This column may contain strong language, sexual content, adult humor, and other themes that may not be suitable for minors. Parental guidance is strongly advised.
Kellyanne Conway a badass? Really CNN? Give me a f*cking break.
Why the likes of CNN even give a person whose relationship with facts is so elastic, even a rubber band would rather stay away from her, a platform, much less name her among their “Badass Women of Washington” is beyond me.
Yes, Kellyanne Conway is intensely loyal and “relentlessly on message, reliably defending her boss, no matter what the circumstances.” Yes, she is a “survivor,” and will probably be the last one standing in an administration so unprecedented in its corruption and mendacity.
Normally these would be qualities to extol and emulate, someone young girls and women might look up to as a role model, particularly in the male-dominated world of politics. But these are not normal times, as we all know. And loyalty at the expense of truth and principle and moral fiber is, in the end, worthless. Especially when the object of that loyalty is a man so odious and amoral as Donald J. Trump.
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Her capacity for spin is indeed breathtaking. She spins the facts with far more speed than a clothes dryer on turbo setting. And she gleefully obfuscates, deflects and diverts, going off-topic to stay on-message. And she has no shame. “Conway is one of the world’s most shameless liars, distinguishing herself with a unique willingness to look into a camera and say anything to protect a president who traffics in misinformation,” a recent piece in Vox so accurately described her. And indeed, as one of the more prominent shills of Trump administration, ready to make a TV appearance to defend her boss, she is 1st runner up in the Miss Universe pageant of liars and gas lighters, second only to Trump himself, who has worn the crown all his life.
CNN lauds her as a woman of power. Really? In a Marvel superhero movie, she would without a doubt be the evil villain. She has no qualms standing up for an evil administration. She has no qualms putting the President before her marriage, dissing the alarm bells raised by her own husband regarding Trump’s mental and moral unfitness to be in office. She’s clearly thrilled that her boss refers to her husband as Mr. Kellyanne Conway because “it’s very unusual for a husband to get his notoriety and power through his wife. It’s usually the other way around.
People are always saying, ‘George and you should write a book, George and you should come to Harvard and speak,’ you know side by side and we should do all that, and I think, ‘Oh, OK,’ but then I’d have to give him my power.”
As the President of the United States himself put it, “George Conway, often referred to as Mr. Kellyanne Conway by those who know him, is VERY jealous of his wife’s success and angry that I, with her help, didn’t give him the job he so desperately wanted. I barely know him but just take a look, a stone cold LOSER and husband from hell!”
Thus spake the Husband of the Year.
Again, under normal circumstances, a husband who plays second fiddle to his wife, unfazed by her basking in the spotlight while he is secure enough in his own masculinity to pursue his own separate interests, is unusual and, well, #goals. But not in this situation. To George Conway’s credit, he has not denigrated his wife on Twitter or called her out on her own willingness to lie for the Liar-in-Chief—yet. Because it takes a village (and the entire Republican party) to enable a president whose stock in trade is his own blatant disregard for the truth and shameless defense of white supremacists.
(And for that alone, I say that George Conway has major Big Dick Energy. Trump thinks he does. And Kellyanne wishes she did.)
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I agree that discussing the Conway marriage should be off-limits as it is no one’s business but their own. And frankly, despite the CNN puff piece portraying her as a mother of four just trying to balance family and work like everyone else, Kellyanne’s daily utterings on behalf of Trump are sordid enough that I have no interest at all in yet more sordid details about the state of her marriage. But, I’d have to say that based on respect for the facts alone, sorry, but I’m Team George. If their marriage ends post-Trump, I wouldn’t be surprised. If it endures, quite honestly, who cares?
Yet we should care that Kellyanne Conway continues to lie and twist facts, refusing to back down even when fact-checked. We should care that the likes of CNN think that this somehow is a virtue and makes her powerful and “badass.”
As the respected professor, political scientist and journalist David Rothkopf pointed out on Twitter, Kellyanne Conway is a “serial liar and accomplice to true evil… She is not a badass. She is just bad.”
Vox reported that “CNN stood by its story, citing Conway’s role as the first woman to run a successful presidential campaign and her long tenure as one of Trump’s top White House staffers.”
But as Vox said, context counts, that “those things aren’t worth celebrating in a vacuum. What Conway does with her power matters. Instead of using her taxpayer-funded platform to inform and uplift, Conway defends a president who traffics in hate and misinformation with a willingness to say anything—even if it means insisting that a doctored footage the White House spread to demonize a CNN reporter wasn’t really doctored.”
Girls, please, don’t grow up to be like Kellyanne Conway.
B. Wiser is the author of Making Love in Spanish, a novel published by Anvil Publishing and available in National Book Store and Powerbooks, as well as online. When not assuming her Sasha Fierce alter-ego, she takes on the role of serious journalist and media consultant.
For comments and questions, e-mail b.wiser.ph@gmail.com.
Disclaimer: The views expressed here are solely those of the author in her private capacity and do not in any way represent the views of Preen.ph, or any other entity of the Inquirer Group of Companies.
Photo courtesy of Vox
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