Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) went off the rails on Twitter this past week.
The freshman congresswoman accused Fox News host Laura Ingraham of being a “neo-Nazi fan favorite.”
Getting the ball rolling
Recently, Ocasio-Cortez has been put under pressure by a free-speech watchdog group, called the Knight First Amendment Institute — an affiliate of Columbia University — for blocking certain individuals from interacting with her on the social media platform Twitter.
“1. I have 5.2 million followers,” Ocasio-Cortez tweeted in response to a letter that the watchdog group sent her, asking that she stop blocking people. “Less than 20 accounts are blocked for ongoing harassment. 0 are my constituents.”
“2. Harassment is not a viewpoint,” she added. “Some accounts, like the Daily Caller, posted fake nude photos of me & abused my comments to spread it. No one is entitled to abuse.”
The cause
Here is where Ingraham stepped in. Spotting a solecism, the Fox host decided to let the congresswoman know about it.
“‘Fewer’ than 20 accounts …” Ingraham tweeted, referencing the old grammar rule that if there are countable items in the comparison, then the correct phrase is “fewer than” not “less than.”
But the grammar lesson proved to be too much for Ocasio-Cortez.
“See? You’re a neo-Nazi fan favorite and I don’t block you for defending white supremacist viewpoints and mocking gun violence survivors,” she replied.
Name-calling
These days, such name-calling, particularly from Ocasio-Cortez’s corner is par for the course. But it is not the first time that Ingraham has been called by such a name.
Previously, Ingraham has been smeared with the appellation over some of the views that she has espoused on her show, “The Ingraham Angle,” particularly her strict immigration stance. In 2018, for example, she said that Democrats “want to replace you, the American voters, with newly amnestied citizens and an ever-increasing number of chain migrants;” and, more recently, Ingraham caught heat for including Paul Nehlen, a true neo-Nazi, on a graphic illustrating “prominent voices censored on social media.”
But, of course, that Ocasio-Cortez would respond to a tease about grammar by shouting “Nazi” isn’t surprising at all.
No comments: