One of the few things Democrats are really good at is concealing their deep contempt for working-class Americans behind what independent journalist Glenn Greenwald appropriately called a “thin veneer of condescending intellectual compassion.” But every once in a while they let the masks slip, and the ugliness that is revealed as a result can sometimes end up backfiring spectacularly.
We saw it in 2016 after Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton said during a posh September 2016 celebrity-filled $50,000/ticket fundraiser in New York City that “you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables.” She later expressed mild “regret” for her comments but the targets of her remarks didn’t buy it. She lost.
We saw it again earlier this year after Virginia Democratic gubernatorial nominee Terry McAuliffe admitted during a September debate that “I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.” Afterward, he continued to insult Virginia parents by suggesting they were “racists” for opposing the implementation of Critical Race Theory in public school classrooms, the latter of which he repeatedly lied about when he claimed it wasn’t being taught there. He lost.
Actress Bette Midler isn’t running for office, but for some voters, the words of celebrities (the vast majority of who are Democrats) carry a similar weight to the words of a politician or a candidate for public office. They provide “windows into the souls” of the left in terms of what they really think about Average Janes and Joes. And earlier this week, Midler let the liberal mask slip after Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) effectively torpedoed President Biden’s “Build Back Better” plan for the foreseeable future.
Here’s what she wrote:
So in Midler’s view, every person living in West Virginia is “backward,” “poor, illiterate and strung out” because one of their Senators won’t vote as she wants him to on the Democratic agenda. It was a nasty, broad, not to mention ill-informed generalization and one she was immediately called out on:
And to somewhat prove the above tweeter’s point, AOC appeared on Morning Joe’s program Monday and proclaimed her Congressional district had more people in it than West Virginia:
Er … no:
But back to Midler, reactions to her little tirade fell mostly along these lines: Leftists who were either upset at her broad generalizations or the fact that she said the quiet part about loud about how they really feel, and those on the right who used her tweet as an example of how the elitist left looks down on the little people.
The same day Midler posted her tweet, “West Virginians” trended as other Democrats took to the Twitter machine to either join her in sneering at the state or to claim Manchin was supposedly going against the interests of the people in his state. I made the following contribution:
That’s the thing that “progressives” don’t get about people in the south. The same folks who latte leftists secretly view as dumb, illiterate hicks are actually very wise to Democratic machinations. They know that when Democrats make overtures to them on the bread and butter issues, what they’re really thinking is along with the mindsets of the Midlers, Clintons, and McAuliffes of this country.
For the record, I should also point out that though West Virginia does tend to elect Democrats as governors (their current governor Jim Justice was a Democrat when elected in 2017 but switched parties a few months later) and to serve in the U.S. Senate, they are usually the old school, non-“woke” type Democrats like Manchin who are socially conservative though fiscally liberal.
Perhaps sensing that she wildly overplayed her hand, Midler did a rare thing for an outspoken Hollywood leftist to do. She apologized (though the original tweet is still up as of this writing):
Too late, Bette. The mask y’all have been wearing since long before the pandemic started is off – for good.
— Stacey Matthews has also written under the pseudonym “Sister Toldjah” and can be reached via Twitter. —
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