Breitbart criticism a sign of worse to come
Dear, oh dear.
There is Jennifer Lawrence surely thinking that being on the cover of Vogue magazine makes it about her, only to find her thunder stolen by another woman.
It all happened when a man named John Carney — presumably not related to our banking guru Mark Carney, nor to Obama’s baby-faced press guy Jay Carney, but an editor at that hallowed journalistic enterprise, Breitbart — chanced upon an Instagram of Vogue’s latest cover that instantly set off his sensitivity radar.
It revealed what everyone else, including those who planned the cover, had missed: an attack on conservatives.
“We’re going to have to create a full #MAGA shadow cultural industry because the Opposition Media can’t even do fashion without attacking us,” he tweeted Thursday.
“Seriously, I think we could do really well with @BreitbartNews Fashion. Lots of women who would like their fashion without leftism.”
Was JLaw that offensive? No. Was Chelsea Manning, who is also featured in the magazine, at fault? Nope.
His ire was directed at that towering, oxidized green statue in the background of the photo, audaciously holding aloft a torch showing the path to liberty.
If you’re still going, “huh?” you need to stop being so normal. You need to step out of a world of wardrobe malfunctions and enter the alt-right sphere of factual malfunctions.
The Statue of Liberty, Carney says, has been weaponized by the left against immigration reform.
For proof, he brandished illustrations in the German magazine Der Spiegel and New York’s Daily News that showed Trump with the decapitated head of Lady Liberty.
Imagine being so wrapped up in victimhood that you’re triggered by a symbol of enlightenment.
On a lazy summer Thursday, the man’s foolishness shone like a shiny rainbow-coloured pebble on a sandy beach, just begging to be picked up. So tweeters had a lot of fun with it.
One tweet showed a photo of men in tattered dungarees and read:
“This stunning sibling / spouse ensemble is just what u need while waiting for coal jobs to return.”
Another came with a photo of Donald Trump Jr. dressed country style: #breitbartfashion Burying incriminating evidence in the most remote parts of dad’s golf course demands rugged and comfortable footwear.
It was a viewpoint that beggared belief in many quarters. “If you take a picture of the Statue of Liberty as an attack on your beliefs, maybe that says more about your beliefs than about Vogue,” read one tweet.
Carney’s distaste for the statue isn’t an isolated voice from the alt-right wilderness.
Earlier this month, White House aide Stephen Miller was promoting a new Senate bill on immigration reform that would favour Englishspeaking immigrants.
(I know this leaves us all wonder- ing, does the Mississauga ranter at the doctor’s office work for the White House?)
CNN reporter Jim Acosta asked if the bill was in keeping with American tradition and referred to the famous phrase from “The New Colossus,” the poem by Emma Lazarus inscribed on the pedestal of the statue.
“Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”
Miller was having none of it. “The poem that you’re referring to was added later,” he said. “It’s not actually part of the Statue of Liberty.”
Sure, but it was written in 1883 before the statue was dedicated to help raise funds for the pedestal, and it is the poem that cements the role of the statue as one that welcomes immigrants to the land of dreams.
If there are two words that would make this U.S. administration flinch, though, they are, “welcomes immigrants.” No Mexican immigrants, no Muslim immigrants; now it’s no-English-no-immigration. The new reform bill also sets up barriers for new immigrants wanting to bring their parents or siblings or grown up children. Guess whom this affects most? You got it — nonwhite immigrants.
“The bill doesn’t affect the millions of Irish, German and Italian Americans whose families came to the U.S. in earlier waves of immigration and no longer have close relatives abroad,” write Dana Liebelson and Elise Foley in the Huff Post.
Lawrence, the “American beauty,” might have the “freedom to be herself” as the magazine cover declares but such freedom is no longer extended to poor Lady Liberty.
Americans representing political power are quickly shunning all that represents the soul of their nation.
In July, Trump-ites were upset with NPR for promoting propaganda, when NPR was actually tweeting America’s founding document, the Declaration of Independence.
Now the administration and its fans are distancing themselves from the Statue of Liberty. Next in its sights, if I were to guess: The blindfolded Lady Justice. Shree Paradkar writes about discrimination and identity. You can follow her @shreeparadkar