Playing the Card
We’ve heard of people “playing the race card” in certain situations. Apparently there are other “cards” in the deck these days.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi played the “gender card” this week regarding her questionable trip to Taiwan. China has not been shy in pointing out their displeasure. Her reaction was to publicly say she was surprised at the outrage because other speakers had traveled there in the past and suggested the Chinese reaction was because she was a woman.
True, others had traveled to Taiwan in the past…like a quarter-century ago, when the geopolitical landscape was quite different. And when traveling there was not in contrast with public statements of the White House. So while it is true that she being a female was different from the past visits…that’s hardly the reason why virtually everyone in the world understood this was a troublesome trip.
Dropping “the card” must run in her family, though. You no doubt heard that when her husband Paul was recently arrested for operating his motor vehicle while under the influence, he appropriately handed his drivers license over to the officer…along with a card he had in his wallet pointing out that he was a significant donor to police charities.
Obviously, subtlety is not in the playback for either the Speaker or her spouse.
It’s another reminder that “they” do not live like the rest of us. When your first reaction to being challenged is either “do you know who I am?” or “if you criticize me it must be because of a characteristic of birth”…that’s not how most of us think. And it shouldn’t be how they think…but once you get to that level of self-importance, common sense—and relating to the common American—is long gone.
