Why is Katie Britt?
A Unified Theory of the Trump Verse
Jeffrey Denny
“I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way.”
So goes the memorable line seductively crooned by Jessica Rabbit in the 1988 multiple Academy Awardee, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?
Katie Britt — “Pageant queen. Go-getter. NFL wife. Senator. SNL target,” as Britain’s The Independent newspaper summarized her real American life — has earned plenty ribbing for her seductive, badly drawn AI performance in her GOP State of the Union rebuttal.
Note that when it comes to Washington elite, Britt’s about as swampy as the Disney World alligator that killed a toddler: Bama college student government president and political science grad. Lawyer. U.S. Senator staffer and spinner. Career politician, rising star, and GOP sock puppet flop-sweating for the elusive woman vote. Tracy Flick-y climber misappropriating feminism like the Reese Witherspoon character in the 1999 comedy Election. (See also the 2022 sequel, Tracy Flick Can’t Win.)
And after her hilarious reality TV performance as a Truman Show 1950s American kitchen housewife rebutting Biden’s SOTU speech before she saw it, Britt must be loving every minute that her social media is atomically Oppenheiming with love or hate. Any attention, even calling out despicable you, is better than none, as it goes on our antisocial media.
Don’t cry for Katie, America.
Her camera-ready appearance and notoriety sets her up for riches far beyond her meager $174,000 Senate salary that’s over thrice the average $52,000 of her Alabama constituents.
Her SOTU rebuttal is a beautiful audition video for future Fox News commentator or Washington swamp lobbying, advising and influence-peddling that embraces diversity, equity and inclusion in screwing poor Black and white Alabamans alike.
Britt’s Trump MAGA cult surely loves her more when Americans with any brains or BS-meter call her out.
Anyone who’s done media coaching for leaders (I have; not well) would be mortified by Britt’s performance if they were involved. Yet I’ll bet her handlers were thrilled. And so was she. She nailed it. High five on the flip side.
What?! How? you may ask.
Because Goal One in prepping any leader — whether Senator, Fortune 50 CEO, smug billionaire tech titan, or Ivy college president — is to know your audience, speak to your audience, and inspire your audience.
That’s exactly what Britt did.
“I’m not bad, I’m just drawn that way” has double meaning.
To be drawn with a pen. Or to be drawn to something.
The likes of Britt — and the entire Trump theater troupe — is drawn to the roar of the greasepaint and the smell of the crowd, namely, MAGA Nation.
This is the Unified Theory of the Trump Verse that even the best and brightest pundits seem to miss: The Trump Troupe aren’t necessarily bad, they just play bad.
They’re merely performing for the cheap seats with a hit reality show: America’s Got Stupid.
Their marks adore Trump even more for his lawlessness, depredations, lying, cheating, bigotry, misogyny, and every deadly sin and defied commandment on the Christian listicles. The worse the better.
Trump is the Greatest Show on Earth for angry, cynical, nihilistic, resentful, revengeful, mean-spirited, narrow-minded, proudly uneducated, anti-democratic, backwards-looking, progress-triggered white fools for richer, smarter political and media pettifoggers who use them for power and money and then screw them.
These are proudly patriotically folks who could never pass the U.S. citizenship test like the immigrants they hate who take jobs they don’t want or can’t do. They live 2,000 miles from the Mexican border and complain about the border crisis.
If these MAGAs have any tired, poor, huddled refugees in their towns, they were probably shanghaied by MAGA-performing governors for churches to take in.
I don’t believe in conspiracy theories.
But isn’t it weird that Britt represents a state where its esteemed high court declared a stupid thing like how IVF eggs have civil rights? While Alabama also opposes helping poor mothers and children and civil rights in general?
Coincidence? I don’t think so. Maybe pandering to stupids?
Jeffrey Denny is a Washington writer.
