Ingraham Gets AOC to Seriously Freak Out After Guest Tells Truth About AOC's Name
If Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has one weakness — or rather, if I had to choose one that’s her Achilles’ heel — it is her ability to be trolled.
Like Marty McFly being called a “chicken,” you can pretty much get a querulous response from the freshman representative from New York by mentioning her name in a public forum and not following it with something such as “most awesome thing to happen to politics since Abraham Lincoln” or “the future of the Democrats in the same way that the smartphone was the future of computing.”
Joe diGenova, guesting on Laura Ingraham’s Fox News show, made such an indiscretion. And wouldn’t you know, she decided to flip out on Twitter.
According to the Huffington Post, the former United States Attorney for the District of Columbia and Trump supporter asked about Ocasio-Cortez, “does she take on that Obama, Obama put on accents?”
“She does the Latina thing where she does her, you know, ‘Anastasio Ocasio-Cortez,’” he said, exaggerating the pronunciation of her name and then saying his own name with an exaggerated Italian accent.
“And I assume she’s going to love that when I do that,” diGenova added.
Ingraham, meanwhile, described Ocasio-Cortez as “the It Girl, and I mean girl in a very mature way” and “the juice” of the Democrats.
Well, as you may have guessed, “Anastasio” Ocasio-Cortez didn’t like what diGenova did. The insinuation that Ocasio-Cortez may play up her accents in some situations was enough for a short tweetstorm from Ocasio-Cortez. And of course, it involved retweeting someone who (of course) said the conversation was racist:
If by ‘the Latina thing,’ she means I actually do the work instead of just talk about it, then yeah, I’m doing ‘the Latina thing.’
Unless of course she‘s talking about being multilingual, which we know isn’t a ‘Latina thing.’
It’s a ‘21st century’ thing.https://t.co/v41dAyjshP
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 21, 2019
“How dare they refuse to say their name in a wrong accent & not mangle their own family name so that I can feel more comfortable instead of look inside myself & examine why something as small as *a person’s name* makes me uncomfortable in the first place?? This is an outrage!” https://t.co/ArYd28WVcv
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 21, 2019
By the way: Fox News likes to say my name (incorrectly) as “Cortez,” which I can only imagine is bc that sounds more ‘stereotypically’ Hispanic + probably incites more ‘anxiety’ for them.
Pro Tip:
My last name is not “Cortez,” just as theirs isn’t “Ingra” or “Carl” or “Hann.”— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 21, 2019
Uh, OK, where to begin. First, the point wasn’t that she was just pronouncing her name correctly. It’s that, as you may have seen, she can have a tendency to situationally play up an accent. “Cortez” doesn’t sound more “stereotypically” Latina than Ocasio-Cortez and playing up your accent has nothing to do with speaking multiple languages.
But thanks for playing, I guess.
DiGenova made a good point, though: He doesn’t pronounce his name in the traditional Italian manner because he’s interested in assimilation. It’s perfectly fine that Ocasio-Cortez decides to pronounce her name however she likes, but it raises questions regarding her position on immigrant assimilation into American culture.
Also, the fact that it tends to pop up at certain moments leads to questions about motivation. Like the Irish politician who plays up his heritage and his connection to it during a St. Patrick’s Day parade, it’s difficult to take her pronunciation seriously.
By the way, this isn’t the only time that a minor incident has sent Ocasio-Cortez into a tizzy. In fact, it doesn’t even take controversy such as Ingraham and diGenova’s decision to call her out on her opportunistic code switching to get her flying to the Twitters and accusing people of racism. You know what else can do that, too? Polls.
Take a recent Gallup poll that showed her favorable rating was 31 percent and her unfavorable rating was 41 percent; the poll also said she was “underwater among most groups.”
Her response to straight-up data from a reliably left-leaning polling organization:
If you want to know what subconscious bias looks like, it’s a headline saying “AOC is underwater with every group EXCEPT women, nonwhites, and 18-34 year olds.”
So older, conservative white men are considered “everyone” and everyone else is discounted as an exception.
Cool 👍🏽 https://t.co/qkwTknMYhC
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 16, 2019
The reason people know more is bc Fox News has turned into “AOC TMZ” (no offense to TMZ), so awareness is growing w/ GOPers.@JaneMayerNYer has reported deeply on this propaganda machine + it will be aimed at any Dem they want. Nothing changes that.
We can’t be scared by that.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 16, 2019
So, all right, that’s just once. Surely, when another poll came out finding that she was unpopular in the state outside of New York City and that people blamed her for the Amazon headquarters debacle, she would have learned her lesson and just let it slide.
When “centrists” care more about the GOP base than the Dem base, bigotry gets legitimized.
This is *the* playbook. GOP does it w/ virtually every Dem figure who isn’t a white male: otherize, demonize + splinter.
It’s vital that we adapt & dismantle this approach, not cow to it. https://t.co/dKlzflqZVn
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 18, 2019
We can’t gloss over it, or quietly consider that the “shrewd” thing to do is nominate someone who won’t be subject to bigoted attacks.
Morally, we can’t give a pass to this dangerous tactic.
But even politically, the Dem base is all the people you demoralize by not standing up.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 18, 2019
This is different than being moderate on policy. I may disagree w/ approach (keeping the ACA as-is w/small tweaks, etc), but at least that’s a policy convo.
But to make decisions based on the political efficacy of a bigoted argument gives that bigotry power, & that’s a problem.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) March 18, 2019
Or not. So, “centrists” who have issues with Democrats are potentially racists, it’s subconscious bias to point out that she’s “underwater among most groups” in a poll and it’s all Fox News’ fault.
Ocasio-Cortez’s tendency to fulminate on Twitter over the slightest obloquy is like the big flashing red spot on an old-school video game boss: Anyone who really needs to beat her knows where to attack. Nobody’s really had to use it yet, since everyone’s favorite meme-tastic millennial socialist has been quite adept at defeating herself thus far. (See: New Deal, Green)
When the day comes where conservatives actually have to defeat Ocasio-Cortez, they will know what to do. Trump occasionally goes too far on social media but knows how to use it to get around the media filter.
Just make a snide remark about her and you’re guaranteed an angry Twitter riposte about how you’re a racist. And yet, she doesn’t seem to see how this could be a liability going forward. No wonder those poll numbers are trending downward.
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