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How the Women of the House Flipped the State of the Union Script


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It was the most unexpected moment of an otherwise dully divisive evening: a group of lawmakers taking a speech that wasn’t about them and insisting that in fact it was.

MEGAN GARBER
Democratic female members of Congress cheer after President Donald Trump said there are more women in Congress than ever before during his second State of the Union address.JONATHAN ERNST / REUTERS

“You weren’t supposed to do that!”

Donald Trump, midway through his State of the Union speech on Tuesday evening, did a rare thing: He applied his habit of rhetorical excess to someone other than himself. “No one,” he said, “has benefited more from our thriving economy than women, who have filled 58 percent of the newly created jobs in the last year.” The president had apparently not been expecting the line, the statistic bolstering the broader point about the “thriving economy,” to be met with applause. The Democratic women of the House of Representatives, however—nearly all of them clad in white, the symbolic shade of women’s suffrage, as a show of political unity—applauded it anyway.

 

And then, even though they weren’t supposed to, they did something else: They rose to their feet. First a few of them, then several, and finally all of them, an eddy of brightness within a sea of dark suits, the women cheering, clapping, laughing, and pointing to themselves as job-fillers—reveling in the irony that their presence in the Congressional chamber was one thing a boast-prone president really could claim credit for: Many of the women, indeed, had ended up in their new jobs precisely as a reaction to the presidency and policies of Donald Trump.

 

It was that most unexpected of moments in a State of the Union event that was otherwise dully divisive: unscripted, human, fun. The rote inertias of party politics colliding with the brief delights of, simply, a party. But the scene that erupted in the House chamber on Tuesday was also a moment of reclamation. Here was a line in a speech that, like most of the president’s lines, was meant to be about him; and here was a group of women—many of them newly elected to Congress and many of them women of color—insisting that it was, in fact, about them.

 

There is politics as performance and there is politics as an intimate and urgent force in people’s lives; the State of the Union, a spectacle that is also a setting for declarations of presidential policy, summons both. The speech often hosts a series of uncomfortable collisions—between empowerment and exploitation, between people highlighted as fellow citizens and people used as props. The Democratic women of the House, their outfits all but demanding attention and comment, effectively weaponized those tensions: Knowing the power of the image—understanding the capabilities of the strategic spectacle—they effectively objectified themselves. But they didn’t exploit themselves: In their uniforms, instead, they were insistently joyful and insistently vocal and, perhaps above all, insistently there. Within an event designed to center itself on the chief executive, they effectively reclaimed their time. (“Thank you very much,” the president said, after the women first stood to be counted, perhaps attempting to restore the evening’s promised Trumpcentrism. “Thank you very much.”)

 

The women’s choice of white as the outfit of unity was its own kind of reclamation. “Suffragette white,” after all, has an extremely fraught history, in large part because suffrage itself has an extremely fraught history. It wasn’t “women,” the collective, who in practice got the vote in the America of 1920, as Trump would later claim; it was merely white women who did. The suffragist agenda, in a decision whose errors would reverberate into a feminist movement that would go on to preach justice but too often fail to practice it, deliberately excluded women of color.

But reclamation, as a political weapon but also as a broader ethic, allows a new kind of history to be made. (The white worn on Tuesday—a uniform chosen for the occasion by Representative Lois Frankel of Florida, the chair of the Democratic Women’s Working Group—echoed the all-white outfits Democratic women wore to Trump’s first State of the Union, in 2017, and the black they wore in 2018, as a visual nod to the #MeToo and #TimesUp movements.) The lawmakers who donned white on Tuesday found ways both to acknowledge the shamefulness of history and to repurpose it—but to do so, they made clear, on their own terms. As Representative Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts tweeted on Tuesday evening: “The women of the #116th were asked to wear white tonight in tribute to the #suffragetes Tonight, I honor women like #AlicePaul who led the movement & women like #IdaB who were excluded from it. Kente cloth & the color white. Holding space for both #womanists & #feminists, always.” Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York—acknowledging the fact that Shirley Chisholm, as well as Geraldine Ferraro and Hillary Clinton, wore white in ceremonial settings as a nod to suffrage—put it like this: “I wore all-white today to honor the women who paved the path before me, and for all the women yet to come. From suffragettes to Shirley Chisholm, I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for the mothers of the movement.”

 

A broad coalition that makes space for individualized nuance: that complicated idea, it turned out, was part of the easy imagecraft of the evening. Nancy Pelosi, perched between the president and an American flag—and fresh off a political victory over Trump, as she refused to bend to his demands for a border wall—presided over the scene, herself clad in the all-white uniform, ensuring its visual harmony. The House speaker gave her caucus a slight nod when the president delivered a line they might applaud. She scowled when Trump lied, and spun, and preached division. As he concluded his speech, she offered him a rousingly petty and therefore exceedingly internet-friendly round of applause. At times on Tuesday, Pelosi resembled a conductor of a human orchestra, aware of the emotions of the audience and attuned to the rhythms of the score, using sweeps of her hands to convey to her musicians when, precisely, the crescendo should swell.

