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This is that movie we've seen before where the right wing, alarmed by the risks of the Scary Other, seeks to manufacture scandal, spread rumor, sow confusion, impute some sense of the sinister. The less they have to work with, the more shrill, desperate and idiotic they become.
Back then, it was Barack Obama. He wore a tan suit and conservatives sank onto their fainting couches. He greeted his wife with a fist bump and Fox "News" thought it might be terrorism. And how many conservatives, with furrowed brows and studious miens, pretended to believe there was some reason to doubt that he was born in Hawaii?
Obama's "otherness" came of being a black guy with a funny name. Alexandria Octavio-Cortez, though, hits the trifecta. She is young (29), a woman, and of Puerto Rican heritage. Add her ideology to that mix, and you have a perfect storm of panic for those who consider power the birthright of gray-haired white men.
Ocasio-Cortez is another unwelcome reminder for them that change is here -- and that power will henceforth no longer be the province of the favored few. They've had over a decade to acclimate themselves, so it is sad to see the right wing retreat instead to the same old script -- especially since it reveals more about them and their 'fraidy-cat bigotry than anything else.
Yes, we have indeed seen this movie before. It was a lousy film the first time around.
It has not improved.
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