This just in- Stepford Wife delivers GOP response to State of the Union address
How is it that Sen. Katie Britt (R-AL) is only Alabama's second-worst Senator?
By now, unless you’re living in a hermetically sealed Republican biosphere, you know that the story told by the junior Republican Senator from Alabama, Katie Britt, during her response to the State of the Union, is a lie.
Shocked, SHOCKED I am, that a Republican- especially one from Alabama- is telling lies. Whodathunkit??
Journalist Jonathan Katz was curious about her story because Sen. Britt’s SOTU response wasn’t the first time she’d told it. So, after some cursory digging, it wasn’t long before he identified the victim. It turns out the woman Britt discussed was the victim of sex trafficking.
In Mexico.
During the Presidency of…wait for it…George W. Bush.
While Sen. Britt's story was horrific, almost none of it was confirmed in how she told it, and what was true didn’t happen while Joe Biden was in office. Nor did it have anything to do with the current crisis on our southern border.
It was a fundamentally and knowingly dishonest invention with a kernel of truth told in a way intended to place the blame squarely on the shoulders of a Democratic President who had nothing to do with it.
How could Joe Biden stand by so callously as something so horrific happened in America? Well, that’s easy; he didn’t, because it didn’t happen in the way Sen. Britt told the story. She lied about it, but her barely contained faux rage was almost believable, no?
One has to wonder how many easily deceived MAGA true believers were taken it by Sen. Britt’s lie?
The choice of Sen. Britt was interesting, made as it was to spotlight President Biden’s age. As
observed, what happened was a fair bit different.The Republicans tapped Senator Katie Britt (R-AL) to give their rebuttal to the speech, evidently hoping to contrast her youth—she’s 42—with Biden’s age. But while her team helpfully distributed talking points to Republican influencers before either Biden or Britt had spoken, suggesting they describe her as “America’s mom” and say that Biden’s speech was “tone deaf” while hers was “the perfect pitch,” the fact that the Republicans had a female senator give what could be the most important speech of her life in a kitchen seemed to tell its own, more powerful, story.
That “more powerful story” seems to be the one in which Sen. Britt helped to negotiate the border bill…and then voted against it when Donald Trump ordered Republicans to do so.
As President Biden pointed out in his speech, Republicans could’ve helped to fix the problem. Instead, they caved to Trump and decided to continue contributing to it. Sen. Britt conveniently ignored that truth in her speech, even as she cynically blamed President Biden for the border crisis.
Yes, the hypocrisy IS rather stunning, but it’s become SOP for the GOP.
Sen. Britt wasn’t chosen because she was a young, fiercely independent, free-thinking Republican. Those no longer exist.
One could be forgiven if the family kitchen in the background fairly screamed, “Stepford Wife.” While that might seem a bit harsh, she was chosen in part because the kitchen is where Republicans prefer their women to be.
Or, as
discerned,As soon as Senator Katie Britt started speaking, I knew exactly who she is. She is so many of the pastor's wives and Sunday School teachers I knew growing up in an Evangelical church. Be sweet. Obey.
I was about to head to bed after the State of the Union last night, when I heard a voice coming from my television that stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t know who was speaking, but it really didn’t matter—I recognized the voice. It was so many voices from my childhood. It was so many Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings. It was potlucks, and baby showers, and graduations, and birthday parties.
It was Senator Katie Britt using her well-practiced fundie baby voice.
I threw so many folks for a loop last year when I discussed the voice in a video. I used my “training” as a former Evangelical, a Southern Baptist, to describe the breathy cadence and the soft, child-like high pitch. Folks outside of Fundamentalist culture had never heard the term—they just knew the voice made them uncomfortable.
I know that voice well…in fact I can’t shake it myself. It was engrained in every woman I knew from church and every time I speak about it, folks will point out that I sound that way myself. Yes, friends. That’s the point.
Be sweet. Obey. Prove it by speaking in muted tones.
Having grown up in a small town of 941, I can vouch for Ms. Piper’s assessment of Sen. Britt. Pastor’s wives are expected to fit into a particular box, particularly in Evangelical, Fundamentalist, and/or Southern Baptist cultures. And while I know nothing of Sen. Britt’s husband or occupation, she does fit the description of that genre. At the very least, she was playing a woman from that genre.
You all know Michelle Duggar. Remember her voice? Too high pitched? Too much like a little girl? Too breathy. That’s purposeful. Michelle has to show submission to her husband in all interactions public. She stared at Jim Bob anytime he spoke. She was quiet until given a question or prompt. She was also harboring secrets and that’s something I can’t forget. Terrible secrets behind that voice.
Christian nationalist Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, is married to a woman who also uses the voice. I first heard her speak in a Fox News interview. I had the same reaction I had to Senator Britt. I turned the video up and listened…and got a cold shiver. Kelly Johnson says nothing too awfully problematic during the interview, but we all know she holds anti-LGBTQ views and even once correlated gay folks with bestiality and incest.
Johnson removed a document from her Christian Counseling site that said, ““We believe and the Bible teaches that any form of sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication, homosexuality, bisexual conduct, bestiality, incest, pornography or any attempt to change one’s sex, or disagreement with one’s biological sex, is sinful and offensive to God,”
Some women use their fundie baby voices from habit. From years of lessons, but some have something to hide which they cover for in fundie baby voice and a good-natured temperament. From an abusive husband, to a drinking problem, to hiding a pack of cigarettes in the kitchen, it was often something.
Many of these women also couldn’t keep it up at all times, and I saw lots of masks slip when these women spoke to their children. I remember staying the night with a friend and her mom dropping the voice at home. It can be a little creepy to watch the venom spewed at a child who has spilled his milk when his mother was dripping honey from her mouth just the instant before. It feels cold.
