With the backdrop of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, this year’s Super Bowl was bound to be different. And by different, we mean weird. From the 30,000 cardboard cut-out “fans” sprinkled throughout the stadium to the plainly odd commercials, football’s Big Night™ can best be summed up with a hearty, “WTF?” But it’s one commercial — Oatly’s CEO commercial — that has truly left us all collectively scratching our heads, wondering what in the capitalist hell we watched.

The commercial opens with a close-up of the company’s CEO, Toni Petersson. His eyes are shut and he’s looking towards the sky with an impassioned look on his face. Then he starts singing. Yes, in actual sing-song. “It’s like milk,” he begins. “But for humans.” As the camera pans out we realize that Petersson is also playing a keyboard (giving lots of Ross Geller “the sound” vibes) as he inexplicably stands in the middle of a meadow. “Wow! No cow!” Petersson continues to sing, as the camera pans to a carton and glass of Oatly milk expertly placed on the keyboard. 

That’s it. That’s the entirety of the company’s 30-second Super Bowl commercial. Here’s what a reported $5,500,000 will buy you:

But the reaction to the bizarre commercial seems to have been the company’s overall goal — they’re leaning all the way in to what appears to be a carefully crafted social media campaign. Following the commercial, the company’s front page of their website featured the ad front and center, along with a statement that reads: “Yeah, that was really our CEO singing on the Super Bowl. Maybe interrupting the second quarter so the world could experience Toni’s musical stylings about how oatmilk is like milk but made for humans wasn’t the most Super Bowl-ish idea ever, but on the other hand, our attempt to promote Toni’s singing skills to a wider audience actually got you to visit an oatmilk company website on the big day. Total success!” And on Instagram, the business is giving away “I totally hated that Oatly commercial” t-shirts. 

The Swedish oat-drink company, founded in 1994, is no stranger to controversy. While the company claims to have created a plant-based drink as a way to combat climate change, last year the company sold a 10 percent stake in the business to a group spearheaded by Blackstone, an investment firm that donated $3 million to former President Donald Trump’s super PAC and was responsible for massive amounts of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest.

On the company’s website is a page that includes a “promise to be good,” which includes a disclaimer of sorts that reads, “We are not a perfect company, not even close, but our intentions are true. We would like to be judged by the good we do and not just the pretty words we say.” 

After this year’s truly out there Super Bowl, the company can add “tone and pitch” to the list of ways we can all judge them, too.

Refinery29 reached out to Oatly for comment. We will update this story as we know more.

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Over the weekend, disturbing body camera footage of Rochester, NY police officers hand-cuffing and pepper-spraying a child surfaced, causing increased scrutiny of a police department that already faced backlash in the death of 41-year-old Daniel Prude, a Black man who was in mental distress when police officers put a hood over his head, eventually killing him.  

On Friday afternoon, Rochester police responded to a family disturbance call. Moments later, as footage shows, police can be seen chasing a 9-year-old girl down a snow-covered street. After catching up with the child, who becomes more upset, police handcuff her while she kicks, screams, and pleads to see her father. After multiple attempts to force the child into the back of a police car, an officer is heard saying, “You’re acting like a child.”

“I am a child,” the young girl responds. Minutes later, the child is pepper-sprayed while handcuffed, then left in the back of the car to scream and cry in pain. 

This is just the latest example of how police officers are unable to adequately respond to people in various states of duress — including, and perhaps especially, children. In 2019, a viral video showed a North Carolina Sheriff Deputy throw a middle school-aged child to the ground violently — twice. In 2021, another viral video showed a “school resource officer” body slam a 16-year-old girl to the ground, causing memory loss, headaches, blurry vision, and sleep deprivation, according to the child’s mother.

The proof that police departments are ill-equipped to help children in mental and emotional duress are as horrific as they are ample, and further highlight the need for community policing and support alternatives. Currently, most police departments do not offer youth-specific training, beyond a brief course on juvenile law, according to a report by the International Association of Chiefs of Police, an advocacy and research group founded in 1893. Sara Douglas, PsyD, a psychologist specializing in pediatric neuropsychology, tells Refinery29 that children have needs that differ vastly from those of adults. Those needs require an entirely different approach by police officers, teachers, and others in positions of power and influence. 

“There are many reasons why children would react differently than adults, but their brains — including their frontal lobe, which houses a portion of our brains that is responsible for emotional regulation — are not fully developed,” Dr. Douglas explains. “Individuals’ abilities to react in stressful (or even non-stressful) situations is in part mediated by the development of this complex brain region. Children quite literally are not as cognitively capable of reacting with the same level of control as are adults.” 

