Kamala Harris and Her Clintonian Penchant for Self-Aggrandizing Stories
[guest post by JVW]
Becket Adams of the DC Examiner passes along an item catching Vice-President Kamala Harris in a whopper of a tale. The story is explained at the Twitter link above, but if you don’t want to click over to that site, here is the gist of it:
Back in October, Elle magazine published a Yaasss Queeeeen feminist ode to the marvelousness of Senator (and at the time VP nominee) Kamala Harris. It included this gem of an anecdote in the piece’s opening:
Senator Kamala Harris started her life’s work young. She laughs from her gut, the way you would with family, as she remembers being wheeled through an Oakland, California, civil rights march in a stroller with no straps with her parents and her uncle. At some point, she fell from the stroller (few safety regulations existed for children’s equipment back then), and the adults, caught up in the rapture of protest, just kept on marching. By the time they noticed little Kamala was gone and doubled back, she was understandably upset. “My mother tells the story about how I’m fussing,” Harris says, “and she’s like, ‘Baby, what do you want? What do you need?’ And I just looked at her and I said, ‘Fweedom.’”
How sweet! How precocious! How perfectly appropriate for a paragon of social justice!
How stupid do they think we are?
Left-leaning Canadian writer Andray Domaise retweeted a fellow who found an interesting passage in Alex Haley’s interview with Martin Luther King, Jr., as published in the January 1965 issue of Playboy. Here is Rev. King’s anecdote, found on page 78 of that issue:
Well what do you know: the little girl in Oakland somehow channeled the exact sentiment, cute pronunciation and all, of the little girl in Birmingham, spoken before the future Vice-President was even born. I suppose it’s possible that her mother, Dr. Shyamala Gopalan, could have been the one who appropriated this story — itself perhaps a bit fanciful — on behalf of her daughter, but somehow I imagine Kamala Harris hearing of the story as related by MLK and deciding to cast herself in the starring role of the woke little tyke.
In any case, be prepared for more of this kind of nonsense as the new VP inches closer to the ultimate prize. Like Hillary Clinton with her serial fabrications, the lure of the “Isn’t that amazing!” yarn will be too much for her to ignore. I recommend that nobody switch off or even turn down your bullstuff detector, just because a big-time blowhard is departing 1600 Pennsylvania. Rest assured, he’s making way for two others.
– JVW
UPDATE BY PATTERICO: Thanks to JVW for writing this post so I don’t have to. What a soulless power-hungry wraith she is. If there’s any good news, it’s that Kamala Harris is a terrible campaigner. If she runs in 2024, which is not impossible, that will hobble her — as will the fact that whatever cretin she faces will at least be marginally less repulsive than Trump. Unless it’s Trump.
And of course we’ve already had far too many Presidents who can’t tell the truth if their life depended upon it.
JVW (ee64e4) — 1/4/2021 @ 5:36 pmSounds like Biden and Harris are truly soulmates.
Hoi Polloi (139bf6) — 1/4/2021 @ 5:41 pmI don’t think normal people, just secure happy people who care about the country more than themselves, who have shame, have any shot at success in politics. It’s Political Darwinism. Just ask Mitch Daniels.
Trump leaving will just mean the lies are less psychopathicly dumb.
Dustin (4237e0) — 1/4/2021 @ 5:44 pmI wish the best of health on Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. (Even if he has to return to swimming naked in front of female Secret Service agents.)
norcal (b4d7b1) — 1/4/2021 @ 5:45 pmThe entire Elle article is chock-full of the kind of hokum that progressive Democrats love to peddle: there’s the story about how African villagers keep it real, how from day one Kamala worked herself to exhaustion in the Senate (never mind the fact that she found the time to get married and run for President in her fleeting break time), and her spending time as a girl in locations where black legends like Nina Simone and Maya Angelou used to hang out. Even the author of the piece, when now fawning over the magnificence of Ms. Harris, acknowledges that her childhood “does sound a little like Harris was raised inside a Hallmark card” though Heaven forbid she question any of the horsepucky that she is being peddled.
This profile is every bit as insufferable as the politician herself is.
JVW (ee64e4) — 1/4/2021 @ 5:45 pmI wish the best of health on Joseph Robinette Biden, Jr. (Even if he has to return to swimming naked in front of female Secret Service agents.)
Now let’s not put our brave Secret Service agents in grave danger, norcal.
JVW (ee64e4) — 1/4/2021 @ 5:46 pmUgh. not to mention a child falling out of a stroller is going to be noticed immediately. its not something mom realizes later and has to “double back” to find her daughter.
Good lord, how long did the woman push an empty stroller before she realized her “widdle” precious baby girl was gone?
