What are Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's Flaws?

(xps) That is Dennis Kucinich.

Dennis is running for mayor of Cleveland, again. The primary is today!

but did they pay full price to get into Seaworld, or did they sneak in? It sounded like AOC got in for free ... so ... I don't see the problem.

calstars: Aurora James

https://www.cosmopolitan.com/style-beauty/fashion/a37582578/aoc-tax-the-rich-met-gala-dress/

AOC worked with James on the design, and she spoke to Ilana Glazer on the Vogue livestream about the experience: "We really started having a conversation about what it means to be working class women of color at the Met. We said we can't just play along, we need to break the fourth wall and challenge some of the institutions. While the Met is known for its spectacle, we should have a conversation about it."

xp thanks visiting

The idea that the dress "challenge[d] some of the institutions" is what most people seem to be taking issue with, not attending the MET.

Maybe she crashed it

lol oh no I've seen plenty of hot twitter takes already about her going to the event at all.

Idk why I said "already" -- they started last night about 3 seconds after she got there.

In so much as a dress could challenge some of the institutions, I think hers did. Idk ... I'm a diversity of tactics type.

to be clear, i'm not against her being there, the dress, or the message. i'm just extremely doubtful that it challenged anything about the institution, the Met gala isn't going to be one bit less extravagant and ridiculous last year. but she clearly did get more visibility to the message, so i'm not disdainful of the effort.

my only beef with this is that i probably would have avoided hearing about the met gala altogether otherwise

I think it's going to be consumed by the social media grist mill as a classic "limousine liberal" meme no matter why she attended, despite the fact she didn't pay, etc. The message doesn't matter as much as the imagery.

I am 100% in favor of her being there and wearing the dress, for the exact same reason I was 100% in favor of Bernie Sanders (a politician I did not support at the time) going on Joe Rogan's show. You reach new people by going to where they are. You present your message, unchanged, and if some percentage of them are receptive, you have achieved something.

lol realized i botched my post, meant to say "one bit less extravagant and ridiculous next year"

to be fair, i'm salty because i think the whole Met gala thing is ridiculous, stupid and amplifies some of the worst tendencies of American culture, so i look askance at the whole thing. but i'm not faulting AOC in the least for these larger issues i have with it all.

Get the message out there, build buzz. Take the stupid hits from randos on twitter in order to widen the audience. It's good tactics imo.

lol oh no I've seen plenty of hot twitter takes already about her going to the event at all.

There are a billion people tweeting and half of them aspire to be Dave Portnoy. Undoubtedly there are bad faith takes from people who had to look up how to spell Antoinette. From the left, though (the only side where criticisms or jokes should even be considered), not so much.

Stan culture, unfortunately, demands that people like Dennis PerrinHogan pretend Dave Portnoy and the person with the EZLN avatar are coming from the same place.

If you want to go to the fancy rich people party, go to the fancy rich people party. You're a celeb and might get to meet Frank Ocean, why wouldn't you go. Dressing it up as an act of political subversion, though, is lame as hell. I'm sure the 90-year old billionaires they keep off camera (so lenses don't shatter) really felt owned.

wait are people invoking Marie Antoinette because they don't understand what "have your cake and eat it, too" means?

Dressing it up as an act of political subversion, though, is lame as hell. I'm sure the 90-year old billionaires they keep off camera (so lenses don't shatter) really felt owned.

Again you miss the point. The audience for this gesture is not the billionaires at the party. The audience is the Teen Vogue reader/celebrity gossip consumer who wants to see pictures of celebrities dressed up fancy and has now been sent a political message along with it.

Teen Vogue has been explaining Marxism to its readers for like five years now.

I would dearly like to meet the person who was opposed to a wealth tax until they saw the nice dress on the red carpet.

is VHS on this thread

yeah the take that she's sticking it to the celebs at the Met Gala is weird, almost everyone there is left-wing and I don't think these are necessarily "the rich" she's talking about. tbh I if she did indeed get in free then yeah, by all means, have a good time. I think she's pretty cool

I think the MET gala dress may be AOC’s New Jersey

hot take: i like the met gala

some cute outfits

AOC is one of the most full-time advocates/activists of anybody in politics... i really would not interpret this in terms of her wanting to hang out with celebs first and foremost.

right she's one of the very few politicians you really should be giving the benefit of the doubt to

Again you miss the point. The audience for this gesture is not the billionaires at the party.

The audience is everyone who sees her. On that basis, what she did has some good readings and some bad ones, and they're both correct. There is no way to sum those readings and arrive at some objective answer of right or wrong because everyone is going to assign a different weights to different aspects of the act. It's also not fair to blame AOC for not solving that impossible calculation before she does stuff. I wouldn't have done it. She did. But I also have zero interest in going to a gala and meeting famous people and an attendant ignorance of the potential political benefits of doing so. I suspect there's a gendered aspect to how I interpret such events as well that makes me hesitate to forge ahead with my Capitalist Realism take. We're both still socialists and I'm gonna say she's better at it than I am.

only slightly related but i would read the hell out of a compendium of class traitors, i.e. rich/royal who supported working class interests.

If you don't think AOC's dress will advance the class struggle you're possibly not understanding social democracy correctly from a Marxist viewpoint.

