Tuesday, November 21, 2023

Truest statement of the week

Unless you reside in the state that elected him, there’s a very good chance you’d never heard of Republican Senator Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma until he told a man to “stand your butt up” and challenged him to a fight during a Senate committee hearing.

Sean O’Brien, president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was testifying at that Nov. 14 hearing, but Mullin was all up in his feelings over mean things O’Brien had said about him on social media. And the best way for a Republican lawmaker in 2023 to handle this disagreement, Mullin decided, was to invite O’Brien to throw hands.

That same day, Republican Representative Tim Burchett of Tennessee claimed GOP Representative Kevin McCarthy intentionally elbowed him in the back — “a clean shot to the kidneys,” as Burchett put it — as he passed Burchett in a US Capitol hallway. Yelling back and forth, the two men publicly squabbled like children stuck in the back seat of the family car on a long trip. A smirking McCarthy denied poking Burchett, but later told reporters, “If I kidney punched someone, they would be on the ground.”

And some say women are too emotional to be leaders.

If you want to see the much-discussed crisis in masculinity in action, look no further than elected Republican men who are ferociously waging their uncivil wars.

--  Renee Graham's "A 'crisis' in masculinity? Look no further than the fussin' and fightin' Republicans" (BOSTON GLOBE).



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