Dumb & Mean: Why Marjorie Taylor Greene's hometown hates her
N.S.F.S.'s September Award for Generic White Woman Goes To...My Hometown Fascist Hero
In this post: the NSFS September award for worst GWW goes to... my hometown fascist hero.
Last week: what imaginative discourse offers us in terbulent times: hope for a different future.
Next week: it's as we all suspected, she's a dirty hypocrite... NSFS gossip column edition.
Oh hey folks,
Today, with both disgust and (admittedly) some relish, I’m diving into the atrocity that is Marjorie Taylor Greene, who wins Generic White Woman of September.
Disclaimer: the NSFS award for Generic White People(s) is not merit-based.
Greene wins for September not because she is particularly effective at being evil, but because she is as dumb as she is mean. She also happens to represent my native town of Rome, Georgia, in the county of Floyd, which is a floating district (if you don’t know what that is, I recommend Spenser Mestel’s free newsletter about US voting). This makes her mine to hate. As if she represents some sort of twisted version of my uncanny doppelganger, or perhaps she is more like the shadow-me from Jordan Peele’s Us. She is me. And also not me. Regardless, our backgrounds are mighty similar.
She haunts my town, at least in my imagination. My dad used to attend the same gym as her (to be specific: spin class at the YMCA, which is weirdly relevant to this story), before her crossfit insanity celebrity took her elsewhere (sorry crossfit fans, but that shit’s a cult). Family friends report running into her in the town’s “fancy” Italian restaurant. And ain’t nobody got nothing nice to say about her.
No, seriously. People from all swaths of the political spectrum in Rome hate her. In fact, it’s made strange bedfellows of the few, beleaguered Democrats with ardent Republicans in town. And yet, she’s still in power.
To be fair, before I go in hard for this collagen-filled bleach-blond white trash won’t even have her of a woman, another disclosure:
I come by my disdain honestly in a long tradition of southern writers who remain obsessed with the uneasy cultural quagmire of postbellum southern history. I grew up reading William Faulkner, Alice Walker, Flannery O’Connor, and Anne Rice (yes, I was a weird-ass kid). Southern gothic may be the only way to look squarely at people like Greene and not lose it in a stream of incomprehensible profanity.
Why Marjorie Taylor Greene Is So Freaking Unsettling: The Uncanny Logic of Racism
I know exactly who Marjorie Taylor Greene is, where she comes from, who her people are, and even how she conducts herself interpersonally in everyday interactions. Gossip in old southern towns might as well be a cultural tradition. As is oral story-telling and preacher-ing, of which I reluctantly admit, Greene is a master at her craft of bullshit. But of course, a good villain would be, especially with her backstory.
This is why when my friend from high school, and now a fellow white teacher absolutely committed to racial justice via education, shared this video of that $#%@3!4 it reignited the latent flame of hatred I have for that %#$@# @#$#@$.
It comes in a speech she gave to the Texas Youth Summit (eyeroll and of course it was) last week, where she tells a “joke” about the “President of Canada’s” plan for eclectic airplanes. Villain though she may be, clever comic she is not:
"So we were joking around and talking 'How is there an electric airplane and what does that look like?' So we were just making fun and thinking about, remember back a long time ago when you see movies and people in those slave ships and they're down there and they're rowing, and they're being whipped to row?"
"We were saying, 'How are they going to keep powering these electric airplanes?'" Greene asked. "'Is it like a spin class in a tube, and they've got everybody riding spin cycles and then this mean nasty airline stewardess that forced you to wear masks all the time on the planes...are they going to be forcing you to spin the plane?'"- MTG
Forrest’s momma said it best: “Stupid is as stupid does.”
I’ll leave a line-by-line analysis at that quote and move on for the sake of sanity.
There is a sublime horror in the image she is deliberately invoking: a modern-day Canadian-socialist world where instead of rowing ships, slaves are now trapped in some sort of soulless spin class turned mile-high club. It’s stupid, and doesn’t make any sense, but it’s not supposed to. It’s supposed to evoke a feeling.
As I watched it, what tripped me up was not what she said (per se), but rather how casually she said it. But no, it wasn’t casual. Flippant, maybe? It was that factor of everyday, subliminal racism that is both so abundant and deeply entrenched it bubbles lightly to the surface of every single word that comes out of her mouth. She is certainly not the only southern white woman I know who does this.
What makes her more grotesque than your standard issue southern white lady is that her speech was also pitch-perfect study in inciting anger. Clearly well-rehearsed, in the longer clip, you can see the performer at work, spinning a yarn designed to wrap around the minds of the audience and strangle out coherent thought.
One does not simply mention “slave ships” casually in such a setting.
The word “dog whistle” came to mind as I chewed on what exactly I found so stomach-churning about that clip. But this is not something that only dogs can hear. Normal human ears can hear it just fine. We all see what she is doing. Seemingly, the Rome, GA elite are united in their hatred of her. And yet, she remains in power.
What was it Hamlet said about something being terribly afoul in Denmark? In Rome, Georgia at least, it’s the stank of Marjorie Taylor Greene’s sweaty armpits.
And, just for the cheap seats in the back:
Racism and homophobic and transphobic “dog whistles” coming out of the mouths of political puppets represents a direct threat not just to all of us, but to democracy. Please see: basically all of Anne Applebaum’s essays and books et al.
Let’s not forget that poem that is in the common core curriculum across the United States by Martin Niemöller’s “First they came for…” (See what I did there in the tail end of the post? And I bet you didn’t think this post was also about education, but it just goes to show: everything is about education)
As the alt-right tightens its grip in Europe, such as Italy’s recent venture (or return) to neo-Facism is any indication. Here’s what September’s GWM had to say about that YESTERDAY (September 26, 2022):
What I’m Reading About Trash:
“Marjorie Taylor Greene loves Italy’s new fascist prime minister. But she can’t spell her name” where the article discusses Greene’s praise of the anti-LGBTQ+ leader whilst misgendering her (lolzzzz, ain’t no shade like queer shade- this article brightened my day).
And with that, until next week, keep it sleazy folks,
Allison
