A return to fake right-wing outrage: Without Trump, Republicans run back to sexist resentments [View all]

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A return to fake right-wing outrage: Without Trump, Republicans run back to sexist resentments

Desperate to keep the rubes riled up, the right reverts to faking umbrage at "unladylike" self-expression

By AMANDA MARCOTTE at Salon

DECEMBER 18, 2020 6:03PM (UTC)

https://www.salon.com/2020/12/18/a-return-to-fake-right-wing-outrage-without-trump-republicans-run-back-to-sexist-resentments/

"SNIP......

So the right is returning to the strategy of the Barack Obama years, churning out a steady stream of fake outrage over supposed Democratic transgressions — remember how angry they were that Obama wore a tan suit? — all to feed their metanarrative that Democratic governance is inherently illegitimate. And they know that the quickest way to stir the furies of right-wing America is to tell them stories about how all those Democratic women are out of control. Who do those b*tches think they are? 

This past week saw a deeply unpleasant return to the long-standing Republican practice of firing up the base by bashing Democratic women for supposed sacrileges against ladylike behavior.

First, the Wall Street Journal threw out bait by running an op-ed by Joseph Epstein in which he addressed Dr. Jill Biden, the incoming first lady, as "kiddo" and argued that it's "fraudulent, not to say a touch comic," for her to use the title of "Dr.", even though, objectively, she has a doctorate. Epstein has been playing this game as far back as 1970, when he wrote in Harper's that "I would wish homosexuality off the face of the earth" and other grotesqueries about gay people. 

The op-ed was dumb and misogynist, so of course, Tucker Carlson of Fox News was drawn to it like ants to a puked-up Long Island Ice Tea. For multiple nights this week, Carlson hosted unhinged segments full of maximum umbrage, screeching that Biden is "borderline illiterate," dismissing her career as a high school and community college English teacher. The rest of conservative media is following suit:

.....SNIP"