Washington Post media critic Margaret Sullivan dedicated her latest column to the phenomenon of Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and said that the freshman congresswoman’s identity played a significant role in the hate she has been receiving from critics in recent months.
“The AOC furor we’re seeing has plenty to do with her being a young Latina. Plenty to do with her willingness to challenge the status quo,” Sullivan said near the end of her piece. “And it has everything to do with America’s divisiveness, misogyny and celebrity obsession.”
“The cascading insanity over Ocasio-Cortez says far more about the audience — what used to be known as American citizens and public servants — than it does about her,” she added.
The piece broadly examined media and political reaction to Ocasio-Cortez and her “green new deal.” Sullivan looked at former Fox News contributor Seb Gorka’s CPAC speech which warned about a AOC’s Stalinist plot to steal hamburgers. She also trained her sights on Fox News’ Kat Timpf who warned during a taping of “The Greg Gutfeld Show” that Ocasio-Cortez’s policies would lead to cannibalism.
“I don’t want to eat people, Greg, and I don’t want people to eat me,” Timpf said. “AOC, do you want people to eat you?”
Since taking office, the freshman Democratic Congresswoman has faced a blizzard of critics who have attacked her both on policy and on personal grounds. In her spare time, AOC has made a hobby of dispatching some of them on Twitter – like this Washington Examiner reporter who mocked her clothing, and this Newsmax anchor who joked about her childhood home.
While her signature green new deal has been embraced by some of the party’s 2020 presidential hopefuls, it still faces resistance from many Democrats in Congress who continue to have concerns about its potential cost and impact.