Yet police officers are, more often than not, trained to treat children and adults in the same way. In 2011, teens and young adults made up roughly 40% of all police street stops, per a Justice Department survey. And due to viral videos and body camera footage, the country has been privy to some of the violent outcomes of these stops: police officers arresting children for skipping school; throwing children to the ground; pepper-spraying children who are already detained; threatening, screaming, and otherwise berating kids into submission even though science shows that children are prone to act “more impulsively.” 

“This is a strong indicator of exactly how ill-equipped law enforcement personnel are when handling individuals with mental health issues,” Nicole Hensley, an assessment specialist who has a MS in school psychology and is currently a PsyD practicum student, tells Refinery29. “A 9-year-old child in need of caring and compassionate intervention was treated as a criminal and basically assaulted by the very people who have sworn to protect and serve. When people hear ‘defund the police’ and it makes them scared or immediately visualize a world without police protection, what they need to see instead is an opportunity for professionals in various areas being more readily available for situations such as this.”

In the absence of proper training — or funds being redirected to community organizations and other leaders who specialize in mental health care — a cycle of police-involved abuse that perpetuates the school-to-prison pipeline is left to flourish. One 2013 study found that children and young adults who are stopped or arrested by law enforcement are more likely to offend in the future. Currently, as many as 48,000 youth are incarcerated in the U.S. on any given day — many are Black children and children of color. 

“Everybody should understand that different populations of people are likely to view different things as threatening,” Dr. Douglas says. “A white child may not perceive a police officer to be a threat, whereas a Black child may. Children should be given an extra clear understanding of what is happening, as they likely do not have the background or procedural knowledge to be able to pragmatically process what is happening, and their emotional reactions are likely to be reflective of this confusion, which can be terrifying.” 

The 9-year-old girl who was handcuffed and pepper sprayed was taken to Rochester General Hospital. In the final scenes of the video, an officer is heard saying “unbelievable” to the officer who pepper-sprayed the child. Unbelievable, indeed.

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There were the Montagues and the Capulets; Brand New and Taking Back Sunday; the black and blue dress people and the white and gold dress people. And in the first few weeks of 2021, there was Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and actor, writer, and oh-so proud Canadian, Seth Rogan. 

At this point, as far as Twitter feuds go, a politician who proudly supports the man who called his wife ugly and the star of Pineapple Express going tit for tat is far from surprising. What is a-typical, however, is how long the two have allowed this social media beef to continue. Since Inauguration Day, it seems that the disgraced senator and comedian have been exchanging “pleasantries” online — quote tweeting one another with reckless abandon and sending more than a few four-letter words of, shall we say, “encouragement” their foe’s way. 

It all started when Cruz tweeted in opposition of President Joe Biden’s decision to have the U.S. rejoin the Paris Climate Agreement, in which the senator criticized Biden for being “more interested in the views of the citizens of Paris than in the jobs of the citizens of Pittsburgh.” (It should be noted that the Paris Climate Agreement does not just impact people who live in Paris, and the mayor of Pittsburgh wrote a joint opinion article with the mayor of Paris for The New York Times after former president Donald Trump pit the two cities “against each other other.”)

Rogen’s response?  “F*ck off you fascist.” 

Whether Cruz takes issues with brevity, or is so thin-skinned all it takes is four words from a celebrity to send him spiraling, remains to be seen. But Rogen’s tweet sparked a days’ long, ongoing feud that, for now, shows no signs of slowing down. At one point, Cruz shared that Disney’s Fantasia was the first movie he watched in theaters. Rogen replied, “Everyone who made that film would hate you.” On Jan. 24, Rogen tweeted, “All jokes aside, @tedcruz is a fascist piece of sh*t.” Cruz then quote-tweeted Rogen, writing, “All jokes aside, @Sethroegn is a moron” before throwing in a “cancel culture” reference for good measure. 

Behold, some receipts:

Charming, civil, educated response. ⁦@Sethrogen⁩

If you’re a rich, angry Hollywood celebrity, today’s Dems are the party for you.

If you’re blue-collar, if you’re a union member, if you work in energy or manufacturing…not so much. #JobsMatter pic.twitter.com/mwtMaBKiS2

— Ted Cruz (@tedcruz) January 21, 2021

Your lies got people killed. You have blood on your hands. https://t.co/eoy1uUDK73

— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) January 24, 2021

As someone who has Tourette’s in their family (and also has a very mild case himself), I once again take great pleasure in telling you to go fuck yourself. (Also VERY few cases of Tourette’s manifest in uncontrollable swearing. Most cases, like mine, manifest in twitching.) https://t.co/NJaEjMfNJt

— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) January 24, 2021

If you’re a white supremacist fascist who doesn’t find it offensive when someone calls your wife ugly, Ted Cruz is the exact motherfucker for you. https://t.co/w4zdynI2V9

— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) January 21, 2021

While there’s no denying the guilty pleasure of a good old fashioned Twitter beef, it’s important to note that Cruz is an elected official tasked with picking up the pieces of a violent insurrection he provoked, protecting the American people from a deadly virus that, to date, has killed more than 400,000 Americans, and lessening the blow of a historic recession that has left nearly half of all Americans without a job. The fact that he has time to volley with a well-known actor is not just surprising — it’s damning. Unless, of course, paying attention to Twitter instead of the myriad of issues facing the public is a calculated decision on behalf of Cruz. 

