mind Ms. Britt, fine example of “southern womanhood” that she (still) is, would be a permanent fixture in what is so well understood among shothern belles as “the meow corner.”
I’m being truthful when I say that I was taught as a child that that was the feminine ideal, the sweet submissive phony shit. That that was what “men wanted” and there was no higher purpose in life, for a woman, than to constantly think about what men wanted and to mold oneself accordingly.
Since my baseline position is honesty, as opposed to saccharine subterfuge, this indoctrination was hard for me. And make no mistake, it was about “finding a man” who would “give you” what you wanted. And a man can provide some material comfort, assuming he’s got any himself, but what I wanted in life nobody can give me but me. That’s the part they don’t tell you.
I loved that book as much as I hated 12 years in GA.
It is so HUGELY & HAPPILY wonderful to read the across-the-board loathing of this pathetic performance politician’s contribution to folklore.
Regardless of the reasons for McConnell’s choice and her delivery methods, i.e., setting, content and “voice,” it is great to see that either, and/or and both apply. The republicons f-ed this one up completely. Again. I do so love their consistency…
And President Biden was superb. Did it all without using the phrase “performance politics.” Glad to hear Murf’s followup report about the President’s next day trip to Pennsylvania.
The fact that freaking Newsmax called this woman’s performance “phony” and “out of touch” put me on the floor. That saccharine sweet delivery was totally out of character with a speech of that sort. She would have been better off using her normal voice instead of the southern belle bit. That was her first mistake and it was a lethal one. Nobody wanted to hear somebody from the cast of Gone With The Wind do a response. They wanted a sober Republican voice — and they got Suzie Homemaker, instead.
They weren’t trying to persuade liberals or even independents. They’re attempting to ride herd on female evangelicals, some of whom.are wavering at the thought of themselves or their daughters being raped by a Black or undocumented man and forced to carry a biracial fetus to term or who want to have an abortion if their life is at risk.
Dobbs may cause a few of these ladies to sweetly agree with their husbands and then vote their own fears once in the voting booth