By Vincent L. Hall
“One of the biggest problems facing America: It’s being run “by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they’ve made and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too.”
– J D Vance, U.S. Senate campaign 2021
“Shay-D Vance,” Trump’s prime choice as a presidential running mate, is headed for trouble. In the words of my late father, “he gon’ let his $5 mouth get his million-dollar ass in trouble.”
As if Donald Trump wasn’t sufficiently weird and suspect in his patented brand of misogyny, he recruited “Alfalfa 2.0.” Vice President Kamala Harris is just the right woman to use Vance’s arrogance to her advantage.
Alfalfa was the central character in The Little Rascals, aka Our Gang, a series that goes back to 1922. Although it began in print form, it catapulted to fame on the hazy black-and-white television screens of Americans fortunate enough to own the technology.
The Little Rascals barnstorm made them a national favorite and created many icons and celebrities. Names like Alfalfa, Darla, Spanky, Froggy, and, don’t forget, the famed Black characters, Buckwheat and Stymie.
Parenthetically, White folks bringing Negroes along for entertainment purposes is nothing new. Our Gang had Buck-wheat and Stymie, and Trump had Tim Scott and Byron Donalds for the same reason.
The constitution says you can’t sell coloreds; no prohibitions against renting exist.
Ask Harlan Crow!
Alfalfa, who was about as addle-brained and ambitious as Shay-D Vance, decided to venture past a casual dislike for girls and totally shut them out.
His all-boy club shut the door on “those pesky girls” and all their “foolishness.”
“The He-Man Woman-Haters Club” became the closed, private neighborhood boy’s clubhouse and denied girls as members or visitors.
Wikipedia summarized it best.
“Spanky had founded the exclusive club as a defense against girls and Valentine’s Day, but Alfalfa’s heart was just not in it. His love for Darla keeps him from taking it seriously, but Spanky soon forces him to realize the bonds of brotherhood.
Spanky later restores the club as revenge after none of the boys gets invited to the MacGillicuddy Girls’ party and institutes Alfalfa as president.
However, when Alfalfa learns the club rules to never mingle with the girls again, he is forced to rush back and get back a love note he sent to Darla, later trapping the club members there, but he gets busted when the love note is discovered.”
For all the slapstick silliness and frivolity they created, at least Alfalfa had sense enough to know that some words you write or recite must be retrieved.
Shay-D Vance, like Trump, the engineer of this misguided MAGA train, can’t bring himself to repent or rephrase. He doubles down on his ignorance.
Vance doubled down on the “cat ladies” statement. “It’s just a basic fact – you look at [Vice President] Kamala Harris, [Secretary of Trans-portation] Pete Buttigieg, [Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez] AOC – the entire future of the Democrats is controlled by people without children.” “How does it make any sense that we’ve turned our country over to people who don’t really have a direct stake in it?”
What seems strange to me and most political strategists is why Vance and Trump think that they can continue to lock women out of their clubhouse and expect to win.
Al Jazeera (quickly becoming one of my faves) expounded on why Vance’s philosophical folly could harm the campaign.
“Vance’s comment has angered not just Democratic Party leaders but also many public figures and some Republican commentators, sparking questions over whether his public statements might be hurting former President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign.
At the heart of the debate are a record number of American women who are choosing to stay childless: 21.9 million women in the US between the ages 20 and 39 had not given birth in 2022, reaching a historic low, according to the US Census Bureau.”
It is bad enough for MAGA that statistically, women vote more often and at higher rates than men. All the glee that Republicans and this jaded Supreme Court have for gender-related issues like abortion and a woman’s right to her own body may be short-lived.
Shay-D Vance may need to watch a few episodes of The Little Rascals.
Alfalfa could teach him a thing or two.
(Shout out to the Meidas Touch podcast for the “Shay D Vance” reference!)
A long-time Texas Metro News columnist, Dallas native Vincent L. Hall is an author, writer, award-winning writer, and a lifelong Drapetomaniac.