Enter: Beto O’Rourke. Because, no, this Twitter beef just wasn’t weird enough. 

O’Rourke, who ran against Cruz in 2018, weighed in on Cruz’s Twitter troubles, tweeting, “Why does he keep this fight going with Seth Rogen even though he’s getting destroyed at every turn? Because he’s guilty of sedition. He’s hoping distraction & time diminish the urgency of accountability. Don’t let him change the channel or the subject, it is sedition every time.” 

Whether Cruz is just a glutton for public punishment — lest we forget his personal Twitter account liking porn tweets — or is just hoping the American public really are as short-sided as he seems to believe, one thing is certain: he is no stranger to being called out by prominent members of the public. Everyone from NBA coach Steve Kerr and climate activist Greta Thunberg, to actors Ron Perlman and George Clooney have denounced, made fun of, or otherwise taunted Cruz — oftentimes on more than one occasion. And Cruz, for all his baseless pontificating about “unity” and the need to “rise above petty partisan politics” seems to revel every minute of it and the car crash-like attention his public feuds inspire.

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Madison Cawthorn, the youngest member of Congress, has wasted zero time getting to work as North Carolina’s newly-appointed representative of the state’s 11th congressional district. But Cawthorn isn’t focused on COVID-19 relief, quelling the fallout of a historic recession, or aiding the reported 1 million children living in poverty in North Carolina. Instead, the Hitler-admiring congressman is spending his first weeks in office continuing to peddle 2020 presidential election conspiracy theories — his reputation, credibility, or appearance on national television be damned. 

During an interview with CNN’s Pamela Brown, Cawthorn was asked to provide evidence of so-called election fraud. The result was as entertaining as it was damning. 

“What are some specific examples that informed this bold decision, this audacious decision, even after the riots, to decertify the results? You must have seen some concrete evidence,” Brown said. In response, Cawthron immediately backpedaled, claiming that he wasn’t objecting to the certification of President Joe Biden’s 2020 victory due to claims that Dominion Voting Systems was changing ballots, or that UHaul trucks were driving to voting stations and dumping fraudulent ballots in favor of Biden.

“The thing I was objecting for is things like I said, in the state of Wisconsin, particularly in the town of Madison, where there was an appointed official in that town that actually went against the will of the state legislature and created ballot drop boxes, which is basically ballot harvesting that was happening in the parks,” he said. 

The problem? These claims were litigated and either dismissed, withdrawn, or never brought to trial due to a lack of evidence, as Brown goes on to mention. “Indeed,” Cawthorn replies, “I believe specifically, and this is the one that I debated on on behalf of on the House floor, in Wisconsin that was never heard because they dismissed it because of standing.” Cawthorn attempts to argue that dismissing these cases is not “concrete enough” of a reason to throw out the cases. 

“Three Trump-appointed judges actually threw out these cases because of merit. It was because of merit,” Brown follows up. “You keep talking about Wisoncsin: I’m still not hearing any specific examples of fraud. If you would, just tell us what are the specific examples you saw of fraud. Because when you think of fraud you think of a vote — you’re slipping one past from the election official, or a vote was stolen; somehow it didn’t count. Did you see that specifically?” 

Cawthorn takes a beat before replying, “No Pam, and like I said that’s not the reason I contested the election.” 

“Hold on: so you wanted to throw out millions of votes without actually seeing any concrete evidence of fraud? Because that’s what you were doing when you were contesting the election — the intent there was throwing out millions of votes.” 

“Well I disagree with you on that point,” Cawthorn responds. “That was not my intent. My intent was to hold up the constitution.” 

CNN’s Pamela Brown challenged Madison Cawthorn to cite evidence of election fraud to back up his vote against certifying the election results. He had nothing. pic.twitter.com/irBADDOciU

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) January 24, 2021

The fact that Cawthorn made a fool of himself on national television in yet another attempt to de-legitimize a fair and free election is par for the conspiracy theory-peddling course. Cawthorn has aligned himself with hair dye-melting Rudy Giuliani, Sidney “Hugo Chavez did it” Powell, and QAnon supporter Rep. Marjorie Taylor, who once claimed the Sandy Hook school shooting was “staged.”

