What Democrats Should Learn From the Jasmine Crockett ‘B6 Incident’
Is it time to revisit the advice from yesteryear, ‘When they go low, we go high’?
It was the clapback heard around the world. The MAGAt Hatriot Queen Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) had finally met her match.
On the fateful night of May 15, 2024, the House Oversight Committee descended into chaos after Greene, in now-characteristic bully mode, made a demeaning remark aimed at Rep. Jasmine Crockett (D-Texas).
“I think your fake eyelashes are messing up what you’re reading,” Greene declared.
Yes, Greene went there — with a Black woman.
An uproar ensued. One can reasonably assume this was the actual intent of Greene’s barb since trolling and disruption now routinely reflect the MAGA objective to create political gridlock in Washington and “deconstruct the administrative state.” Committee Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) called for order and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) demanded that the Committee “take down” Greene’s words, essentially to reprimand her for insulting another lawmaker.
“That is absolutely unacceptable,” Ocasio-Cortez protested. “How dare you attack the physical appearance of another person?”
“Are your feelings hurt?” Greene mocked, unapologetic for her offensive remark.
Comer suspended the hearing for several minutes so lawmakers could confer with their parliamentary experts. Greene agreed to “strike” her words but refused to apologize, which led to a resumption of her and Ocasio-Cortez’s heated exchange.
“Come on guys,” Comer pleaded.
“Why don’t you debate me?” Greene challenged Ocasio-Cortez.
“I think it’s self-evident,” Ocasio-Cortez retorted.
“Yeah, you don’t have enough intelligence,” Greene responded.
Several more minutes of heated parliamentary discord ensued. The Committee voted to allow Greene to finish her allotted speaking time. That did not sit well — Crockett was not done.
“I’m just curious, just to better understand your ruling,” Crockett asked the Committee with seeming innocence. “If someone on this Committee then starts talking about somebody’s bleach blonde, bad built, butch body, that would not be engaging in personalities, correct?”
BOOM.
“What now?” Comer asked, clearly caught in the crosshairs of nuance.
“I’ve received so many amazing compliments from MAGA America throughout my time in Congress,” Crockett divulged with heavy sarcasm, after what has now been dubbed the B6 Incident. “They associate anything I do as a form of beautification with being quote-unquote ‘ghetto.’”
“I am not the only woman in Congress that wears lashes. There are women on [Greene’s] side of the aisle that wear lashes as well, as well as hair extensions. But she’s never felt like that was a dig she needed to take at anyone except for me, a Black woman who sits on the Committee.”
“It is racism,” Crockett declared. “And [Greene] decided that she was going to be that person, out loud and out front, yesterday. The difference is I just wasn’t going to take it lying down.”
That, right there, is what should inform Democratic strategy going forward.
Enough of the lying down.
The overwhelming response — hilarious articles, memes and videos in support of Crockett — damn near broke the internet. It also elevated her profile to a household name.
Let me be clear. Hurling ad hominem insults to attack someone on the winning side of a debate is nothing new. It is distraction. Obfuscation. A tactic of last resort when one scrapes the bottom of their intellectual barrel but comes up wanting. In politics, however, ad hominem attacks often serve a different purpose. They muddy the waters, effectively jamming communications of truth to promote disinformation — the very hallmark of fascist propaganda. Indeed, having mastered this playbook in his fake-wrestling WWE days and, seemingly, through careful study of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi writings, Donald Trump has now normalized this skillset in the political arena. For his fascist sycophants like Greene, it seems like a natural fit. Her fundraising elevates to new heights when she is in attack mode. Political discourse in America is now pure theater.
Except, fake is the new real.
The post-Trump era has birthed a country that is almost unrecognizable in terms of decency — and leadership. We have lain with dogs and are getting up now with their fleas. Indecorous exchanges, as transpired between Greene and Crockett within the hallowed walls of Congress, were once almost inconceivable. The lie — the more bare-faced, the better — is now “alternative truth.” Trump, a reputed mob-boss with 91 criminal indictments, is being allowed by a Supreme Court — awash in ethics violations that call into question its own objectivity on Trump — to run again for the presidency after inciting an insurrection at the nation’s Capitol. And Trump, a shameless grifter and conman spreading hate while selling Bibles and waving an American flag, is welcomed by Christo-fascist evangelicals like Franklin Graham and Paula White because, well, “To say no to Trump would be saying no to God.”
Clearly, it wasn’t God who set their anointed king, Trump, down in 2020. Oh no. That election was “stolen.”
If nothing else has become clear in the post-Trump era, it is that politically correct, 18th-century manners won’t win this war against cult “demons” whose assignment is to stir up the collective lumpen, invigorated by “blood sport” — blind and ignorant to what creeping fascism looks like.
Indeed, the rabble isn’t roused by intelligence or critical thinking. After Trump, that much is clear. The American electorate craves relatable political engagement that motivates them to get involved. They want entertainment. Trump has long transformed politics into reality-TV, and Democrats better get with the program. Is it what civic engagement should be? Many would argue no. However, when our democracy is at stake, we have to measure our effectiveness in messaging by whatever it takes to win.
Politically conscious citizens have been sounding the alarm for a while now, trying to get others to recognize that the death rattle of American democracy is already gurgling in our throat. And we’re frustrated because Democratic leadership is not as effective in messaging as they could be. They postulate and pontificate and posture their pedigree — listening to advice from yesteryear about “When they go low, we go high” — when, in fact, they ought to be taking a page out of Crockett’s playbook. She is eminently qualified as an attorney and former state legislator. However, she’s also fearless and understands the assignment — that you have to be in the arena and win the battles to win the war. As I stated in a previous article, we cannot persist in fighting a war on the “high road” when that is not where the battle is being fought.
Theodore Roosevelt once said:
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.
The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
Gladiator Crockett’s face is, indeed, “marred by dust and sweat and blood” in the arena in which she has found herself. Her dustup with Greene was not her first takedown to go viral.
Joe Biden and the Democratic posse of intellectual “strategists” would be wise to pay attention. Recruiting the fearless Robert de Niro — who can find the gutter if need be — to join the Biden-Harris campaign is but a small step in the right direction. De Niro entered the arena in his official capacity outside the New York City courthouse where Trump is currently being tried on 34 counts of fraud, related to hush-money that was paid to adult-film actress Stormy Daniels. MAGAts were out en masse making a mockery of our justice system. De Niro handled them. Colorfully.
Enough is enough.
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