As you might guess, I hold politicians in the same esteem as I hold most used car salespeople, but it’s a rare individual that makes me do a double take, and not just to look at their two faces.
One such individual is Texas Congresswoman Jasmine Crockett. She has garnered a lot of attention from both sides of the political aisle for her blunt talk and seemingly intelligent questions/retorts when asked questions or speaking at a committee meeting. Many on the Left consider her to be the de facto leader of the Democrats, and many on the Right are perfectly willing to let her be that. Regardless of the reasoning behind it, I figured I’d do some homework on the good Congresswoman and give my honest appraisal of her.
One of the first things that caught my attention was not where she stands on issues, but how she articulates them. (Sue me, I have an ear for that kind of thing.) I noticed there are times when she can be eloquent, even if her points are dumber than a bag of hammers. She reminds me of the old time fire and brimstone preachers when she speaks sometimes, full of passion and direct rhetoric designed to get us motivated to do better.
Then, there are times she takes on a different tone for different audiences. Behind her bravado there is also a woman who can speak softly or more down-to-earth. When she does this, she becomes more relatable and is actually charming.
Which makes for an interesting question: who is the real Jasmine Crockett?
That…is a complicated story.
Judging from her past, she has an educational pedigree that would rival many of her peers. She also has a legal background, where performance can mean the difference between a guilty and a not guilty.
At the same time, she’s kept in touch with “her” community. I put “her” in quotation marks because her pedigree clashes with the experience of the people she represents. She looks like them, but that doesn’t make the Venn diagram of her ability to relate to her constituents into a circle.
Not that it stopped her constituents from voting for her, mind you. For a lot of voters and politicians, there’s a notion that if someone looks like you, they’re better able to represent you because the voters feel a kinship. It’s not racially, politically, or socially driven; it’s hard-wired into our societal DNA. Sociologists note we feel most comfortable when we’re amongst people who look like us. And to be fair, whites have done some pretty shitty things to blacks in history, and vice versa, so it’s not hard to understand why we have racial division in this country stoked in part by the political leadership.
That brings us to the wonderful world of identity politics. Instead of being seen as the sum of one’s parts, identity politics seeks to strip a person down to his or her (still two genders, kids) basic attributes. And I’m not talking about anything more complex than surface attributes here. Then, consider intersectionality (which is pretty much trying to figure out who is most oppressed by looking solely at the aforementioned superficial aspects and checking off boxes because that’s totally how you determine how oppressed someone is in America, amirite?), and you’ve created Franken-Candidate. Or Franken-Candidate’s Monster if you’re pedantic. Or if you’re trying to excuse a former Minnesota Senator’s joking behavior caught on film.
Anyway, the point is Crockett is the right mix of racial and gender factors, well-heeled connections and urban appeal, and above all else Orange Man Bad levels that are over 9000. Yet, even with all of that, we still don’t really know who she is because there are so many conflicting pieces to this puzzle. For example, she gives two different stories about how she got promoted to a position early in her career. In one story, she busted her butt to earn the position, and in another she simply demanded it because she was black. Vastly different story depending on what version you hear at what time.
More recently, she’s gone on to the Social Media Network Formerly Known as Twitter to attack MAGA supporters who troll her. And this is after the multiple times she’s gone after MAGA supporters in Congress and in real life. When she gets on a roll, she sounds like a badass, but after this most recent social media meltdown, that may be the extent of her badassedness. She’s a Tweeting contradiction.
And that’s what makes Jasmine Crockett such a mystery to me. You don’t know what she’s going to say at what time, but she’s built up a fan club based on it (not unlike a certain President I know). As long as there are conflicting stories out there, there will always be some doubt as to what she truly stands for, at least to anyone paying close attention. To the Left, she’s a hero, taking the fight to the Republicans. To the Right, she’s a loud-mouthed joke not to be taken seriously.
And somewhere in between is…well, I can’t say for sure, but I’m not sure it’s where Jasmine Crockett is at any given time. All I know for sure is she’s going to be in our faces for a while longer.
Or until her district gets redrawn and she’s out of a job.
