here’s the insidious reason the GOP put Katie Britt’s vapid face on TV

why did the GOP pick a rookie like Britt to give an important speech?

by now, the whole world knows that Alabama Senator Katie Britt’s disastrous State of the Union reponse was built on a lie.

Britt spun a horrific tale of a 12-year-old girl who was trafficked and raped by drug cartels, and blamed it on the policies of the Biden Administration. at its center is a true story — except for the part where the events took place in Mexico, almost 20 years ago, while George W. Bush was president.

after days of issuing non-denial denials, Katie Britt’s spokesperson now admits she lied.

it was a dumb unforced error that made an ineptly-delivered clownshoes catastrophe of a speech only worse.

so why did the Republican Brain Trust — now there are three words that absolutely do not fucking belong together — pick an unproven rookie like Britt to give an important speech?

let’s let that cautionary tale for why you shouldn’t play football without a helmet, Tommy Tuberville, lay it out.

(content advisory: listening to Tub-of-shit’s mangled syntax may lower your IQ by several points. don’t say you weren’t warned.)

TV bobblehead: “how do you think she did?”
Tuberville: “well, considering the circumstances, I think, I thought she did very well. and you know, she’s a mom. she’s a housewife. she’s around people at a young age. and if you just see what the left is doing, they’re going after families. they’re going after separating families — taking the dad out of the family. they’re going after kids in the schools, not allowing them to learn to read and write and do arithmetic. they’re being indoctrinated with all these pronouns and all these books that are in the library about sexuality. I thought Katie was a very good choice, she did a very good job. it’s a hard job to do, to come out and criticize, but she’s had one point to make. you know, she didn’t have enough time to go and criticize everything Joe Biden had talked out. she had the narrative of talking about family — and that’s what Republicans are for, Democrats are against, the family.”

there’s a fuckload of dipshittery to unpack here, but gist of T-Tube’s word salad is this: “she’s a housewife.”

Katie Britt is meant to be a shining example.

you see, it’s a world full of scary people out there — with pronouns — and if women watch Britt’s speech, they’ll be inspired to quit their jobs and get back in the kitchen and be a good mom to little Jimmy and Susie and stop having these crazy feminazi notions about having autonomy and choosing their destiny.

yes, I know that doesn’t make one fucking lick of sense. don’t shoot me, I’m just the messenger.

it’s all about being a tradwife. seriously. check out this lethal dose of fucknuttery:

Although she is responsible for cooking and cleaning their Virginia home, Williams doesn’t venture outside — not to the gym, to buy cleaning supplies or to meet a girlfriend for coffee — without calling her electrician husband Conner to ask for permission, nor does she leave the house after dark alone.

Asking for permission “is a respectful thing,” Estee Williams tells TODAY.com. “I am happy to do it and he’s happy to usually grant it.”

Williams is one face of the “Tradwife” (traditional wife) movement, composed largely of Christian, conservative millennial and Gen Z women who are leaning out of the workforce and into homemaking. This decision is not primarily logistical or economical; instead, it is philosophical.

Jesus wept. I want to say that the christofascists are taking us back to the 1950s, but I don’t think that June Cleaver had to call Ward to ask permission to take the Beaver to the dentist.

it was no accident they put Katie Britt — a United States Senator and very much not a housewife — in the kitchen.

as Amanda Marcotte explains in Salon, Katie is the Christian Nationalists’ latest tradwife avatar.

And yet, even as her colleagues were in D.C. for the speech, Britt framed herself as a hausfrau, talking about how “my husband, Wesley, and I just watched President Biden’s State of the Union Address from our living room.” Her address was filmed from her kitchen with an aesthetic that former White House communications director Jennifer Palmieri mocked as “tradwife,” which is internet slang for “traditional wife.” As feminist writer Jill Filipovic wrote, Britt’s was a message of who women should be: “Afraid, valued only for being mothers, and in the kitchen.” Republicans didn't even bother to hide the sexist nostalgia they were angling for. As the New York Times reported, talking points circulated before the speech suggested Republicans call her “America’s mom.”

“America’s mom” — ugh.

hey, did you know there’s something called the “tradwife voice”? check it out:

that breathy, childlike sing-song is not Katie Britt’s regular speaking voice. it’s a complete put-on. I’m not even sure what era this is meant to evoke, because again, I can’t recall June Cleaver ever speaking in that tone.

“hello, Ward? go fuck yourself.”

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Katie Britt, for her part, is all over the Sunday bobblehead shows this morning, insisting that she never meant to deceive anyone. spoiler alert: she’s lying.

TV bobblehead: “but to be clear, the story that you relayed is not something that happened under the Biden administration — that particular person.”
Britt: “I very clearly said I spoke to a woman who told me about when she was trafficked when she was 12.”

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now let’s all enjoy this: here’s Scarlett Johansson doing a dead-on Katie Britt impersonation during last night’s Saturday Night Live broadcast.

“I’m not just a senator. I’m a wife. a mother. and the craziest bitch in the Target parking lot.”