Why the right loves to cheap-shot Kamala Harris

And how the mainstream media sometimes go along

Why do right-wingers detest Vice President Harris?

If you listen to their criticisms of the vice president, you can’t help but notice how seldom they focus on her stands on the issues and her official actions in office.

What you hear instead are cheap shots and style quibbles.

She’s got “that awful giggle that just makes people cringe,” according to Fox News’ Jason Chaffetz. Radio host Ben Shapiro says it’s an “insane Joker laugh,” while Newt Gingrich finds it “distinctively jarring.” Before Tucker Carlson got fired by Fox, his show featured a Harris impersonator doing the “Kamala kackle.”

And it’s not just Harris’ laughing that’s a threat to the American way of life. She has been caught smiling too. Former Fox personality Geraldo Rivera once accused her of “over-smirking.”

Most normal people think a sense of humor and a broad smile are positive qualities, but right-wing columnist Miranda Devine is not fooled, declaring: “There’s something that’s not warm about her.” 

Hmmm. “Something.” 

A few years ago, Harris even came under fire for how she said the word “the.” While in Paris, she pronounced the word as “thee” instead of “thuh.” Fox News was outraged over what it called her “fake French accent.” Less propagandistic news outlets like Bloomberg News and The Independent also jumped on the “story.”

As well as being petty, the criticisms of Harris are also vague.

Her detractors claim she’s a “very unserious individual” who is “charmless and inept” and “just doesn’t resonate with voters.” The Washington Post’s George Will called her a “mistake” in a column in which he did not even show the courtesy of using her name.

Never mind that she’s the White House’s outspoken advocate for abortion rights, an issue on which about two-thirds of Americans agree with her. And never mind that she gave a stalwart defense of NATO at the Munich Security Conference last month. Newsmax would rather call her “the Wicked Witch of the West” and leave it at that.

Pundits keep pushing the stupid notion of Harris leaving the Democratic ticket and Biden naming a replacement. Obviously, anyone who was chosen would get a similar sliming from the right wing, though the tone of the attack would be different for a white male.

The Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker wrote a column last week headlined, “For the country’s sake, Vice President Harris should step aside.” Yes, that’s the same Kathleen Parker whose column just before Trump’s election in 2016 was headlined, “Calm down. We’ll be fine no matter who wins.” And yes, it’s the same Kathleen Parker who wrote a 2018 column headlined, “Calm down. Roe v. Wade isn’t going anywhere.” 

In this new column, Parker cited almost nothing of substance as a reason Harris should step down, beyond the fact that she hasn’t solved the border crisis. (Which Republicans haven’t solved either, and in fact they’ve blocked a compromise border bill on Donald Trump’s orders.) While short on examples of Harris’ alleged shortcomings, Parker’s column did cite the vice president’s dreaded “cackling.”

It’s an enigma why the Washington Post keeps printing Parker’s column, and it’s particularly disheartening when mainstream media participate in the cheap shots against Harris.

Last month, Axios allowed an anonymous “former Biden administration senior official” to say Harris was “at best ineffective, and at worst sporadically engaged” on the border. Those aren’t facts – they’re opinions, and therefore inappropriate for anonymous sourcing. Who knows whether the person firing the anonymous potshots might have an ulterior motive? 

Last October, Politico’s senior political columnist Jonathan Martin tweeted that Harris was “a vp w scant experience on world stage (to be charitable).” By that time, Harris had made four trips to Asia as vice president (including stops in Thailand, Philippines, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia and South Korea) as well as journeys to Guatemala, Mexico, France, Germany, Poland, Ghana, Tanzania, Zambia, Honduras and the Bahamas. Her recent appearance at the Munich Security Conference was the third time she has represented our country there.

But there’s “something” troubling about Harris, in the words of Miranda Devine.

Fox’s Jesse Watters has identified one supposed character flaw: She’s “very ambitious.” Which apparently is a problem for certain types of politicians but perfectly OK for others.

What’s obvious is that there are three chief reasons for the right’s relentless bashing of Kamala Harris. Those reasons do not include her laugh, or her “scant experience on the world stage,” or the way she pronounces the word “the.”

The three reasons are:

She’s a Democrat.

And a person of color.

And a woman.