Whether you’re media types like Brian Stelter or outlets such as Vanity Fair, it’s Fox News and right-of-center news outlets that have an obsession with socialist Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). But segments like one on Thursday’s Last Word and cover stories like the latest issue of Time by lefty writer Charlotte Alter (and daughter of longtime liberal journalist Jonathan Alter) prove otherwise.
Supposedly a straight-news anchor, fill-in host Ali Velshi teed up the show’s final segment with Alter by gushing to Alter that Ocasio-Cortez is “a freshman member of Congress but she has a guiding philosophy that has made her a lightning rod according to your article.”
Alter replied by showing that she too isn’t much of an objective journalist, touting Ocasio-Cortez as “basically an activist with a congressional pin and a lot of people see her as the conscience of the Democratic Party” who “can really authentically speak to the issues that are facing a lot of people and she’s faced a lot of issues that not only other working class people have faced but also millennials have largely faced like student debt, health care affordability, college affordability, climate change.”
Ah, yes. Thinking of millennials as some homogenous group that struggles with the same sorts of things and thus thinks the same.
Showing that neither one seemed to note what The Federalist’s David Harsanyi has concluded with regard to how millennials are “the safest, freest, most educated, longest living, and most globally connected,” Velshi touted a brief back-and-forth Alter and Ocasio-Cortez had on Twitter (click “expand”):
And her age is important here. She’s 29-years-old. She responded to a tweet that you had sent. So I want to read your tweet first and then hers is on the top of the screen. Yours is, “In order to understand @AOC, you have to look at what she experienced — and what she didn’t. Red Scare. Reaganomics & prosperous 90s were all before her time. Her adulthood was defined by financial crisis, debt & climate change. No wonder she and her peers are moving left.” She responded by saying: “Yes, and this is not just my story - this is true of wide swaths of our entire generation who are now poised to become a much more influential civic + electoral block as we mature into our 30s and beyond.” She’s almost suggesting her ascent is inevitable.
Alter responded that “honesty, it is in some ways” because of how old both President Trump is and the last Congress was and how, in a clear slight to conservatives as backward nitwits, “Trump has surrounded himself with people who are rooted in 20th Century ways of thinking and the thing about AOC....is that she is really bringing us into the politics of the 21st Century.”
If turning America until Venezuela or instituting bread lines or discouraging wealth (since it’ll be seized from you in massive taxes) or forcing millions from their homes so every building can be up to code to fit her Green New Deal parameters, then sure.
Velshi then concluded with this softball: “Do you get the sense that she understands why she’s so threatening?”
The privileged millennial journalist ruled that “there’s a lot of different reasons why she’s so threatening,” whether it’s Ocasio-Cortez being “a young Hispanic woman” or “too far-left” or “kind of turning over the apple cart and disrupting the way things have typically worked in Washington” that, all and all, are things why “a lot of people find her really exciting.”
(h/t: Grabien)
To see the relevant transcript from MSNBC’s The Last Word on March 21, click “expand.”
MSNBC’s The Last Word
March 21, 2019
10:53 p.m. Eastern [TEASE]ALI VELSHI: Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is America’s most famous freshman member of Congress. A progressive firebrand, the right’s new favorite villain and now the subject of a Time magazine cover. Her policy proposals, like the Green New Deal, are being debated by Democratic presidential candidates. Ocasio-Cortez tells Time magazine: “I used to be much more cynical about how much was up against us....I think I’ve changed my mind. Because I think that change is a lot closer than we think.” Why does she think that? That’s next.
(....)
10:56 p.m. Eastern
VELSHI: This week’s Time magazine cover is titled “The Phenom, How Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez became America’s Lightning Rod.” Joining me now is writer Charlotte Alter. It’s a great piece. It tells a lot of people if they missed the creation story of Alexandria Ocasio- Cortez, this is it. She tweeted on March 8 about being working class, being a waitress. She said, “I find it revealing when people mock where I came from & say they’re going to ‘send me back to waitressing,’ as if that is bad or shameful. It is as though they think that being a member of Congress makes you intrinsically ‘better’ than a waitress. But our job is to serve, not rule.” She’s a freshman member of Congress but she has a guiding philosophy that has made her a lightning rod according to your article.
CHARLOTTE ALTER: Absolutely. Yeah, she’s — she’s basically an activist with a congressional pin and a lot of people see her as the conscience of the Democratic Party. I think that she — her working-class background is absolutely intrinsic to the story she’s telling and to her power in this moment right now because she can really authentically speak to the issues that are facing a lot of people and she’s faced a lot of issues that not only other working class people have faced but also millennials have largely faced like student debt, health care affordability, college affordability, climate change, those are all things that she’s really experienced firsthand. So I think she’s speaking to something that hasn’t really been spoken to before.
VELSHI: And her age is important here. She’s 29-years-old. She responded to a tweet that you had sent. So I want to read your tweet first and then hers is on the top of the screen. Yours is, “In order to understand @AOC, you have to look at what she experienced — and what she didn’t. Red Scare. Reaganomics & prosperous 90s were all before her time. Her adulthood was defined by financial crisis, debt & climate change. No wonder she and her peers are moving left.” She responded by saying: “Yes, and this is not just my story - this is true of wide swaths of our entire generation who are now poised to become a much more influential civic + electoral block as we mature into our 30s and beyond.” She’s almost suggesting her ascent is inevitable.
ALTER: And honestly, it is in some ways. You’ve got to look at the math here, right. We have the oldest first-term President ever elected until 10 — until a couple of months ago, Congress was 10 years older than it had been in the 1980s. Trump has surrounded himself with people who are rooted in 20th Century ways of thinking and the thing about AOC and the reason that she is I think tapping into something that is so exciting to some and threatening to others is that she is really bringing us into the politics of the 21st Century. She is a 21st Century leader trying to tackle 21st Century problems, in a body that’s largely dominated by 20th Century thinking.
VELSHI: Do you get the sense that she understands why she’s so threatening?
ALTER: I think she does. I think there’s a lot of different reasons why she’s so threatening. Some people are threatened because she’s a young Hispanic woman. Some people are threatened because they worry that she’s too far-left. Some people are threatened because she’s kind of turning over the apple cart and disrupting the way things have typically worked in Washington. She’s spent, you know, her first week of orientation picketing. You know, staging a protest in Nancy Pelosi’s office, that’s not something that people have typically done. So I think she’s — I think a lot of people find her threatening but I also think a lot of people find her really exciting.
VELSHI: Thank you for a great article, Charlotte Alter.
ALTER: Thanks for having me.
VELSHI: Charlotte Alter, and her article, is in the current issue of Time magazine and that is tonight’s Last Word.