She, too, had some repurposing to do. And her own approach to that work helped foment the other striking moment of an otherwise unstriking speech: a scene that came just a few lines after Trump found himself pleasantly surprised by applause from the Democratic side of the aisle. “Don’t sit yet, you’re gonna like this,” he said teasingly—flirtatiously—to the women who had just risen at his words. He paused dramatically. “Exactly one century after the Congress passed the constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote,” the president said, “we also have more women serving in the Congress than at any time before.”

 

He was right, to an extent: The women did like it. The line may have been historically inaccurate, and it may have been delivered by a president who has been both accused of and known to brag about sexual assault—a president who has referred to women as horses and pigs and dogs—but in that moment, the women of the 116th Congress chose to focus on the message rather than the messenger. They rose again, cheering and applauding: not the president, but themselves. And then they took the celebration further: They started chanting. “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” they yelled, the sentiment spreading through the congressional chamber, thunderous and insistent and, against all odds, jubilant.

And so, for a moment, that most basic cheer, which Donald Trump and his supporters had for so long co-opted as their own, was co-opted once again: The chant—one that, in political settings, has so often suggested swaggering jingoism and cowboy diplomacy and the polite fiction that politics are effectively indistinguishable from sporting events—took on a new kind of symbolism. On Tuesday, “U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!” echoed through the House, a cheer of progress and possibility, its syllables centered on women who were clad in history but looking to the future. As the president delivered his prepared remarks, the lawmakers engaged in an ad-lib that doubled as that most fundamental of American activities: being told you weren’t supposed to do that, and doing it anyway.

 

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2019/02/sotu-why-women-wore-white/582178/

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52 minutes ago, Shabibilicious said:

Thanks for posting, Bumper......It was truly a glorious sight to see American women of differing ethnicity, races, religions....grandmothers, mothers, and daughters....take their rightful place at the table of governing.  Amazing to see.....and so long overdue.

 

GO RV, then BV

yes it was amazing I saw the KKK without hoods

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13 minutes ago, huffy2005 said:

yes it was amazing I saw the KKK without hoods

 

That's an interesting view of women of all colors fulfilling their civic duty......I imagine the grumpy old white men of the Grand Old Party are not amused by the ladies presence one little bit.  As always, just my opinion.

 

GO RV, then BV

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Quite a bit of meaningless fluff on Tuesday night. Nice that more women are participating, but look at the side they were standing on. The party of slavery (physical slavery in the Confederacy ) and today the Rats keep the slaves on the welfare plantation promising things they can NEVER deliver, just to maintain power. Sad indeed. And let's not forget the type of government these white clad ladies purport. SOCIALISM!! NEVER succeeded EVER, no matter where it is tried.

Edited by md11fr8dawg
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4 minutes ago, md11fr8dawg said:

Quite a bit of meaningless fluff on Tuesday night. Nice that more women are participating, but look at the side they were standing on. The party of slavery (physical slavery in the Confederacy ) and today the Rats keep the slaves on the welfare plantation promising things they can NEVER deliver, just to maintain power. Sad indeed. And let's not forget the type of government these white clad ladies purport. SOCIALISM!! NEVER succeeded EVER, no matter where it is tried.

 

It seems to be a mixed and matched balance of women representing their constituencies.....only one of them is openly pushing for Socialism.....and as stated before, that one is so enamored with her current fame and social media status, same as Trump, that she will lose all but her staunch supporters, same as Trump.  As always, just my opinion.

 

GO RV, then BV

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Trump Approval Index History

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/

Date

Approval Index

Strongly Approve

Strongly Disapprove

Total Approve

Total Disapprove

07-Feb-19

-5

37%

42%

49%

50%

06-Feb-19

-7

36%

43%

48%

51%

05-Feb-19

-6

36%

42%

48%

51%

04-Feb-19

-10

34%

44%

45%

54%

01-Feb-19

-15

31%

46%

43%

57%

31-Jan-19

-15

31%

46%

43%

56%

30-Jan-19

-15

31%

46%

43%

56%

 

 

 

 

Only a Democratic Socialist would call this 

FALLING:confused:

http://www.rasmussenreports.com/

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3 minutes ago, ladyGrace'sDaddy said:

Trump Approval Index History

Date

Approval Index

Strongly Approve

Strongly Disapprove

Total Approve

Total Disapprove

07-Feb-19

-5

37%

42%

49%

50%

06-Feb-19

-7

36%

43%

48%

51%

05-Feb-19

-6

36%

42%

48%

51%

04-Feb-19

-10

34%

44%

45%

54%

01-Feb-19

-15

31%

46%

43%

57%

31-Jan-19

-15

31%

46%

43%

56%

30-Jan-19

-15

31%

46%

43%

56%

 

 

 

 

Only a Democratic Socialist would call this 

FALLING:confused:

 

Dude no one believes polls...

