"Do you think that it's the goal of the Smithsonian Institution to promote white supremacy culture?"

Congressman Brandon Gill asks Smithsonian Museum director Anthea Hartig at the House Oversight Committee hearing today.

It's quite an exchange. Gill has a very well-planned set of question designed to destroy Hartig, and Hartig's defense is almost entirely restricted to long silences and diligent note-taking, as if she's endeavoring to learn from Gill:

 

GILL: "Director Hardig... would you say that that the goal of history, even if it's not properly carried out... is to be objective?... Doesn't that seem a little bit concerning? It it certainly does to me because as part of this white supremacy document that your organization has promoted, objectivity is a core and defining aspect of white supremacy culture. Do you think that it's the goal of the Smithsonian Institution to promote white supremacy culture?

"Boebert famously campaigned against drag story hours, while Noem wrote to South Dakota’s college board asking it to ban campus drag shows...."

"Yet these women express themselves via a dizzying mash-up of gendered conventions: They augment their smiles, bedazzle their pantsuits, and broadcast their bench presses. In their fevered performances of hyperfemininity and hypermasculinity, so many of the GOP’s most visible women are themselves engaging in a form of drag. Of course, drag in its queer context offers the chance to slip from and send up the constricting bounds of gender norms, to encourage empathy and celebrate diverse forms of identity. The show these Republican politicians are putting on is its cold opposite: asphyxiated, distended, nasty. Theirs is surely drag’s gothic inverse."

Writes Rebecca Traister, in "How Did Republican Women End Up Like This? The baffling, contradictory demands of being female in the party of Donald Trump" (NY Magazine).

"I think he’s praying. But if he is sleeping, you know, he certainly looks pretty while he sleeps."

Said Congresswoman Lauren Boebert, reacting to Congressman Robert Garcia, who'd had some reason to point out that Trump seems to be sleeping some of the time at his criminal trial, reported at Mediaite.

This exchange took place at the same House Oversight Committee meeting where Marjorie Taylor Greene sneered at Jasmine Crockett's false eyelashes and Crockett shot back with a butch-phobic remark about MTG's body.

The most outré quotes come from the Oversight Committee.

"I think the way she referred to a fellow member was probably not the way we expect our members to refer to other fellow, especially female, members."

Said Freedom Caucus board member Rep. Andy Harris (R-Md.), quoted in "Marjorie Taylor Greene booted from House Freedom Caucus/The vote occurred nearly two weeks ago, shortly after the Georgia Republican had called then-fellow Freedom Caucus member Rep. Lauren Boebert a pejorative in a verbal fight on the House floor" (Politico).

Greene had called Boebert a "little bitch." 

Are female "fellow members" treated differently from male fellow members? I don't like the name-calling, but I assume members of Congress call each other names from time to time. I just want to know if the standard is different when the slur is gendered female, when the person slurred is female, and/or when the hurler of the epithet is female. Are the males coming to the aid of the female, paternalistically? Does it not matter when the group is right-wing and perhaps presumably comfy with old-time sex roles? 

"Lauren Boebert will be a grandmother at 36. This is what conservatives want for us."

That's the headline of a column at The Guardian by Arwa Mahdawi.

I want to stress that the only reason her growing family is at all newsworthy is because Boebert decided to turn a private affair into a big public statement about how the rest of us should live.... 

“There’s something special about rural conservative communities,” Boebert effused. “They value life. If you look at teen pregnancy rates throughout the nation, well, they’re the same, [in] rural and urban areas. However, abortion rates are higher in urban areas. Teen moms’ rates are higher in rural conservative areas, because they understand the preciousness of a life that it’s about to be born.”

Boebert's son, the father-to-be, is 17.

"You don’t get to 'thoughts and prayers' your way out of this" — says AOC to Lauren Boebert.

.@laurenboebert you have played a major role in elevating anti-LGBT+ hate rhetoric and anti-trans lies while spending your time in Congress blocking even the most common sense gun safety laws.

You don’t get to “thoughts and prayers” your way out of this. Look inward and change. https://t.co/mxt6wFMVEv

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) November 20, 2022

"Democratic strategist Kurt Bardella recommends that Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.) turn to pornography ..."

"... should she lose the down-to-wire Colorado House race against Adam Frisch. Bardella made the suggestion on set with MSNBC host Joy Reid, who responded with a blaring cackle. 'What’s the meaning if Lauren Boebert, the second most popular QAnon congressperson in MAGA, what if she loses?' Reid asked 'I guess there might be a gain for OnlyFans if [Boebert loses],' Bardella responded.... Bardella followed in line with frequent MSNBC guest Elie Mystal, the goofy-looking man who uses racial slurs to refer to Hershel Walker. On Wednesday, Mystal tweeted the following message before quickly deleting it: 'Is… Lauren Boebert still losing? I guess this is the lucky day of the next OnlyFans star Ted Cruz thinks should be a Congressperson.'" 

From "Joy Reid Blasts Her Cackle [When] Sexist Guest Tells Rep. Lauren Boebert to Join OnlyFans" (Outkick). (I found that via this tweet from Glenn Greenwald.)

MSNBC's @JoyAnnReid: "What job will Lauren Boebert have if she loses?"@kurtbardella: "I guess it might be a gain for OnlyFans" pic.twitter.com/fVf5QZG6xa

— Greg Price (@greg_price11) November 10, 2022

According to Yahoo!entertainment — entertainment? — "DNC Adviser Apologizes For Suggesting Lauren Boebert's Next Job Should Be OnlyFans." But let's take a look at the text and context of that apology.