When the media falls in love, it falls hard. Its latest crush is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat congressgirl from New York. With Obama gone, she’s their new idol and how they gasp every time she flutters her Bambi eyes from behind those Deirdre Barlow-grade glasses. Brits find the deference US journalists show their president unseemly — all that standing to attention, Hail to the Chief stuff — but their slobbery swooning over every Great Progressive Hope that comes along is just creepy. There was the White House correspondent who offered to fellate Bill Clinton and the New York Times writer who blogged her shower dream about Barack Obama and claimed ‘many women’ were having sexual fantasies about him. (This is strictly a lefty behaviour. Reporters on National Review don’t get hot under the collar for Mike Pence).
It’s not hard to see why Ocasio-Cortez has captured the hearts of the media. She’s a woman, she’s a Latina, she’s an endearing geek. If she wasn’t in Congress, she’d have her own show on MSNBC. She also calls herself a ‘democratic socialist’ and advocates a 70 per cent tax rate, which is to say she’s 29 and before entering the House of Representative was a ‘community organiser’. Ocasio-Cortez describes herself as ‘working class’, as only an architect’s daughter who grew up in Yorktown Heights could. Two years into their Trump trauma, the New York Times and the rest needed a new pin-up. It was supposed to be the guy who pretends his name is ‘Beto’ but he lost to the guy who pretends his name is ‘Ted’. Ocasio-Cortez is an upgrade: she’s a real Hispanic.
So gaga have they gone for the neophyte lawmaker, the media is even hallucinating Republican attacks on her. Last week an anonymous Twitter account snarkily tweeted a video of an undergraduate Ocasio-Cortez busting moves from the Breakfast Club.
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