 

B/A

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3 minutes ago, ladyGrace'sDaddy said:

Trump Approval Index History

Date

Approval Index

Strongly Approve

Strongly Disapprove

Total Approve

Total Disapprove

07-Feb-19

-5

37%

42%

49%

50%

06-Feb-19

-7

36%

43%

48%

51%

05-Feb-19

-6

36%

42%

48%

51%

04-Feb-19

-10

34%

44%

45%

54%

01-Feb-19

-15

31%

46%

43%

57%

31-Jan-19

-15

31%

46%

43%

56%

30-Jan-19

-15

31%

46%

43%

56%

 

 

 

 

Only a Democratic Socialist would call this 

FALLING:confused:

 

Source Link please.  

 

GO RV, then BV

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1 minute ago, ladyGrace'sDaddy said:

Those aren't women on the left, they're baby murdering Democratic Socialist. 

And I KNOW you don't approve of that. 

 

You know the post about the law recently proposed? Do you know how many laws are proposed every year that go nowhere? That was rhetoric... Nothing more but to incite a reaction, which obviously it did. Don't fall for the political positioning, that's exactly what they are hoping people will do... They want sheeple...

 

B/A

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2 minutes ago, bostonangler said:

 

You know the post about the law recently proposed? Do you know how many laws are proposed every year that go nowhere? That was rhetoric... Nothing more but to incite a reaction, which obviously it did. Don't fall for the political positioning, that's exactly what they are hoping people will do... They want sheeple...

 

B/A

That  very same law was just passed last week in New York. Now there are 9 other states attempting to follow suit. I don't think that is political positioning. 

And just this week the Democratic Socialist Women blocked a bill that would have made it illegal

to kill a baby born after a botched abortion. Is that political posturing? 

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I found this "white out " event to be a bit confusing..........

 

In Congress women have the greatest representation ever.........We have Many Women CEO's of Major, major Corps......

 

WW2 saw Women step up in manufacturing........the US would not have won the war.......and we all wouldn't be where we are today without those efforts......

 

So it is what these ladies were trying to say that confuses me..........?.......almost if they are playing the "victim card".......

 

 

"The white outfits dozens of female lawmakers wore to the State of the Union address Tuesday night were a visual tribute to the U.S. suffragists and an attempt to spark the same kind of publicity"

 

The Suffragist movement was something started in 1913.......for many reasons that are no longer issues..........

 

So what are these ladies in Congress trying to say....?    Are they so suppressed in today's world that they are all miserable...?

 

When the President of the country is mentioning many positives occuring in the country......they need to sit on their hands and not acknowledge the many positives.........why?........are they is such straights they have to protest other positives in their country.....??

 

Frankly I thought they were an embarrassment to their gender and the Citizens of the Country.........let's hope they can celebrate their gender in this country by doing something in Congress that betters the country....!

 

JMO.........CL

 

 

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Probably still about the me too movement and our president is still part of the problem no matter what. They would rather have a socialist woman president like cortez or Hillarious than a man that has turned our country around in our favor and has given far more too woman and minorities than any other president for quite some time. We should stand together as a country and not race or gender. But then victomhood will always show that its about them, about getting even, and even extinguishing the very thing that helped them get to where they are at now. The more you give, the more powerful they are, the more they take.

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24 minutes ago, coorslite21 said:

WW2 saw Women step up in manufacturing........the US would not have won the war.......and we all wouldn't be where we are today without those efforts......

 

So it is what these ladies were trying to say that confuses me..........?.......almost if they are playing the "victim card"......

What you say about WW2 and women stepping up is so very true and also why we won the war. 

Before that time most women were full time stay at home moms and did a wonderful job raising 

there children, our future. 

However, after the war women did not return to there most important jobs of raising their children, our future. Rather they stayed in the work environment and nearly doubled the average family household income. An Income that the women, along with their husbands, soon learned to live beyond. This then created the need for a more extensive credit system and the banks were all too eager to supply the needs of the people. This in effect has forced women to remain in the work environment as today they have little choice. 

Meanwhile those "Children" that were no longer being raised by a loving mother and being taught the Bible along with the facts of life, were left to the public school system and daycare, in some sad cases worse, like watching endless hours of TV.

Today we have grown children with little morals and nearly zero people skills. 

So I submit to all, that the Democratic Socialist Women might have revived the woman's suffrage movement of 1913 because they feel suffering for the children which they have abandoned by being forced into the work environment forever. 

Maybe?

No!

That's right they would rather murder their children.

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1 hour ago, md11fr8dawg said:

Quite a bit of meaningless fluff on Tuesday night. Nice that more women are participating, but look at the side they were standing on. The party of slavery (physical slavery in the Confederacy ) and today the Rats keep the slaves on the welfare plantation promising things they can NEVER deliver, just to maintain power. Sad indeed. And let's not forget the type of government these white clad ladies purport. SOCIALISM!! NEVER succeeded EVER, no matter where it is tried.

 

In Scandinavian countries ( Denmark, Sweden, Norway, etc) where it was called "Social democracy" it did work for decades......

 

True....Taxes are high over there...But if citizens obtain excellent services from cradle to grave...then it's probably worth it.....

Edited by umbertino
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