Tucker Carlson: ‘Dumb’ and ‘Annoying’ AOC Wore Met Gala Dress So People Would Stare at ‘Her Butt’
Tucker Carlson could not resist opining on Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) and the dress she wore to Monday night’s Met Gala. AOC’s full-length white dress had the words “Tax the Rich” splashed in big print across the back, which she explained was designed to spark a conversation about being a working-class woman of color working at the Met.
It’s not clear that she achieved the goal of any meaningful discourse about gender, racial, or class identity politics from the dress, but she DID get a ton of attention for herself and the “tax the rich” message, so…bully for her? But Carlson’s take was a bit more circumspect.
“If you’ve been awake at any point over the past 24 hours you have probably seen this picture of Sandy Cortez showing up in a $35,000 a head gala in New York with a dress that says ‘Tax the rich” on the outside, the back,” Carlson opened. “So Cortez claims she wore the dress to start a conversation about what it means to be a working-class woman of color and not at ALL to focus on a picture of her butt.”
Carlson may have inadvertently revealed what his focus was — staring at her butt (!) — but ascribed his motive to AOC. Pop psychologists would call that projection, but the psychoanalysis of cable news hosts is a subject for another day.
But Carlson wasn’t done, and couldn’t resist going after his political nemesis.
“She is so dumb and so annoying, but also kind of clever,” he grumbled while admitting Ocasio-Cortez’s successful dress gambit.”She is baiting us here. Obviously, it’s tempting to rise to the bait.”
“Working-class? Right,” Carlson ridiculed. “Sandy Cortez grew up very far from the Bronx; her dad ran an architectural firm, she went to BU. Like so many vapid rich girls, her primary interests are wearing trendy clothes and talking about herself. Working-class? Please. Sandy Cortez is a paid defender of entrenched power.”
The Fox News prime time host has long mocked Ocasio-Cortez (who he demeaningly refers to as “Sandy” — a nickname she used in high school) and claims that the Yorktown Heights community in Westchester county, New York where she grew up is affluent — far from the working-class boroughs of the Bronx and Queens, which comprises the congressional district she represents. There are some very nice parts to Yorkville Heights, but there is a strong working-class section also. From my experience having visited friends in that particular nabe dozens of times, it’s largely middle class, sort of a classic slice of American suburbia, to be frank.
But apart from the objectification of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez’s body part, there is something weird going on in this clip: Carlson demeaning AOC’s “Tax the Rich” dress as a means to start a conversation about the disparity of wealth and power, and then addressing the very same issues, albeit in a dismissive manner.
Carlson and Ocasio-Cortez will both hate the comparison, but they are far more similar than they are different. They are both politically populist celebrities, which is a strange phenomenon to have developed over the past decade. And no, I am not talking about famous actors lamenting the daily woes of the working class as they are chauffeured from promotional press junkets to personal trainers. These are people getting famous, rich, and powerful over their populist ideology, though in a very different fashion.
The rise of figures that espouse populist ideas as a matter of polity so effectively that they rise to a level of fame (or notoriety) isn’t necessarily new. Still, the current media ecosystem of immediacy — combined attention deficits — has created a sharp increase in political personalities. Former President Donald Trump is in many ways the progenitor, but one can easily include Carlson and Rep. Ocasio-Cortez in the same canon. There is of course the rather massive difference in that the former is unafraid to spew racist tropes, while the latter does not.
It is clear that there is no love lost between the progressive politician from New York City and the Fox News host; they are in many ways ideological foes. But they also enjoy a symbiotic relationship that is perfectly represented in the clip above, which dear old Mediaite is all too willing to promote and give oxygen to.
Everyone wins?
Watch above via Fox News.
This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.
