The Kitchen's the Thing

In Senator Katie Britt’s conservative Republican rebuttal of Biden’s State of the Union speech the biggest message was in the background: the kitchen. Whether she decided this, or was simply an unwitting dupe, the kitchen motif was a blatant tell of the conservative Christian Republican party’s view of women and where they belong.

Katie Britt (L), and Scarlett Johansson portraying Britt on SNL (R)

This is precisely why Biden cautioned the nation against the danger of old ideas, and what this MAGA Republican party seeks to embrace. Britt spoke of being at a crossroads, where the choice is to move forward or backward. Yet the kitchen backdrop speaks for itself, even as Britt would have us believe that the MAGA Christian conservative platform to roll back laws that grant voting rights, women’s freedoms, even health care access, is somehow a step forward.

Biden’s predecessor has already helped MAGA and Christian conservatives take several steps back to the kitchen, weakening the Voting Rights Act, overturning Roe v Wade, and now, the absurdist ruling that embryos are people, too! Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has written that striking down Roe v Wade should also open up the high court to review the right for married couples to buy and use contraception without government restriction, and to review same sex relationships and marriage equality. Britt was oblivious to the irony as she urged in hushed tones that Republicans “want families to grow,” referring to IVF, but not to their commitment to ban access to abortion.

Britt, in her catastrophizing of the world under Biden, spoke of the threat of China, again missing the irony as she warned that if the CCP conquers the minds of the next generation, it conquers America. But apparently it’s just fine if it’s MAGA doing the conquering. In this vein, Britt dredged up 20 year old story of a sex-trafficking victim at the border to hang on Biden, all while supporting a MAGA presidential candidate who has been found liable for sexual abuse. Britt warned us that we are at a crossroads, that it doesn’t have to be this way.

She’s absolutely right. We can move forward and continue to fight for equality, the right to vote, the right to health care, the right to choose, as Biden and Democrats propose, or we can take a giant step back as the setting for Britt’s speech patently shows, into the kitchen, where the only choice open to women is what to make for dinner.