Podcast: Disciples of Power Karens

Power Karens don't get to stand by and watch the country burn in comfort.

The post Podcast: Disciples of Power Karens appeared first on Taylor Marsh.

via Twitter, source unknown

But when former First Lady Michelle Obama used uncharacteristically loose language to dismiss Ms Sandberg’s career advice catchphrase, “lean in”, she seemed to underline just how far Ms Sandberg’s star had fallen. “It’s not always enough to lean in because that [expletive] doesn’t work,” Mrs Obama said. – BBC

THE LIST is long, but three women make Trump’s world of White nationalists possible. And, yes, they’re White too.

Sheryl Sandberg leads the list. Bloomberg business roasted her recently.

“Leaning in” seems premised on the idea that, if women can simply buy in to the sanctity of the profit motive, they will be amply rewarded in time. It leaves out important things like having genuine human reactions to bad ideas, overruling idiots and being moral. 

When Sandberg says we need more women leaders, I can’t help but ask: leading what, and to what end? In this case, real leadership would at the very least involve a public disavowal of Zuckerberg’s irresponsible stance.

Kayleigh MacAneny has a law degree from Harvard, schooled at Oxford, and knows when she’s lying, but isn’t interested in the Constitution. Her sights were set on more personal goals like getting in front of the camera, “but couldn’t get a break.”

The Guardian

After graduating in 2010, she worked for three years as a production assistant at Fox News for Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas and father of Sarah Sanders, Trump’s second press secretary. In 2012, she wrote a tweet about Barack Obama, the country’s first black president, that has come back to haunt her: “How I Met Your Brother – Never mind, forgot he’s still in that hut in Kenya. #ObamaTVShows.”

… But in 2015, McEnany received some intriguing career advice over cocktails from Michael Marcantonio, a fellow summer associate at a law firm and a Democrat. In an interview with the New York Times, he recalled telling her “Donald Trump is going to be your nominee,” adding that if “a smart, young, blond Harvard graduate” wanted “to get on television and have a career as a political pundit, you would be wise to be an early backer”.

Then there’s Ivanka Trump, bless her heart. Vanity Fair’s Emily Jane Fox weighs in and it’s devastating for the “disassociated princess.”

And where she stood was so clear, because it was intentionally, internationally televised. She was part of a brain trust that had urged her father to hold a photo op outside of St. John’s church, across from the White House, last week. She had reportedly urged him to pose with a Bible—a Bible that she handed him from her now iconic bright white $1,540 Max Mara purse—for a media opportunity that required law enforcement officers to clear peaceful protesters from the area with riot gear and chemical irritants. Students at WSU Tech had already listened to her, and they rejected it. That is not cancel culture. That is the American political system at work.

Power Karens don’t get to stand by and watch the country burn in comfort.

Each of these women made choices for which they need to be held accountable.

If women in power act like incompetent men, or worse, cover for men in authority, what’s the point in giving women a leadership platform?

The post Podcast: Disciples of Power Karens appeared first on Taylor Marsh.