Sarah Huckabee Sanders boasts of her humility, then shows a darker side - The Washington Post
Posted on 09/18/2024
Enough.
?My kids keep me humble,? Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders preened, thereby disproving her own claim. ?Unfortunately, Kamala Harris? ? and at this point Sanders mispronounced the vice president?s name ? ?doesn?t have anything keeping her humble.?
Leave aside the gall of accusing the opposing candidate of lacking humility when you are the warm-up act for Donald Trump, Sanders is living proof that parenthood offers no guarantee of that virtue.
Enough, too, with the deliberate othering of someone with an unusual, foreign-sounding, first name. It?s not hard to learn the correct pronunciation. It?s no accident that Republicans, led by Donald Trump, consistently and flagrantly get the syllabic emphasis wrong ? that is, when they can manage to choke out Harris?s name at all. In his debate performance, Trump referred only to ?she? and ?her,? as if Harris were not a person worthy of being identified or, for that matter, even looked at.
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Enough with the cloaked, perhaps unconscious, racism. Harris, according to Sanders, ?doesn?t have anything keeping her humble. You would think after four years of straight failure she would know a little humility. Unfortunately, she doesn?t.? Maybe Sanders didn?t mean it this way, but when you accuse a Black woman of lacking humility, it evokes complaints about ?uppity? Black people.
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And enough with the misogyny ? yes, misogyny can come from women, too ? the sneering suggestion that women are not complete human beings unless they manage to fulfill their biological destiny to procreate. That lacking children of their own they are, in the words of Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, ?a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they?ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.?
To give Vance his due, he was equal-opportunity offensive, including gay men in his attack. ?It?s just a basic fact ? you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC ? the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,? Vance said in 2021, referring to the transportation secretary, who was in the process of trying to adopt, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). ?And how does it make any sense that we?ve turned our country over to people who don?t really have a direct stake in it??
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Vance that same year also went after teachers union president Randi Weingarten, a self-described lesbian ?mother by marriage,? for daring to be a teacher without having biological children. (Hello, Catholic nuns?) ?If she wants to brainwash and destroy the mind of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone,? he said.
But the anti-gay animus is icing on the sexist cake. Somehow you don?t hear much criticism of childless male politicians, whatever their sexual orientation. No, the disparagement centers on women, and the notion that there is something wrong, that they have somehow failed, that they aren?t worthy of citizenship, if they do not reproduce.
I suppose this is the point in the column where I demonstrate my maternal bona fides. I have two grown daughters. They are the center of my life ? at least until they produce grandchildren ? and, yes, they do keep me humble. They arrived when I was older ? 37 for the first, almost 39 for the second ? and, to share perhaps a bit too much information, I have a recurring dream in which I discover that I am too old to have children. Every time, I wake up in a sweat.
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All of which is to say: I can easily imagine having become a childless, in my case, dog lady. That would not have been my preference, but it would not have made me lesser ? a less involved citizen, a less loving person, a less valuable member of society.
Every day on the campaign trail, Harris demonstrates more humanity, more empathy, more interest in and capacity to connect with others than Trump has ever shown himself capable of, his five children notwithstanding. And, of course, as her magnificently blended family has affirmed, she is not, in fact, childless. She has demonstrated the wonderful human capacity to love non-biological children as if they were her own.
Proof of that came in the aftermath of Sanders?s dig, from Kerstin Emhoff, the former wife of second gentleman Doug Emhoff and biological mother of Harris?s stepchildren.
?Cole and Ella keep us inspired to make the world a better place,? Kerstin Emhoff tweeted. ?I do it through storytelling. Kamala Harris has spent her entire career working for the people, ALL families. That keeps you pretty humble.?
The best tribute comes from the name Harris?s stepchildren use for her: Momala. They somehow manage to pronounce it correctly.
?My kids keep me humble,? Arkansas Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders preened, thereby disproving her own claim. ?Unfortunately, Kamala Harris? ? and at this point Sanders mispronounced the vice president?s name ? ?doesn?t have anything keeping her humble.?
Leave aside the gall of accusing the opposing candidate of lacking humility when you are the warm-up act for Donald Trump, Sanders is living proof that parenthood offers no guarantee of that virtue.
Enough, too, with the deliberate othering of someone with an unusual, foreign-sounding, first name. It?s not hard to learn the correct pronunciation. It?s no accident that Republicans, led by Donald Trump, consistently and flagrantly get the syllabic emphasis wrong ? that is, when they can manage to choke out Harris?s name at all. In his debate performance, Trump referred only to ?she? and ?her,? as if Harris were not a person worthy of being identified or, for that matter, even looked at.
Advertisement
Enough with the cloaked, perhaps unconscious, racism. Harris, according to Sanders, ?doesn?t have anything keeping her humble. You would think after four years of straight failure she would know a little humility. Unfortunately, she doesn?t.? Maybe Sanders didn?t mean it this way, but when you accuse a Black woman of lacking humility, it evokes complaints about ?uppity? Black people.
Follow Ruth Marcus
And enough with the misogyny ? yes, misogyny can come from women, too ? the sneering suggestion that women are not complete human beings unless they manage to fulfill their biological destiny to procreate. That lacking children of their own they are, in the words of Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance, ?a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they?ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.?
To give Vance his due, he was equal-opportunity offensive, including gay men in his attack. ?It?s just a basic fact ? you look at Kamala Harris, Pete Buttigieg, AOC ? the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children,? Vance said in 2021, referring to the transportation secretary, who was in the process of trying to adopt, and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.). ?And how does it make any sense that we?ve turned our country over to people who don?t really have a direct stake in it??
Advertisement
Vance that same year also went after teachers union president Randi Weingarten, a self-described lesbian ?mother by marriage,? for daring to be a teacher without having biological children. (Hello, Catholic nuns?) ?If she wants to brainwash and destroy the mind of children, she should have some of her own and leave ours the hell alone,? he said.
But the anti-gay animus is icing on the sexist cake. Somehow you don?t hear much criticism of childless male politicians, whatever their sexual orientation. No, the disparagement centers on women, and the notion that there is something wrong, that they have somehow failed, that they aren?t worthy of citizenship, if they do not reproduce.
I suppose this is the point in the column where I demonstrate my maternal bona fides. I have two grown daughters. They are the center of my life ? at least until they produce grandchildren ? and, yes, they do keep me humble. They arrived when I was older ? 37 for the first, almost 39 for the second ? and, to share perhaps a bit too much information, I have a recurring dream in which I discover that I am too old to have children. Every time, I wake up in a sweat.
Advertisement
All of which is to say: I can easily imagine having become a childless, in my case, dog lady. That would not have been my preference, but it would not have made me lesser ? a less involved citizen, a less loving person, a less valuable member of society.
Every day on the campaign trail, Harris demonstrates more humanity, more empathy, more interest in and capacity to connect with others than Trump has ever shown himself capable of, his five children notwithstanding. And, of course, as her magnificently blended family has affirmed, she is not, in fact, childless. She has demonstrated the wonderful human capacity to love non-biological children as if they were her own.
Proof of that came in the aftermath of Sanders?s dig, from Kerstin Emhoff, the former wife of second gentleman Doug Emhoff and biological mother of Harris?s stepchildren.
?Cole and Ella keep us inspired to make the world a better place,? Kerstin Emhoff tweeted. ?I do it through storytelling. Kamala Harris has spent her entire career working for the people, ALL families. That keeps you pretty humble.?
The best tribute comes from the name Harris?s stepchildren use for her: Momala. They somehow manage to pronounce it correctly.
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