An old leftist trick to smear the right from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her adoring press
Some jackass with the Twitter handle of "AnonymousQ1776" and one of those Occupy Wall Street Guy Fawkes mask photos put out a newly discovered college video of socialist House rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez dancing with her classmates in a "Breakfast Club" takeoff, and then added some unpleasant commentary.
Here is the now deleted tweet:
Here is the video:
Rest assured: no one agreed with whoever this AnonymousQ1776 with the Occupy mask as his icon is that Ocasio-Cortez, in that particular video, looked like a nitwit, neither right nor left. Ocasio-Cortez came off as a cute and exuberant college student whose dancing was delightful. In fact, the natural response on the right is to think: "Too bad she didn't become a dancer we could all appreciate" instead of a socialist congresswoman, dreaming of a Hugo Chávez-style America. Chávez, of course, wanted to be a béisbol player, and sadly enough for that country, that didn't happen, either. Conservatives can also conclude that she was a far better dancer than economics student. As a dancer, she's wonderful, expressive, a pleasure to watch. As a socialist, well, there she really does come off as a nitwit, given the horrendous failures of socialism not too far from our borders. And yes, we have always noted that she does well in the looks department, we did from the start.
I suspect that the person who put out the churlish tweet was one of those weird anarchist hacker types who hates all political parties, thinks everything he sees is ugly, likes bad things, and holds a nihilistic view of politics. People like that are out there. Or it was someone posing as that for credibility purposes, with Ocasio-Cortez and the media at the ready to pick up the tweet and pounce. No one knows, and no one is going to find out, either, because the disgusting account was deleted.
It didn't take long for Ocasio-Cortez and most of the big papers and networks in her tree to lay that loathsome post at the feet of the entire conservative movement, painting us all as Mrs. Grundies and Talibanites who have a problem with dancing. Some headlines:
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Dancing Video Was Meant as a Smear, but It Backfired –New York Times
Right Attempts To Discredit AOC With Dancing Video –Morning Joe, MSNBC
Conservatives MELT DOWN Over Ocasio-Cortez Dancing On Rooftop –The Majority Report with Sam Seder
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's dance video is goofy, joyful – and absolutely nothing to be ashamed of –Washington Post (Credit to the Post for not explicitly blaming the right, but there's heavy inference of motives.)
Republican's [sic] tried to shame Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez for her college dancing video. She had the perfect response –Independent (Inaccurate and subliterate headline since changed, but it's still what you see in a Google search.)
And Ocasio-Cortez herself, embracing and amplifying the "narrative" and blaming the entire GOP:
I hear the GOP thinks women dancing are scandalous.
— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) January 4, 2019
Wait till they find out Congresswomen dance too! рџ’ѓрџЏЅ
Have a great weekend everyone :) pic.twitter.com/9y6ALOw4F6
All this, based on one tweet from a guy with a Guy Fawkes mask, the very emblem of Occupy Wall Street's leftists, and now the right is indicted as hating anything that's fresh and cool – meaning that old familiar thing: Republicans are squares, Republicans are out, and socialist rabid leftists are the only thing that's "in." It's a "Mean Girls" dynamic, attempting to shut out anyone who thinks differently from any potential for cool. And it's how the commercial world thinks, too. No wonder Nike did that Colin Kaepernick ad.
But man, is that old. And it's frankly a smear. The Times pointed out in its headline that the bad tweet was a bid to "smear" Ocasio, but in their claim to truth-telling, they were the ones who did the smear, the real one, on the right, with absolutely no evidence anyone on the right was involved in it.
Jim Treacher does a good bite-back debunking, pointing out that none of the news accounts attacking the right as hopelessly out of touch over this was able to name a single right-winger, or Trump-supporter, or conservative, who agreed with this AnonymousQ1776 clown. The fact is, nobody hated Ocasio-Cortez's cute dance video. What we hate is her hypocrisy; her naïveté; her will to power over us; and, above all, her embrace of socialism, the failed idea that made Venezuela Venezuela and Cuba Cuba. Why the heck is that too subtle for both Ocasio-Cortez and her smear-the-right left-wing allies?
It also may be a smokescreen. Ocasio-Cortez just came out with a proposal for a 70% tax on top income-earners which amounts to socialist expropriation. It's an idea that's unlikely to make her popular or, at this point, get her taken seriously. Only Fox News focused on that, which is substantial. The rest of the press focused on promoting Ocasio-Cortez with her cute dance video and painting the right as a Taliban that hates dancing with no evidence to show for it.
Got a sense of what's going on here?