What We Missed in the Gazpacho Gaffe
The ever-performative Marjorie Taylor Greene doesn’t care if we’re laughing
A lot of people had fun with congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene’s decrying Nancy Pelosi’s “gazpacho police.” Even Larry Thomas, the actor who played the Soup Nazi on “Seinfeld,” likely cringed, knowing his telephone would start ringing.
Thomas commented to The Guardian, “They say ‘You can’t write this shit.’ This is beyond you can’t write this shit.”
Another actor, Joshua Malina, tweet-responded: “Stupidity, like revenge, is a dish best served cold.” Many people suddenly felt a bit peckish and were inspired to post recipes for the summery tomato and cucumber–based soup.
Amidst all the chortling of the left, Salon senior politics writer Amanda Marcotte warned that all the joking was playing into Greene’s hands — she was again getting the attention for her fascist dreams for America, which she had been missing for some time — and went on to say that “we underestimate her at our peril.”
I agree with Marcotte, but I think the most ludicrous thing that the Republican congresswoman from Georgia said, after her verbal slip (let’s assume it was that, as MSNBC’s Laurence O’Donnell was gracious enough to do, although he went on to call Greene “relentlessly stupid”), was overlooked.
She said House Speaker Pelosi’s gazpacho police (meaning Gestapo, which means “secret police,” so that would have been incorrect as well) were “spying on members of Congress, spying on the legislative work we do, spying on our staff, and spying on American citizens that want to come to talk to their representatives. This government has turned into something it was never meant to be, and it is time to make it end.”
She claimed she and her Republican colleagues are doing legislative work.
What?
No, I mean that literally: What legislative work?
It may be that Taylor Greene mistakes the phrase “legislative work” with conspiracy-mongering, taunting and stalking Democrats, and sending out crazy tweets, many with false information about the pandemic, for which she has been permanently banned from Twitter.
To be fair, she has introduced or sponsored a good number of bills and resolutions, having to do with further bolstering already absurd gun rights, keeping immigrants’ rights down, trying to impeach Biden, and fighting against any COVID-19 mandates (e.g., the “We Will Not Comply Act”), but most of these are simply performative and have not moved past being introduced.
Greene is not so much a public servant as she is a performance artist. Naturally, actors commented on her “gazpacho” gaffe — they well recognize what she’s doing.
The Republicans are not doing legislative work so much as they are posturing to their voters and opposing nearly everything the Biden Administration wants to accomplish for the country. Remember, the Republican Party didn’t bother to write a new platform before the 2020 presidential campaign not because of restrictions caused by the pandemic, as they claimed, but because they were admitting they had become the party of one man. Their idea of good government is simply government that works first and foremost for Grifter One and then for the astonishing number of mini-grifters around him and lastly for citizens without much need of a government, except one that will cut their taxes and allow them to force their religious and bigoted beliefs on others.
Another interesting part of Greene’s statement — which was made in an appearance on the far-right One America Network where she was speaking about subpoenas by the House select committee investigating the attack on the Capitol — was the claim that Pelosi is “spying” on her colleagues and staff members.
Greene was referring to the controversial extra scrutiny of visitors to members of Congress conducted by Capitol police since the insurrection, but she may also be thinking of the Jan. 6 committee looking into explosive claims that some members of the House, including herself, were seen giving “reconnaissance tours” of the Capitol the day before the insurrection, a charge they have denied.
Given the involvement of extreme-right para-military groups and, say, Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert’s historically confused “Today is 1776” tweet from the morning of Jan. 6 and that never-to-be-forgotten photo of Missouri Rep. Josh Hawley raising a fist in solidarity with the protesters, well, it would be difficult to claim a serious investigation is not in order. The committee is also looking into close coordination between the White House and a number of Trump allies in Congress and posted at the so-called war room at Washington’s Willard Hotel on Jan. 5, before the insurrection the next day — an investigation hampered by the former president’s mobster-like habits of tearing up documents and using random cell phones.
Lastly, Greene’s statement ends with her fervent wish to “end” the government, which makes perfect sense for someone who entered government in much the way grit enters gears. What she and her colleagues intend is to do as much damage as they can within Congress to end representative democracy. And they have largely succeeded already — even without whipping up, abetting, and then lionizing treasonous insurrectionists — by hollowing out their party by pushing out any remaining moderates (those poor lumbering RINOs) and engaging in non-stop lunacy and obstruction, leaving the country with only one functional political party.
