By now, most of American is aware that a newly-elected Democratic member of Congress from Michigan, Rep. Rashida Tlaib, employed a colorful but undeniably vulgar term to explain her plans for President Donald Trump once in office:
A choice of words that has sent suddenly genteel Republicans wringing their hands and crying for civility–including the Colorado Republican Party, which as readers know has been sorely in need of something to whine about after one of its most sweeping defeats in history last November:
“Rep. Rashida Tlaib’s comment about our nation’s president is beneath the dignity of her office. Tlaib’s freshman colleagues from Colorado, Rep. Joe Neguse and Rep. Jason Crow, claim to want to elevate our civil discourse. They should start by elevating the discourse in their own house. We’re waiting for them speak out against Rep. Tlaib’s gutter rhetoric.” [Pols emphasis]
This statement from outgoing GOP chairman Jeff Hays seems to have been written in an alternate reality in which the President of the United States is not Donald Trump.
That is, this Donald Trump:
The internet did a good job last week of finding many, many more examples of Trump waxing every bit as vulgar, which should have surprised no one. The outrage being feigned over Rep. Tlaib’s dropping of the dreaded F-bomb in reference to President Trump makes very little sense given the President’s own unabashed vulgarity. But more important, what Democrats complain about with Trump is not dropping F-bombs so much as calling Nazis “very fine people” and saying that “laziness is a trait in blacks.”
In the end, we should all be able to agree that this was a very poor location for Colorado Republicans to plant the flag! And they’re left vulnerable to the next reasonable question, why a man can talk this way with impunity but a woman gets a press release from the Colorado GOP guilting her local colleagues by association.
Safe to say that no votes for the Colorado Republican Party were won back this go-round.
So, you're saying two pussy grabbers make a right?
Or Rep. Potty Mouth represents the best the Democratic Party has to offer?
Really?
She's all we've got?
Sigh. It's going to be a long six years.
Why the hell does it even matter that she was a "potty mouth?
It doesn't matter. Pelosi is running the House as all the newbies will learn.
Because anything that helps Trump matters! This idiot was one of the first two Muslim women elected to Congress. She could have.mouthed the usual cliches about diversity and our cultural mosaic. Instead, for the 99 percent of Americans who never heard of her, she chose to label herself forever as "The Mofo" lady. Stupid, stupid, woman.
Sorry. A little too petty and down in the weeds considering what's going on to matter. That's what I think.
C'mon, V. Don't pull a Lindsay Graham on us.
You are trying to make a big deal out of nothing. That is Fluffys' turf.
Is your loathing of all things liberal so intense? Maybe time for a reality check, old friend. Relax, V…you can hyperventilate all you want, but it doesn't make it important.
The occasion(s) for the comment was/were NOT official. CNN reported
So, let anyone who doesn't swear say something about this.
And let's make certain they are consistent in challenging the language itself, not only the partisan position or gender. Because I'm pretty certain the expletive or something very like it has been said by Republican men, Republican women, Democratic men, Democratic women, and probably even some unaffiliated, too.
If anyone ONLY publicly objects to Democrats saying something like this, it is partisanship at its most trivial. IF Neguse and Crow make any sort of statement, it should CLEARLY object to the language and include all who do it — beginning particularly with the *resident and various Congressmen who quibbled over “shithouse” versus “shithole” nations.
Okay, so you're saying she is the best we have?
Yep, it's going to be a long six years. Rep. Potty Mouth will go a long way toward re-electing the pussy grabber.
This is the face you want to put forward for the Democratic Party?
You're absolutely positive she's the best we've got?
The voters from Tlaib's Michigan District 13 said that she was the best Democrat for the position. They voted for her knowing all about her politics and her outspoken ways, because she was a good community leader with strong public support. She did not have an opponent in the general – she ran for John Conyer's seat, in a very Democratic district, after he resigned under credible accusations of ongoing sexual harassment .