SmithLoco (7438e3) — 1/4/2021 @ 5:47 pmNot only are they fabricating blowhards, one is basically bribing the voters of Georgia:
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-georgia/biden-promises-new-day-trump-heads-to-georgia-on-eve-of-pivotal-senate-runoffs-idUSKBN29912P?il=0
Hoi Polloi (139bf6) — 1/4/2021 @ 5:47 pmI’ve said it before, the best part of the orange fog being being blown out of American politics will be seeing how much the Democrats suck again.
nk (1d9030) — 1/4/2021 @ 5:54 pmDoes she carry chutney in her purse?
urbanleftbehind (bb61b9) — 1/4/2021 @ 6:05 pmFweedom, she said. Could it be that the precocious young Kamala Harris was already channeling Elmer Fudd?
Gary K Hoffman (2a3a16) — 1/4/2021 @ 6:06 pmWhen it comes to plagiarism, Kamala said, “Me too, Joe!”
Paul Montagu (14e7ea) — 1/4/2021 @ 6:16 pmFweedom, she said. Could it be that the precocious young Kamala Harris was already channeling Elmer Fudd?
I tell ya’, my parents were absolute sticklers for enunciation. The young JVW, at age two, was required to spend a couple of hours each day (while other kids were getting play time) sounding out his tongue-twisters:
And that is why today I enunciate like a game show host.
(This story may not be at all true.)
JVW (ee64e4) — 1/4/2021 @ 6:18 pmIsn’t this a little bit more like Joe Biden? Hillary Clinton told many more worse lies, and she learned from Bill.
One of Bill Clinton’s whoppers in 1992 – and still maybe – was to claim he had grown up in Hope, Arkansas, (he grew up in mob controlled Hot Springs where his step-uncle, Raymond Clinton was an important member of the political machine run by Owen Vincent (“Owney the Killer”) Madden 1891-1965, one of the chief founders of organized crime in America.)
Another was to claim he’d supported the Iraq war in 1990-91.
Still another was that he’d balanced 11 budgets in a row (Arkansas had a 2-year budget cycle, and he wasn’t even Governor for 11 years in a row, having been defeated for re-election in 1980)
Possibly Joe Biden has grown more careful about making up tall tales. But in the past, Joe Biden has pretended to have been involved in civil rights protests, or planning them. He said that on Sundays, after attending Roman Catholic Mass he would go to a Protestant church to work on it, In reality he only met that black pastor after his wife and daughter were killed in an automobile accident in December, 1972. An accident he went on from time to time in speeches blaming on a drunk driver, except that the driver wasn’t drunk and his late wife had violated traffic rules.
Sammy Finkelman (fac2c6) — 1/4/2021 @ 6:24 pmCue DCSCA on this bit of plagiarism.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/4/2021 @ 7:12 pmPoor little Kamala had it rough, growing up in a household with two college professors. I can see why she got them out to that protest.
Kevin M (ab1c11) — 1/4/2021 @ 7:23 pmBusted?!?! Why was a little girl in Oakland perusing Playboy circa, 1965? Only myself and Jimma Carter subscribed for the articles. 😉
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/4/2021 @ 7:25 pmBusted?!?! Why was a little girl in Oakland perusing Playboy circa, 1965? Only myself and Jimma Carter subscribed for the articles.
Naw, man, it was the one contribution that Larry Wallace made in his years of employment with her.
JVW (ee64e4) — 1/4/2021 @ 7:48 pmKamala Harris probably didn’t find that article herself. She was probably told about it by someone else, and it may have been reprinted somewhere, maybe many times, or located using a database.
Sammy Finkelman (fac2c6) — 1/4/2021 @ 7:58 pmNone of us know the truth of the matter, but I think the joke may have gone over some peoples’ heads.
Because the civil rights marchers had a chant:
“What do we want?”
“Freedom!”
“When do we want it?”
“Now!”
The little girl in the stroller might have been listening to that chant repeated over and over during the march, and when her mother asked her what she wanted, she gave the response she had heard everyone else giving.
Ditto for the girl in the MLK anecdote.
Nothing sinister; kids repeat things they hear.
Dave (1bb933) — 1/4/2021 @ 8:02 pmSo, rather than internalizing a yearning for the sort of activism their parents were embodying, both the young girl in Rev. King’s story and young Kamala Harris — whose parents and uncle, by the way, were obviously so engrossed in The Movement that they failed to notice the little prodigy was no longer in her stroller and had been left behind to fend for herself near City Hall Park — were just mindlessly repeating something they had heard the adults chant? That’s kind of dispiriting.
You raise a good point, Dave, but given the way that Kamala Harris appears to prefer to tell her version of the story I am willing to bet that there’s a good reason that her eyes are brown.