I don’t know if that was the GOP’s or Sen. Britt’s intent, but I can’t imagine that was far from the mark. The Republicans wanted/needed someone to play an aggrieved and scared mother…and Sen. Britt was perfect for the role.
She was probably a bit TOO perfect, given how obvious it was that she’d been over-coached on what notes to hit. Her over-acting and overly dramatic interpretation of the “scared mother” was…well, watch Scarlett Johannson’s impression of her, and you’ll see what I mean.
Yeah, the “Fundie Baby Voice” was just a wee bit too scripted and stereotypical to be believable.
As
points out, 2024 marks the third consecutive year the GOP has selected a woman to give their response to the SOTU. After all, if you’re going to treat women as property and “less than human,” who better to deliver the Republican point of view than a seemingly harmless and obedient White woman, yeah?Because when Aunt Lydia speaks…well, you know how that goes….
It’s political pick-meism at its finest. As our founding father Benjamin Franklin said, “Our new Constitution is now established, and has an appearance that promises permanency; but in this world nothing can be said to be certain, except death, taxes, and an unthreatening white woman carrying water for the patriarchy.”
Britt’s speech was delivered from her kitchen, because that’s where she thinks women belong. Well, not her specifically. She’s going to the Senate to pass laws to force youinto the kitchen.
A lot of Britt’s speech focused on sexual assault and human trafficking as a threat to the honor of women and girls. Basically, what Sen. Britt was cooking up in her kitchen was a pot roast of racism served with a heaping side of straw man. The point was essentially to white women feel like they and their daughters are under threat from those foreign men.
I’d argue that the only sure things in life are death, taxes, and the Dallas Cowboys failing to make it past the first round of the playoffs, but what do I know? But lyz and I do agree on the menu Sen. Britt was serving up- “a pot roast of racism served with a heaping side of straw man.”
Because if you can keep White mothers scared that Brown people are coming after their children…or to rape them…they can be propagandized into voting Republican. Keep ‘em scared and stupid, and the party serving up fear and loathing will have a healthy head start.
That would account for the scary mommy voice that Sen. Britt affected in her response. I couldn’t decide if she sounded like a woman possessed by the spirit of Lee Atwater or if she was doing her Linda Blair impersonation from The Exorcist.
Truthfully, what Republican men are using Sen. Britt for is part of their elaborate smokescreen to distract from what they’re working toward:
In reality, the biggest physical threat to American women is the men they marry and those closest to them. Essentially, perpetrators of sexual violence aren’t the unknown man lurking on the streets. According to RAINN, 59% of perpetrators of sexual violence are acquaintances and 34% are family members. The call is literally coming from inside the house. And the phone is ringing in Katie Britt’s kitchen, but she’s too busy cooking up a steaming hot racism to answer that phone.
Republicans are working oning to end no-fault divorce, which makes harder for women to leave their abusers, want to make it so domestic abusers can keep their guns, and should you get raped, you will have to carry that baby to term after Republicans take away reproductive rights. But yeah, sure, the border is the real threat.
In some red states, pregnant women can’t obtain a divorce until they deliver because legally, for all intents and purposes, they’re the property of men. As long as they’re pregnant, they possess something that belongs to their husband.
Welcome to America, circa the 16th century….
Katie Britt wants you to know Amazon is shipping babies in cupboards.
Katie Britt read Stepford Wives and thought it was a great idea.
Katie Britt is running on a platform of bringing back lobotomies.
Katie Britt has some yellow wallpaper she thinks would look nice in your home.
Katie Britt just wants America to return to a time when men were men and women lived off cottage cheese, pineapple, and speed; had nothing but tiny waists and glassy-eyed stares; and served their Mr. Potato-head husbands like JESUS GOD INTENDED.
Katie Britt thinks the only three books a home needs are:
The Stepford Wives
The Bible
A Julia Child cookbook
Do you want to know what scares the Hell out of me? Until the night of the SOTU, I had never heard of Katie Britt. Not long after,
mentioned she was/is/could still be on Donald Trump’s VP shortlist.So, let’s say Donald Trump is elected President, and he then chokes to death on a Big Mac on April Fools Day (appropriate, no?). Is America ready for President Katie Britt?
Oh, HELL no.
Wir wären so am Arsch…. (For those of you who don’t speak German, “We would be so fucked”)
There’s much to recommend Britt. A young woman (she’s 42), she looks and sounds very different than Donald Trump (and Joe Biden). She is an able performer on TV. And, she is far less well known (at the moment) than people like Tim Scott and Elise Stefanik — meaning her chances of outshining Trump if she shares the ticket with him are minimal. (And, yes, that absolutely matters to him.)
(Credit where credit is due: More than a month ago, Mark Halperin, who writes the “Wide World of News” Substack first made the affirmative case for why Britt made the most sense as Trump’s VP pick.)
There is NO way that the selection of Britt to deliver the Republican response was made ignorant of the veepstakes. In fact, I would argue that she was picked because there is a significant element within the party (not clear whether Trump is part of that group) who WANT him to pick her.
Of course, the above is what Cillizza wrote prior to Sen. Britt’s tour de farce. The assumption is that Donald Trump wants a camera-friendly and -ready VP. Sen. Britt may be camera-friendly in that she’s young and attractive, especially in Washington, a town charitably described as “Hollywood for ugly people.”
But is she “camera-ready?” Can her nightmarish performance in the SOTU response be written off as an aberration? Can some media training smooth out her “I’m the craziest fucking mother in the Target parking lot” affect?
Or is she merely a slightly more intelligent and somewhat more self-aware wacko than Sarah Palin?
When all is said and done in November, it’s entirely possible that Donald Trump could be the only thing separating us from President Katie Britt.
If that doesn’t drop you to your knees in prayer, supplication, and abject terror, I can’t imagine what would.
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