Did pronouns reelect Trump?
Did the apostrophe?
Jeffrey Denny
Many believe a certain infamous Trump campaign ad put the fascist threat to democracy back in the White House:
“Kamala is for they-them; President Trump is for you.”
For weirdo haters, the ad dog-whistled anti-trans.
But maybe it also whistled a bit for reasonable people. Including Democrats, elders who vote the most, and old-school grammarians who’ve always eye-rolled the “they-them” nongender pronoun use as faddish, confusing and even pretentious virtue-signaling.
I personally don’t care what anyone wants to call himself, herself or themself. For me, it feels a little weird — perhaps narcissistic — to put my selected pronouns in my email signature to teach everyone what I prefer to be called lest they inadvertently or advertently erase my agency and identity. Or to go along to get along like the Vichy French.
I also respect that few receiving my emails may keep track of what I call myself and some may snort at my preening wokeness.
As the old joke goes, call me anything, just don’t call me late for dinner.
Some say it’s condescending, even hateful, for a straight white Boomer like me who captains the universe to cismansplain what people should call themselves.
It sounds a bit typical MAGA fragile toxic male (here gendering is ok) if not pecksniffian, like a celebrated Ivy lit prof ruined by legacy students from wealthy families who were triggered and traumatized because he refused to use their selected pronouns.
Others might say the whole pronoun weirdness is BS that suddenly emerged via dictat by a powerfully righteous minority of progressive poseurs and guilt-tripping bullies who delight in destroying anyone who lacks their superior sensitivity and knowledge of the ever-changing proper lingo.
We’re talking about the new radical chic who casually re-bleat insider patois like ghettoized, dystopian, weaponized, did violence to, interrogate, instrumentalize and interpolate.
But I know plenty of thoughtful, caring, “woke” Democrats who refuse to play the pronoun game.
Yet want to avoid being victimized by the self-appointed guardians of the language galaxy.
Many Democrats mutter in our safe space speakeasies that it makes us uncomfortable when our kids at elite, exclusive $100,000/year colleges we pay for demand free speech to support Hamas for another Jewish genocide. Then guilt us into silence when we’re confused about what they say is hurtful to say or not say. They’re right: silence=violence.
Yes, Virginia, even many libs are sick of HuffPo’s compendium of “75,000 Things You Should Never Say.” Especially since HuffPo is owned by BuzzFeed, which is owned by millionaire capitalists and shareholders, while HuffPo feeds their wallets with claims that, “we report with empathy and put people at the heart of every story.”
All of this is why Trump’s “they-them” ad worked.
It spoke volumes for what most Americans think of Democrats.
They say we’re highly educated, financially comfortable elites, the smartest yet stupidest in the land, overly focused on our hothouse progressive issues. Without a clue about daily matters that worry working-class Americans, people we know mostly from our media, which is produced by people like us.
To me, this is how the Harris campaign lost. Despite its brilliant political consultants who surely made millions in the best heads-I-win, tails-you-lose gambit ever. No wonder they didn’t notice that most Americans care more about gas, groceries and housing costs than social justice. So much so they’ll buy Trump’s lies.
For my part, I’ve gotten a tad weary of how The New York Times, The Washington Post, The New Yorker and other top professional journalism I’ve always trusted to call BS when warranted lately seems obsessed with progressive issues and swallowing them whole without chewing.
Perhaps it’s a dying pander to new gens. Even if they think real journalism is skibbidi Ohio toilet rizz, they’re too busy, knowledgeable and anxious from their phones to read beyond clickbait headlines AI curates to feed their naïve beliefs, and think grammar is stupid or a white Western patriarchal colonizing construct.
Then there’s the Biden apostrophe gaffe.
You may not recall because it was a long several weeks ago, but a flop-sweating comedian warming up one of Trump’s final rallies referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage.”
As the Harris campaign seized on the slur in a clueless attempt own the Hispanic vote, Joe Biden replied, “The only garbage I see floating out there is his supporters.”
Biden’s cleanup crew denied he called Trump supporters “garbage” like Hillary Clinton’s “deplorables.” Biden meant his supporter’s or supporters’ garbage, the comedian or people who found the slur funny.
But the apostrophe defense was another nail that lost the war. Shades of Bill Clinton’s, “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.”
Whatever Biden meant to say, most Democrats don’t care if he committed the classic Michael Kinsley political gaffe, when a politician accidentally tells the truth.
To be honest and respect our identity and agency, most Democrats do believe Trump’s MAGA base is deplorable garbage destroying the country they claim to love more than we do.
But clinging to righteous pronouns, corrected punctuation and progressive rules that make most common-sense Americans work their extraocular muscles means losing America. Let’s call BS on ourselves.
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