JVW (ee64e4) — 1/4/2021 @ 8:21 pmHm. I doubt Ms. Harris made this up. She probably got this story from her Mama, who may or may not have made it up. Good sleuthing, though.
Appalled (242bd9) — 1/4/2021 @ 8:31 pmI doubt Ms. Harris made this up. She probably got this story from her Mama, who may or may not have made it up.
It’s possible; I mention that in my post. But given what we have seen of Kamala Harris, I have my doubts. If we somehow find real evidence that Dr. Gopalan told people this story before her daughter started her public career, then I will gladly revise my opinion. But if this is a story that just started appearing in, say, 2010, or even worse in 2020, I’m going to assume that the politician herself is behind this hogwash. As with Bill and Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump, I’m not willing to give her the benefit of the doubt.
JVW (ee64e4) — 1/4/2021 @ 8:38 pmThe most creative use of Playboy by government employees was the Apollo 12 backup crew ‘stacking’ several checklist pages of moonwalkers Al Bean and Pete Conrad w/some out-of-this-world-images for them to uncover while at work on the lunar surface in November, 1969. [They were returned and can be seen/found w/a Google search BTW.] The discovery of the shapely terrain was ‘covered’ in the real time audio transmissions from the Ocean of Storms w/laughter.
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/4/2021 @ 9:47 pmI am so thankful we are moving on from being upset at things that actually happened to being upset at things that we are imagining might have happened. A good sign for the next 4 years!
The stories are not particularly similar except in the use of the word freedom, which a toddler definitely cannot pronounce and always comes out feedom or fweedom. My toddler thinks she is twee years old. I promise I am not stealing that from some published in the 60’s civil rights toddler that also said she is twee.
Might this story be made up? Sure. Is this at all convincing? No.
nate (1f1d55) — 1/5/2021 @ 3:09 amInteresting she wasn’t compared to Biden who has a known problem with plagiarizing.
BillPasadena (5b0401) — 1/5/2021 @ 7:50 amImpossible to know whether it was made up, but regardless this serves as a little case study of how the next four years will go. The cast of characters are already playing their parts: a genuflecting media and the typical commenters here who adhere to the narrative, or at least suddenly suspend the healthy skepticism normally reserved for pols.
beer ‘n pretzels (042d67) — 1/5/2021 @ 8:48 amUPDATE BY PATTERICO: Thanks to JVW for writing this post so I don’t have to. What a soulless power-hungry wraith she is. If there’s any good news, it’s that Kamala Harris is a terrible campaigner. If she runs in 2024, which is not impossible, that will hobble her — as will the fact that whatever cretin she faces will at least be marginally less repulsive than Trump. Unless it’s Trump.
Patterico (115b1f) — 1/5/2021 @ 8:54 amPossibly the worst thing about Trump is that he forced me to cast a ballot for a ticket that contains Kamala Harris.
Patterico (115b1f) — 1/5/2021 @ 8:54 am@29 eh… but she’s not Trump. So that’s something…right?
She really is a clone of Hillary Clinton…isn’t she?
whembly (c30c83) — 1/5/2021 @ 9:15 am@29.Possibly the worst thing about Trump is that he forced me to cast a ballot for a ticket that contains Kamala Harris.
“Forced?”
Free will. 😉
DCSCA (f4c5e5) — 1/5/2021 @ 9:18 amTom Elliott
@tomselliott
In July, @KamalaHarris tells @CapehartJ the same story, this time embellished with more detail
https://twitter.com/tomselliott/status/1346547045331578884?s=20
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It should never be forgotten that the American news media and even so-called conservatives gave Biden and Harris basically a free pass in the run up to the 2020 election because they were more concerned with defeating Trump.
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Lol ‘forced’.
Some of us not only declined to vote Trump but at the same time had enough principal and common sense not to sign on with this ticket from hell.
harkin (eb0b95) — 1/5/2021 @ 1:58 pm_
What a soulless power-hungry wraith she is. If there’s any good news, it’s that Kamala Harris is a terrible campaigner. If she runs in 2024, which is not impossible, that will hobble her — as will the fact that whatever cretin she faces will at least be marginally less repulsive than Trump.
I wouldn’t bet on it! Trump isn’t the problem. The problem is the Republican Party and the right wing ministry of propaganda. The GOP started going off the rails before Trump came along, and I don’t think this train wreck can be salvaged in next four years.
Purple Haze (848fb6) — 1/5/2021 @ 5:43 pmDoes it even dawn on these people that Harris may be running as the incumbent?
The Hill
@thehill
“Are we allowed to whisper about the transition to President Harris?” via (@TheHillOpinion)
harkin (933076) — 1/5/2021 @ 11:14 pmhttp://hill.cm/ctCWXUB
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