THE NEW ABNORMAL

The Most Absurd Republican Temper Tantrums This Year

From Lizzo playing a Founding Father’s flute to a gay PDA in a Disney movie, 2022 was full of right-wing outrage. Here’s a look back at the silliest conservative scandals.

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Conservatives get triggered over the darndest things.

From Lizzo playing a Founding Father’s flute to a gay PDA in a Disney movie, 2022 was full of right-wing outrage so dumb that The New Abnormal politics podcast host Andy Levy and Media Matters’ deputy director of Rapid Response Andrew Lawrence decided to round up the most “offensive” instances in the show’s latest episode.

“All of these things are dumb and they’re silly and they’re good to make fun of, but they all have sort of a deeper cultural meaning and a much more dangerous cultural meaning,” says Andy.

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Take the Lizzo flute scandal for instance.

“She’s incredibly talented and all it was was just a Black woman playing James Madison’s flute that no one knew existed,” says Lawrence. “It just sent them off the deep end. I mean, I think for three or four days we were talking about this.”

He and Andy walk even further down conservative meltdown memory lane, discussing the sexy M&M situation, the gender-neutral litterbox scandal—which was actually a lie—woke military uniforms, rainbow-colored Fentanyl, and more.

“It’s about creating sort of fear and, from the outside looking in, it looks super silly, but these people are taking it extremely seriously,” says Lawrence. “If you’re a Fox News viewer and you hear Fentanyl, you immediately tie it to immigration, because you're being told day after day after day that millions of immigrants are coming in and they’re bringing in Fentanyl, and that’s why Americans are dying of this stuff.”

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Plus! TNA co-host Danielle Moodie interviews Dr. Treva Lindsey, professor at the Ohio State University and author of America, Goddamn: Violence, Black Women, and the Struggle for Justice, to talk about just that, and Brittney Griner specifically.

“Obviously she is worth something and worth so much more than even one arms dealer for these individuals. But the fact that we can openly debate her worth and her deservedness is a testament to the ways that we consistently undervalue Black women and, specifically, queer Black women,” she tells Danielle.

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Mandy VelezEditor

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