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That POS feature on DNC Rep. AOC from NYC in GQ is LOL funny.

Have you taken a stroll through the dingy back alleys of social media the past couple of days? Then it is entirely likely you have been faced with the image of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez emblazoned on Gentleman’s Quarterly Magazine in an arresting image. Literally, there she appears, in couture fashions, while seemingly replicating her recent bout of PR, where she was allegedly carted off in non-existent handcuffs.

Throughout the gushing profile, there are more images, where Alex From the Bronx is posing throughout the D.C. area in self-serious, hyper-dramatic poses. Bear in mind, this is the woman who verbally recoils at the suggestion that anyone is paying unapproved attention to her, all while she willingly throws herself in front of any lens and fills up data packets with her endless stream of social media offerings.

The only thing that is more grating to her than people paying attention is if people refuse to pay attention to her.

But for all the mirth seen in these garish glamour shots, there is more amusement in her article. Her appearance inside Men’s Vogue does not make sense on the surface, but that becomes smoothed over by the reality that throughout her profile, she does not make sense. Penned by the reliably race-baiting writer Wesley Lowery, we get not only a giddy, slobbering assessment of the alleged import of this woman; she is permitted to wax pathetic without the slightest bit of critical pushback.

This actually makes for a revealing and unintentionally hilarious feature, which I will eviscerate gleefully, but first some context. It arrives without a trace of surprise that the conversation would turn to Donald Trump, and that offers the perfect juxtaposition. This is because just about every critique of the former President and his supporters is found with AOC and her minions. 

Cult-like devotion? Check, and check. Excessive defense of the figure from critics? Boy, you betcha. Slavish praise towards anything spoken? Her people probably exceed Trump’s acolytes in this manner. Yet as we will see, not only is their coverage of this fanaticism delivered without anything approaching objectivity, in AOC’s case, it is roundly ignored. And so, I shall delve into the body of this beatific bio, to spare you the suffering.

Almost four years after her improbable arrival in Washington, Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become the political voice of a generation—and a cultural star whose power transcends politics. 

  • See what I mean? There may be a dose of unintended accuracy here. Her star power may transcend politics, in a way that it does not apply to politics. Her political heft is non-existent, as she exists more as a political reality star.

A certified celebrity. Arguably more famous than any other person in American politics without the last name Obama or Trump; beloved and loathed at competing ends of the political spectrum. Constitutionally opposed to sitting down, shutting up, and conforming to the patriotic play-theater of Washington. The right wing’s night terror in the flesh.
  • That last sentence is something always alluded to, yet never explained. What precisely does she do to induce this supposed terror? The woman has not presented anything resembling a threat to the right. As proof? This passage follows a lengthy melodramatic section about the repeal of Roe vs. Wade, something she lent no heft towards preventing.

She represents something singular: the future. A revolutionary on the rise. The clear heir to an ascendant progressive movement. The best and possibly last—depending on how quickly some combination of fascism, religious fundamentalism, and climate change comes for us all—chance; a source of hope that things can get better in their lifetimes.

  • This placard-worthy effusive praise is completely undone by a very basic question: This is all based on…what? Cite specifically what AOC has actually accomplished to generate this level of fealty and promise. This is a woman who has a full media portfolio, but an empty political resume.

We discussed her three years in Washington, the hostile reception she says she still receives from colleagues, the misogyny and the abuse she endures. Days earlier, a conservative comedian had sexually harassed her on the steps of the Capitol Building, and as we spoke, his leering video of the confrontation was still bouncing around the internet.

  • This references the video made by Alex Stein one day outside the Capitol. He made a gag reel that set AOC off, to the point she stormed up to him. That is how threatened she felt. And she also felt so traumatized by the video that she ended up sharing it on social media. The ultimate point was this was the woman who dismissed the actual and proven threats made on SCOTUS Justice Brett Kavanaugh and others, yet when she was the focus of a comedic bit she raced to Capitol authorities and declared she needed personal security. (Her claim is made somewhat more valid by her fiancé being there that day and walking on without protecting her.)

In those weeks after Roe’s demise, Ocasio-Cortez was ubiquitous: at rallies and on television, demanding that her colleagues move with urgency to protect access to reproductive health services and calling on men in particular to share their stories of how they had benefited from decades of legally protected abortion. The battle for bodily autonomy and human dignity, she said, will only be won if men themselves join in the fight.
  • I’m sorry, what’s that?! We have been told firmly over the years that men have no place in this debate, now suddenly, as their cherished abortions are becoming limited, men have a duty to join in. Funny how that works.

But we know that when white folks take up space and say the right thing in rooms of other white people, that is the most shifting activity that can happen, more sometimes than any protest or any person writing a letter to the editor or anything like that. And we need men to be speaking up in that way as well. 

  • Quite a bit of female-splaining takes place in this article.

When the insurrectionists stormed the Capitol, however, she says that something changed. She spent much of that day crouched in the corners of various congressional offices, convinced she was going to die. 

  • Time out for a brief reminder that she was in a separate building on that day, and never directly imperiled. The operative phrase here: She was convinced…

As we discussed generational splits across movements—specifically the now geriatric women and Black officials who, decades after being elected as historic firsts, can’t seem to stop throwing themselves in front of television cameras to undermine the aims of the younger activists attempting to ascend behind them…
  • Seriously? This is the complaint, in regards to the woman who never met a strange camera??
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez
AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite

It is not surprising to see the media continue fawning over AOC. Wesley Lowrey delivers no surprise as he frames all of her impressions in historical context; he tees up questions to allow her to expound energetically, and he never comes close to critical analysis or challenging questions. This is why seeing her in GQ moves from initially being a paradox.

A fashion magazine is actually an appropriate forum, as she is someone who is hailed and rewarded for the artifice, the presentation. She is savvy on image consciousness. Look at the way any event can be spun back to how it makes her appear. The January 6 riot saw her life threatened. An abortion protest she was key to staging saw her arrested on camera. Now, as Mike Miller pointed out, she is hesitant about the future because she might die – this month. Lowrey takes all of this in and just delivers it to readers. Nowhere in this piece is there anything approaching perspective.

The hilarity is that this is the very behavior these same journalists abhor about the Trump movement. MAGA is a cult, they declare, and Trump’s followers are an unthinking mass of bitter people because they are downtrodden, and the man traffics in fear to motivate them. Now look at AOC’s devotees – you see the same thing. The difference is in the framing by the media.

AOC’s people are inspired. AOC delivers hope for the future. She is not fear-mongering but dealing with very real threats. Her lack of true accomplishment is because the system is against her. She is the voice of the future, the face of our dreams. Donald Trump is motivating a cult, as Wesley Lowrey and the rest of the journalists bang the tambourine and hand us pamphlets, imploring us to accept AOC into our political life.

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