My Official Response to Critics of My New York Magazine AOC Essay
My piece for New York on Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has attracted a lot of criticism. My official response to those critics is here. Please check it out and share it if you're inclined.
For subscribers, consider this an open thread. Talk about whatever you’d like.
AOC is a gifted communicator, but wastes her talents on the venal temptations of social media celebrity activism. Her need for attention, sympathy, and glamorous victimhood is obvious and nauseating. What other legislator cries (!) on the floor of their chamber, requiring their colleagues to pet and comfort her? Who else turned Jan 6 into a solipsistic story of much danger she was in personally and how much therapy she needs to heal? (Nancy Pelosi, for all her faults, would sooner stab herself in the eye, because she came up in an era when feminism required toughness.) I’ve personally been to that immigrant detention facility as part of a legal team; none of us had the luxury of falling into a weepy heap. We had actual jobs to do, not just advocacy by glamor shot.
The narcissism and immaturity (not exactly unknown qualities among politicians) might be tolerable if she accomplished anything. But she won’t, largely because she’s an unserious person.
I haven't looked at Freddie's response yet, but I did read the article (thought it was a reasonable take) and I looked through the comments.
Most of the comments were literally "this piece sucks", "this is wrong", "why is anyone publishing this stuff" type comments. Very few tried to justify their criticism, or tried to challenge the facts or the logic of Freddie's argument.
It reminded me of how damn stupid most of the Internet is and why I usually don't dive into the comments sections.