Uppity women unite

The sad story of Neera Tanden

Mar 03, 2021

Last night, at the request of the nominee, the White House withdrew its nomination of Neera Tanden as director of the Office of Management and Budget. Tanden, president of the left-leaning Center for American Progress, garnered the wrong kind of attention for blunt comments made on Twitter about both Republicans and the left wing of the Democratic party.

(Some called the tweets “mean” but who am I to judge, as I am currently in the third day of a six-day stint in Twitmo, myself, for my use of the word “slap” in a tweet.)

Among other comments, Tanden likened Sen. Ted Cruz (Q-TX) to a vampire, Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) to Voldemort, and she said Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) was “the worst.”

Tanden apologized for the tweets, and after her nomination, she deleted most of them, but that was not enough for elected officials who like their women to be more like Phyllis:

I am not making a plea to go back to the bad old days of hateful name-calling on social media, but remember Richard Grenell, Trump’s ambassador to Germany? He was, according to an NBC editorial, Trump’s “wing man” for nasty tweets, yet he sailed through his confirmation hearings. (Grenell, too, scrubbed his tweets but some of us won’t forget and tweets are forever if you know where to look.)

(For what it’s worth, Germany wasn’t too crazy about the guy, either.)

Remember Judge Brett Kavanaugh who, among other things, went all hysterical and combative on Sen. Amy Klobuchar? He sits on the Supreme Court.

She didn’t have a confirmation hearing, but Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (Q-Georgia) continues her online tirades and yet only 11 of her colleagues voted to strip her of committee assignments. (For her efforts, Taylor Greene’s Twitter account was suspended recently.)

The rules are different for girls, especially well-educated, smart ones who have the audacity to throw an elbow. I don’t intend to ever scrub my tweets. I do intend them to be read at my wake, when I slip from this mortal coil at the ripe age of 134.