As sure as the sun rises in the East and sets in the West, the announcement of Kamala Harris as Joe Biden’s running mate has opened the flood gates of mostly white people questioning her blackness and whether a Black woman can also be Indian. John C. Eastman of Newsweek had a particularly difficult time fitting the idea of a multicultural Vice Presidential candidate into his mind, a conundrum that resulted in a coded collection of word vomit in which Eastman debates if, constitutionally, Harris is considered a “natural-born citizen.”
Naturally, this is an inappropriate and racist debate to manufacture as Harris was born in California and although her parents were not born in the United States, neither of them is on the ballot. Newsweek quickly published an editor’s note explaining that Eastman was not trying to stoke racist fires he was just fucking around with some amendments to see which one could get the most clicks.
There was also Mark Levin, host of Fox News’ Life, Liberty, and Levin, who went on a strange rant over Harris’ ethnic background which seems to confound him. Levin was trying to explain that Harris is not an African American and that her ancestry, “does not go back to slavery at all.” Who knew Mark Levin was also a genealogist?
While a number of pundits have lost themselves in this shit-pile of their own making, the obsession around Harris’ ethnicity, fueled by the far-right and Trump, is an excellent way to distract from the larger issue that Harris, a competent individual, is capable of serving as president, while our current leader was battling with showerheads on Wednesday. Lucky for Levin and I guess other morons, Medialyte published a flowchart on when to use Black versus when to use African-American. It’s not that hard! Still, it’s going to be a long and grueling journey to November.
Sarah Palin has taken a moment to stop staring at Russia from her window to dole out some advice to Kamala Harris, despite the fact that not a soul can recall when Harris asked for this advice. Palin dropped these unsolicited gems in an Instagram post with the caption reading, “Congrats to the democrat VP pick 🇺🇸 Climb upon Geraldine Ferraro’s and my shoulders, and from the most amazing view in your life consider lessons we learned.”
Palin then wrote out a list of things she’d learned during her run for vice president alongside the late John McCain in 2008. Notably missing from the advice list was perhaps the most important tidbit: Try to remember to look up the name of a national newspaper before you go on television with Katie Couric.
- Love is alive and awful in a Vanity Fair piece detailing the unlikely romance between Stephen and Katie Miller who, “had fallen in love—as young people do—while figuring out how to separate children from their parents at the border.” [Vanity Fair]
- Donald Trump admits out loud that he will not attempt to fund the USPS because he doesn’t want mail-in voting to happen. Did someone say voter suppression? [Twitter]
- Finally, someone in the GOP is embarrassed over Marjorie Taylor Greene. [Politico]
- At least 200,000 people have died as a result of covid-19. [New York Times]
- Protestors in Tennessee who camp out in front of the capitol will now be considered felons because protesting is a crime I guess. [Tennesseean]
- In a twist straight out of The Notebook, author Bob Woodward has acquired letters exchanged between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un which will be published in his upcoming book, Rage. [The Guardian]
- Bend, Oregon isn’t just home to the last Blockbuster on earth but also a place where protestors were able to stop an ICE arrest by blocking border agents for 10 hours. [OPB.org]
- Now that she’s on the road to the white house, Kamala Harris’s Senate seat is the new hot place to be. Who will win in a battle of the Californians? [AP]