The conservative war on pronouns has got to be one of the weirdest things they’ve ever become utterly determined to be upset over, especially as they repeatedly make themselves look like they failed second grade grammar but keep on in spite of the mockery. One Republican congressional candidate, Lavern Spicer, has taken this to a new level by declaring that both the Bible and Jesus didn’t use pronouns, even though they both objectively did, all the time, just like human language always has.
Yet she keeps on, so she must think that in spite of appearing not to have any level of comprehension around the very simple concept of pronouns, this is a winning strategy. Has anti-intellectualism gotten this far? Is the hate-click economy now the dominant money-maker in conservative politics? What could possibly explain tweets like this?
The one about pronouns in the Bible in general has been deleted, but people have shown how Jesus repeatedly, and powerfully, introduced himself with pronouns in the Bible, and of course there are pronouns in the U.S. Constitution. “We” is a pronoun. As in “We the People” and “we can’t figure out why anyone would humiliate themselves like this.”
Meanwhile, the Bible one is especially incorrect, as pronouns for both God and Jesus are considered so important that they’re always capitalized. One time, Jesus says “I am He” and the statement is so powerful it knocks everyone off their feet like a force push.
The quote tweets and other reactions to Spicer are predictably hilarious, but perhaps credit to the biggest own on the candidate today should go to Twitter itself. Because the platform doesn’t give the option for users to select pronouns, defaulted to the neutral they/them to wish her a happy birthday.
The burns from other users are worth reading, too, and here are some of our favorites:
