Who Needs Soap Operas? We’ve Got the GOP
I’m old enough to have survived General Hospital and Days of Our Lives. I’ve survived Gun Smoke, Bonanza, Magnum PI and even Stranger Things about some kind of school for Umbrella Marketing through time travel. I could go on and on I suppose, but hopefully you get the idea. Here’s the thing. I kind of thought I’ve seen all the soap opera plots there can possibly be but that was before Margie T leaped into the national spotlight. This sweet little ole Georgia Peach just has no shame at all. I get that all good soap operas have to be shameless. They have to talk trash and cover subjects fit for trailer parks and beauty parlors. But Margie T is setting the bar higher, or in this case maybe lower is the correct adjective, than even the sleaziest soap opera you can imagine.
Early on the signs of her greatness were evident. Who can forget the images burned into the national psyche of Margie T following a teenage school shooting survivor down a street? While screaming for him to explain why he wouldn’t address her utterly unrealistic account of his activities and affiliations? That little girl from Georgia had a practiced set of “When did you stop beating your wife?” questions that the kid couldn’t have answered in any fashion because every single question was based in some variety of fever-induced delusion. Then Margie T went to Washington and yelled through a mail slot to get a rival’s attention and to, I guess, embarrass herself so that rubes back in Georgia would think she was working? In other words, Margie T understands that in order to get people’s attention one has to be controversial. What Margie T seems to have missed was the memo on relevance. If Margie is talking about it you can bet the subject of her discourse is not related to anything related to reality. The girl is the walking definition of performance soap.
Some of her recent performance pieces have been agonizing in their raw representations of her personal real life situation. That somewhat disjointed speech at the Republican Gala when she talked about butt plugs being available at Target while she was wearing a skirt slit up-to-there kind of sounded like a plea for someone to come kiss it and make it better. But she was getting a divorce at that time so maybe she was just venting about the pain she was experiencing. It’s bad form in any description you use simply because it seemed to be a somewhat desperate way of reaching for some comfort that just was not forthcoming. Well, it doesn’t seem to have been forthcoming at that time but things can change, don’t you know.
All soap operas have twists and turns in the plot to keep you coming back tomorrow. Just like a soap opera, Margie T knows the formula to keeping folks tuned in. Events like this one where Margie T stars as the village idiot do not lend themselves to that pesky relevance thing. I do not believe that Margie has any idea why people on the floor of the House of Representatives laughed at her demands that the House come to order and follow the protocols of the body. It’s rare in life to ever see ironic hypocrisy at such a level of proficiency .
To get attention in the TikTok world we live in, one has to be amazingly outrageous while saying what you’re saying but not actually saying what you’re saying. In other words, I want to see it and understand it from what and how you do it. So what was Marjorie T saying when she asked Randy Weingarten if she was not a doctor, teacher or mother? Would she not have to admit that she was a political activist? Isn’t Marjorie a political activist? What is the accusation of a political activist of being a political activist by a political activist say about what the accusing political activist is trying to achieve? Isn’t that what politicians do? Is Marjorie not aware that to be a politician AKA political activist one must represent the thinking of a significant demographic of the public? Oh, if I think of it a moment I doubt that she does or maybe it’s that she just doesn’t care. It’s just difficult to find non-soap opera plot lines to imagine when Marjorie T puts out $100,000.00 for Kissing Kevin’s used chap stick. Don’t you kind of have to wonder just how love sick she is? The house speaker election must have been an ultimate turn on and ex revenge for her.
And this brings me to the crux of the matter. I can kind of see how Marjorie might be blinded to her own programming. She really has not had to alter any of her thinking since she was a good deal younger than she is now. She kind of shows some common behaviors of women who are going through the trauma of breaking up a long term relationship. I could very well look to her as though she and Kissing have something going on. I certainly would not be beyond Kissing to say one thing and mean something else even with someone as blindly blissful as Marjorie T. What the hey! They’re both old enough to make decisions for themselves. But the last time I remember that kind of behavior gushing through a populace I was in Junior High. I wasn’t really old enough to be trusted to drive motor driven vehicles on public byways at that age. Nor should I have been. So when I see Marjorie T gushing about Kissing’s chapstick, I just can’t help but wonder if she moons about holding that tube to her own lips while dreaming goofy thoughts about how Kissing has done the same thing with the same tube? Doesn’t that make you feel all warm and fuzzy? Not me. I just have to think she missed the meaning of that ZZ Top song about tubes and snakes.
The thing that stands out about all of this teenaged mutant crushing is that practically all of the visible segments of the GOP are or at least give a wonderfully accurate performance of galloping sexual repression. From the anti-gay state senator who was outed as having a gay lover. To Republican State Houses voting to keep trans people from expressing their particular brand of humanity. To a morbid desire to control what other folks believe or do or read or say. The part that really shows the stupidity of this whole Republican, umm, thrust, is that they think they have the right to tell other people what they may and may not do with their own bodies. I kind of thought that kind of anti feminine sentiment was passé since maybe Salem? But no, it’s alive and well in all Republican controlled states. All I can say is the likes of Marjorie T, Mountain Laurel, Sarah Huckleberry, Kristen Cinnamon Toast and other righteous Karens of this ilk should perhaps consider how violent the men they pander actually are. The anti-feminine crowd always checks the credentials of those closest to them there, for today’s female leaders are the most likely folks who really should be concerned about the Republicans bringing back witch trials. Just saying.
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