The pearl-clutching over the magic mf word will end, since it's only another distraction from the daily treason. Eventually, Mueller will make his report, and Democrats will have to decide whether impeachment procedures are the appropriate next step. Tlaib will be judged by her constituents, based not on one word spoken unwisely, but by how well she represents their interests.
I'm working with a veterans green group in her district and have spent time in that district this past year as a result. The vets love her and spent a great deal of time getting her elected. Swaths of her district look like a war zone; the underbelly of the kind of capitalist construct that keeps the likes of *rump in their Tower(s) of Gold while her constituents deal with very challenging conditions. Using MF isn't my thing but I understand the context of her frustration and trust me, she was speaking on behalf of the people in the room where she was filmed.
We really don't need to be creating this circus sideshow.
Real people, as opposed to the Leave It to Beaver fiction version of humans, are occasionally vulgar. I am concerned about the content of how people act as opposed to the tone. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg, so why should I care?
I would rather elect a thousand people who occasionally say "fuck" into a hot microphone than one crooked corporate suck up in politics for the golden parachute.
👍👍
I could not agree more.
We have some folks on here who are so enamored of their centrist, corporate leaders, they excuse every piece of mendacious bullshit from Mikey and the Frack Boy. Our very civil, useless, corporate stooges.
These are the same conservatives who routinely bash Bernie for not being a lifelong Democrat, then tell Democrats how we should act.
Good Democrats should repeat and live the phrase that should become a mantra…" Impeach the Motherfucker!!"
Civility? Are you fucking kidding me? How civil is it to run down people with your car? A very fine person indeed…
How civil is it to shut down a functioning government in order to feed your ego and win at politics? Are Ivanka and Barron going to skip breakfast today because they have no money?…or because they HAD to buy grandpas' medication?
Hungry kids, sick grandma? Who fucking cares? T***pWall is coming. The Racist- in-Chief is imprisoning brown children…a national emergency will, to him, justify T***p declaring martial law and diverting funds from the Pentagon for his own use.
But let's not be uncivil and swear. Oh, my…Good Democrats would never do that. Only those LWNJs we keep hearing about.
So keep on calling for civility, fellas. You can be sufficiently indignant while Democrats impeach the motherfucker.
The many distractions – she said "Impeach the MF!" AOC DANCES! Elizabeth Warren is NOT a member of a tribe! etc, etc – from our country's core emergencies truly amaze. We are not in normal times, thanks to the MF-in-Chief. Stay focused, folks.
Some people are not allowed to curse in public in front of clients, students, orconstituents (at least, not without consequences including public shaming and loss of livelihood). I'm one of them. I can and do swear like a sailor in private (I'm a newspaperman's daughter and a former construction worker, after all). But not in the public or professional sphere.
Of course, it's hypocritical, but it is a remnant of America's hypocritical Puritan past. Teachers, preachers, and legislators should not say certain naughty magic words.
So yeah, Tlaib shouldn't have said what she said. To John's point, none of the other powerful men who curse at will should have said what they did in public, either.
The impeachment talk, though….I have to disagree that talking about impeachment makes one a "left wing nut job", which you claimed in an earlier post. There does seem to be harsher public criticism of women advocating for impeachment, particularly women of color such as Maxine Waters and Rashida Tlaib, than that of the many men who have spoken for impeachment, including: Tom Steyer, Rep. Steve Cohen, Rep. Al Green, and former Nixon lawyer John Dean.
I wasn't aware until today that Federal employees are also now banned from discussing possible impeachment of Trump, in an extraordinary, overreaching application of the Hatch Act. This is why we need public sector unions.
We do need freedom of speech. Fine, not the naughty words for public servants. That's a small sacrifice to make. But freedom of ideas and expression, even of difficult and controversial ideas, is indispensable in a democracy.
That's a pretty clear summary of the rules of this fucking game MJ
Rep. Mofo consigned herself to political irrelevance by not knowing them.
If we let the Republicans define what is acceptable behavior from Democrats, then we've lost the war. Especially if we let them insist on different behavior from us than from them.