— Agree to disagree 🍊 🍊 🍊 (@StefGotBooted) September 14, 2021

I got to go to a fundraiser at the Met (not the Met Ball) probably 10 years ago. Being able to walk through the mostly empty museum at night was v cool. I recommend it.

That last tweet Calzino posted is possibly the dumbest thing I've read all day.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E_Q8Dz0WYAQg_tm.jpg

xp

"That last tweet Calzino posted is possibly the dumbest thing I've read all day."

it's a pisstaking reference to a legendary Paul Mason tweet that was extremely dumb and wrong, probably a bit too UK politics for this thread!

I would dearly like to meet the person who was opposed to a wealth tax until they saw the nice dress on the red carpet.

― papal hotwife (milo z), Tuesday, September 14, 2021 10:10 AM (one hour ago)

that's a very simplistic way of evaluating the gesture. Here are some others:

1. a significant part of politics is raising the profile of an issue and keeping the issue in the public's mind. It isn't like the vast majority of people are going around on a regular basis thinking about a wealth tax, or the inequities of our tax system in general. It's not solely about "converting" people.

2. What if she went to this event wearing a fancy gown that didn't have a message? It's signaling that she is aware of the connotations of the event, the profile of the event, etc. It's like advertising during the Super Bowl.

Applying the logic of consumer marketing to politics doesn’t really work. All publicity is good publicity might work when you need to build market share for your energy drink but you’re not building a tax the rich brand.

ie “ It isn't like the vast majority of people are going around on a regular basis thinking about a wealth tax” - and no more people are thinking about it today than before the Met. The people who noticed and cared were already on her side already or already adamantly opposed.

right she's one of the very few politicians you really should be giving the benefit of the doubt to

― frogbs, Tuesday, 14 September 2021 17:31 (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

Its actually the doubt of the benefit here iirc

Applying the logic of consumer marketing to politics doesn’t really work. All publicity is good publicity might work when you need to build market share for your energy drink but you’re not building a tax the rich brand.

ie “ It isn't like the vast majority of people are going around on a regular basis thinking about a wealth tax” - and no more people are thinking about it today than before the Met. The people who noticed and cared were already on her side already or already adamantly opposed.

This is true. Ideas are entirely unmarketable; no one can be made aware of something they don't already know, or have their mind changed. That's why turnout never goes up from one election to the next, and why incumbents never, ever lose. Because it's impossible to change people's minds or get them to absorb new information when it comes to politics.

Mrs. Krabappel: Tonight's homework assignment is--
Bart: Oh, man, is it hot in here. I'd better take off my sweater.
Mrs. Krabappel: "Down with" -- [Gasps] "homework"? pic.twitter.com/ijPALWiwsh

— canwehaveapooldad (@cwhapd) August 4, 2020

idk I kinda thought all the "build the wall" and "Benghazi" and "critical race theory" shit was proof positive that repetitive, simple messaging does in fact work

It definitely works and the left is much worse at it

It definitely works and the left is much worse at it

― Clara Lemlich stan account (silby), Tuesday, September 14, 2021 12:04 PM (forty-two seconds ago)

silby otm

Yep, silby def otm.

It doesn’t work that well in a vacuum (Benghazi and the wall played to an existing base, CRT is a continuation of 50 years of textbook fights backed with the wealth of right-wing billionaires; “M4A” has been successful relatively speaking for the left and everyone who’s been pounding that line for years fell in step to vote for the guy who rejects it out of hand) but the Gala dress isn’t that anyway.

If you got every celebrity to wear ‘tax the rich’ maybe you’re talking.

The idea that this is raising consciousness demands that we believe there’s a mass of people who are simultaneously interested in AOC and unaware of an existing desire to ‘tax the rich.’

The idea that this is raising consciousness demands that we believe there’s a mass of people who are simultaneously interested in AOC and unaware of an existing desire to ‘tax the rich.’

Not necessarily, I gotta imagine there is a not insignificant percentage of people who don't give a shit about AOC but like scrolling through pictures of famous people in crazy dresses and see the message. Again, I think the needle movement is going to be super minimal, if at all.

If AOC looks cool in a cool place and she has a lefty slogan on the dress and it becomes a somewhat cooler thing to say as a result then that is probably worth a lot more than it is being given credence here because a sizeable percentage of ppl who care what is cool don't actually and never will actually read an entire article about any of this stuff

If AOC looks cool in a cool place and she has a lefty slogan on the dress and it becomes a somewhat cooler thing to say as a result then that is probably worth a lot more than it is being given credence here because a sizeable percentage of ppl who care what is cool don't actually and never will actually read an entire article about any of this stuff

― fix up luke shawp (darraghmac), Tuesday, September 14, 2021 12:24 PM (0 seconds ago)

this too is otm

And seriously -- it isn't like we are talking about a campaign that involved hundreds of thousands of dollars in ad buys and expensive consultants and focus grouped logos -- she got a dress, and wore it to an event. In terms of "impressions" and "engagement" -- idk, I think people who are marketing professionals would think this was good.

Agree

I feel like the people pooh-poohing this are the spiritual equivalent of people who automatically shit on bands when they sign to a major.