Did you watch that interview on Fox News? I did. And maybe you saw what I saw.
What I saw was an extended metaphor for the condition of the country itself.
A woman, a person of color, representing a new generation and a kind of voice that hasn’t always been heard in American life, but more and more is being heard now, trying to speak — and a barrel-chested, pomade-glazed relic of the “Mad Men” era, interrupting her and interrupting her some more and interrupting her some more still, and then adding to his interruption some interruptions, and then also interrupting.
Fox News’s Bret Baier wasn’t just trying to stop Vice President Kamala Harris’s words. He seemed offended at the notion that her vocal cords actually make sounds. He invited her voice on his show and was upset that it had a volume.
I doubt there is any woman, any person of color, in this country who has not been in a meeting and experienced this kind of bulldozing. And some of them watch Fox News and still don’t like being interrupted.
Last night’s interruptionism, elevated almost to an art form, is a metaphor for the state of the country because a minority of Americans like Baier, an encrusted old guard, wants to interrupt the future itself. But the future will not be interrupted.
They don’t want to hear voices not their own. But those voices are growing louder.
They think the country will be lost when more people speak. But we know the country will actually come more fully than ever into its own when we all speak.
And we’re not done speaking.
My take: I saw Kamala Harris (as with the debate with Trump) meet misinformation and fear (masquerading as 'strength') and his combative stance with intelligence, respect and righteous indignation. I saw Baier STOP talking when she began "THIS IS A DEMOCRACY" in the tones (not of anger at him) but indignant - for America. It was gorgeous. He saw it. We all saw it. But it was her - not getting lost in any of the traps (the easy distractions) - calling out an attempted dodge of the truth, but (I can't say this strongly enough) she didn't get lost in attacking her interlocutor - she kept focus on HER message. For a Black Woman to do that - but not get lost in fury (not easy, there's a lot to be furious about) was sheer poetry. She embodied that saying: "when they go low, we go high". She was positively Presidential.
I never watch FOX News. It just bothers me. And perhaps "news" is the wrong word to use. But I did tune in last night to watch the interview with Kamala Harris. But what I saw wasn't even an interview. It was an interrogation -- all designed to make her look bad, feeble, inadequate. They went in with their agenda, even with one of their "fair" journalists. Yet, our VP was strong, determined and wanted to speak with all Americans. She won on her own merits. But she also won because she pushed back on an enemy of our democracy, FOX, and told the truth. He truth. And the truth of America's future. And a truth of America's present.