AOC Got Engaged—Cue Right-Wing Outrage About Every Detail of Her Wedding!
Congratulations to these two, and to the Republican news outlets that will milk this union for as many bad-faith attacks as possible.
Politics
Business Insider reported Thursday that Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) is engaged to her longtime partner, Riley Roberts. The pair met while attending Boston University, and the Congresswoman confirmed on Twitter that they got engaged in Puerto Rico in April. Congratulations to the lovebirds, and also to the Republicans and conservative news outlets that will milk however she decides to celebrate this union for as much outrage as possible.
No matter what kind of engagement and wedding AOC has, Republicans will act aghast. Ring that isn’t from Claire’s? She’s a faux-socialist. Dress that isn’t a potato sack pulled out of a dumpster? She’s a hypocrite. Guest list of more than 100 people? She’s a hypocrite about the environment. Courthouse wedding, or one officiated by a friend? An attack on Christianity.
Frankly, it won’t just be Fox News and the Daily Wire—center-left liberals who hate The Squad and Bernie Sanders will probably criticize her for many of the same things. And then some leftists will be upset if she does some performative gesture like, say, carbon offsets for guests traveling by plane—and Fox will breathlessly cover those critiques, too.
As former Jezebel staffer Stassa Edwards wrote about AOC’s controversial “Tax the Rich” dress from the 2021 Met Gala, “No matter what the congresswoman wears, people will project their own political anxieties and expectations onto her.” She continued:
There is an endless possibility of opinions to have about the dress because it’s whatever its beholder needs it to be. But then, that’s the story of AOC’s political career. She’s always been the subject of contradictory expectations, easily slotted into competing narratives and transformed into whatever that narrative needs: a villain, a progressive hero, a hypocritical leftist, or just an incompetent girl.
AOC will get shit no matter how or where or when she chooses to get married, so hopefully she can just do it in a secret cave far, far away, and just tell us when it’s over. We, at the very least, are happy for her.