Saying that in front of an elementary school class would have been inappropriate. Saying it in a bar in her district – spot on. And if it hurts President Trump's feelings – that's too fucking bad.
👍 Well said, David…you LWNJ, you. ☺
Oh my God, Voyageur.
Dick Cheney, acting as President of the Senate, called Senator Leahy a fucker, and did not become politically irrelevant.
*resident Trump, in any number of settings, has been profane. Sadly, he has not become politically irrelevant, either.
Rep. Rashida Tlaib is a recently elected member of the House, one of 435. Of course she will be politically irrelevant — every bit as much as the posturing of Jason Crow on not supporting Nancy Pelosi and AOC voting against the rules package. Newly elected Representatives are nearly ALWAYS irrelevant.
Dick Cheney was famous and well known to almost every American before his faux pas.
Rep. Mofo, on the other hand, was virtually unknown outside her district. She is now known world wide as Rep. Mofo.
Tell me, what's her position on ethanol subsidies? Does anyone know? Or care?
Of course not. They know she likes to say mofo.
She says it a lot.
In front of little kids.
And tv cameras.
And giggles.
Because what serious national leader doesn't giggle when she says mofo?
Christ on a cracker, Voyageur…can we get you another chenille throw for your fainting couch? Perhaps a cool, damp cloth for your forehead…that’s known to help with the vapors.
So, what you've said is that that kind of talk is only acceptable if you're an old white guy with an established career; that Muslim lady doesn't have the same latitude.
You'd best stock up on smelling salts, V. This is going to be a trying year for you.
What were the little kids doing in that bar? Damned, liberals…I guess they don't love their kids either.
The anecdote told — in a post swearing in party of liberals — was what she said to one of her sons after her election.
I can't find details, but it appears both sons are teens. And we know teens from John Conyor's district in Detroit have NEVER heard someone say anything like that before, right?
Tens of millions of people in this country lack proper healthcare. Millions go to bed hungry every night. So many actual travesties in this country. And people are worried about whether a woman's language is too coarse.
All y'all motherfuckers crack me up with this shit. If Tlaib wants to fuck me all the way to universal healthcare, climate action, criminal justice reform, and debt-free college, she can get up on that ass and ride me until I pass out.
Spoken with all the elegance and clear logic we've come to expect from you, Sudafed.
I'm a Republican and I thought her comment was a bit over the top, but appropriate.
NSFW — I'm kinda hoping Pelosi says something like this one day to *rump
Perhaps we need to modify the noun not the verb.
Impeach the treasonous Putin flunky
Impeach the Manchurian Candidate
Impeach the Petty Caligula
Does that make this sentiment any more appropriate?
You should send her that proposal, Psuedo. She has the sense of humor to appreciate it, and it will be a nice change from all of the hate mail and death threats she’ll be getting. 😏
Dear Representative Tlaib…
Coal industry pegboy Joe Manchin rose from his fainting couch to apologize to all of Congress and all American for Tlaib’s unseemly verbiage.
Is an old white dude apologizing to other white dudes about a brown woman's conduct emblematic of something?
Nah. Surely it's just a one-off.
“Let he who hasn’t raw-dogged a porn star after his third wife gives birth to his fifth child cast the first stone.”
This is the best thing that could have ever happened to Rep Tlaib. I think its refreshing to see a politician break from the canned phrases that have made politicians so boring and predictable. One could suggest that this is a similar tactic used successfully by the Trump campaign to distinguish itself from the rest of the pre-packaged, wind up politician double speak of the last 100 years…
This comment has made Rep Tlaib famous, and hopefully she can harness this fame and do something with it. I like her better because of it, but more importantly, I would have never known her at all had she not.
But if you want to poke fun at "poutrage" you may want to start in the mirror.
I was trying to find poutrage in a French dictionary, but all I got was portage – carry the canoe past the waterfall.
I looked it up on the tubes and found: "Owning the Cons"
Priceless