The Marsha Chronicles
Meet Sen. Marsha Blackburn, the honeysuckle-sweet character assassin who told Ketanji Jackson she's had it easy.
It isn’t every day that you see a white woman tell a black woman that she’s had it easy. But then Sen. Marsha Blackburn (R.-Tenn.) isn’t your everyday white woman. Speaking of her constituents, by which she clearly meant her white constituents, Blackburn this week said to Supreme Court nominee Ketanji Brown Jackson: “Their kids, and their grandkids, are not going to have the opportunities that you have had unless we keep this nation free.”
Blackburn also berated Jackson for refusing to furnish her with a definition of “woman” and for praising “the transformative power of progressive education,” this last an altered version of what Jackson actually said, which was that she admired “the transformative power of a rigorous [italics mine] progressive education that is dedicated to fostering critical thinking [italics mine], independence, and social justice.” Blackburn knifes fellow Republicans, too; when she first ran for Senate in 2018 she said in a campaign video, “Too many Senate Republicans act like Democrats or worse,” a dig at Tennessee’s retiring Republican senator, Bob Corker.
Read my piece about this breakout YouTube star and presidential wannabe in the New Republic.
Absent the identity of the speaker, the quote about kids' and grandkids' opportunities vis a vie this nation's "freedom" would be a salient one. But considering whose lips spoke those words, it is no more meaningful than any of the other gibberish spewed at the latest Senatorial dog and pony show, which in recent times has degraded into simply a carnival for wolves and jackasses.
That Blackburn "isn't your everyday white woman" is, I suppose, a small comfort - if you mean that her views do not represent the view of the majority of that particular demographic in this country. But the alternate meaning of her being in such a position of power and influence is beyond depressing. It is shameful. But that statement has no real meaning either, I suppose, since shame seems to have ceased to exist as an influence on behavior these days.