Then again, he doesn’t need to align himself with Trump sycophants to prove his allegiance is to the illusion of reality instead of reality itself. Most recently, on Jan. 22, The Nation published a damning article alleging Cawthorn lied about being accepted to the Naval Academy prior to the 2014 car crash that left him paralyzed, lied about being a successful businessman, and lied about training for the 2020 Paralympic Games. 

[Insert something about people in glass houses here.] 

While we’d all like to believe that the era of “alternative facts” left politics the day Trump flew away from the White House, politicians like Cawthorn are a reminder that what the Trump administration gave air and legitimacy to is alive and well. Thankfully, Pamela Brown is also a reminder that these outright lies are easily deflated, if only the media has the courage to face them head-on.

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It’s going to take a little (read: a lot) more than a calendar change and a well-intentioned resolution to turn things around for former President Donald Trump’s personal lawyer, Rudy Giuliani. After apparently melting on camera, unintentionally hosting a press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, and inciting a deadly insurrection, Giuliani is now being sued by Dominion Voting Systems for $1.3 Billion for his role in pushing what is now being called the “Big Lie” about voter fraud in the 2020 presidential election. 

Lawyers for Dominion wrote in the defamation lawsuit against the former New York City mayor, “Just as Giuliani and his allies intended, the Big Lie went viral on social media as people tweets, retweeted, and raged that Dominion had stolen their votes,” as reported by CNN. The lawsuit goes on to read, “The harm to Dominions business and reputation is unprecedented and irreparable because of how fervently millions of people believe it.” 

The lawsuit is one of many filed in the wake of the 2020 presidential election and the violent coup attempt on Jan. 6. In December 2020, a Dominion worker sued the Trump campaign for defamation, citing death threats and security risks after Trump and company spread outright lies about Dominion “rigging” the presidential election. Then, on Jan. 8, 2021, Dominion sued former Trump lawyer Sidney Powell for also pushing false claims about Dominion, the 2020 election, and evidence of voter fraud. 

Dominion Voting Systems, founded in 2002, is an electronic voting hardware and software company. Headquartered in Toronto, Canada, the company sells voting machines and tabulators in the U.S. and Canada. Dominion enjoyed relative obscurity until it became a major talking point in the Trump administration’s attempts to overturn the 2020 election results and subvert the public’s trust in the democratic process. Powell claimed, on several occasions, that Dominion Voting Systems was created by Hugo Chavez to rig the 2020 contest. Chavez, the former president of Venezuela, died in 2013. 

In the defamation lawsuit against Giuliani, lawyers for Dominion noted that “while Giuliani spread falsehoods about Dominion being owned by Venezuelan communists” he did not “make those claims in lawsuits he pushed on behalf of Trump.” The lawsuit also cites Giuliani’s numerous claims that Dominion aided Democrats’ election fraud attempts despite receiving a cease-and-desist letter, as well as his numerous podcast, radio show, YouTube, and network TV appearances on shows like OANN, Fox, and Fox Business — all spent attacking the voting hardware company and labeling them as a key member of a conspiracy to steal the 2020 presidential election from Trump. 

“Giuliani has not retracted his false claims about Dominion, and many of his false and defamatory television and radio appearances and tweets remain available online to a global internet audience,” the lawsuit reads. At the time of publication, Giuliani has yes to issue a statement in response to Dominion’s lawsuit. 

It remains to be seen how successful the billion-dollar lawsuit against Giuliani — or anyone else who played a part in regurgitating the former president’s lies about the 2020 election — will be. But, it should be noted that Giuliani is reportedly worth $45 million, so how the disgraced lawyer could find the means to pay the full amount if he is, in fact, found guilty is a question for the math-minded among us. According to The New York Times, Dominion Voting Systems plans on filing additional lawsuits, and hasn’t ruled out the possibility of bringing litigation against Trump. 

“We’re not ruling anybody out,” Thomas A. Clare, a lawyer representing Dominion, told the Times. “Obviously, this lawsuit against the president’s lawyer moves one step closer to the former president and understanding what his role was and wasn’t.” 

2020 was hardly a banner year for anyone. But if you haven’t been made into the year’s biggest meme before being sued for $1 billion, chances are you’re doing great, sweetie!

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In the wake of the Jan. 6 domestic terrorist attack, in which Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol in an attempt to subvert a free and fair election, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) issued a warning to the insurgents. “Federal law prohibits you from physically assaulting or threatening to physically assault the crew, and anyone else,” the FAA tweeted over the weekend. “You could be subject to fines of up to $35K and imprisonment for such conduct.” And in a statement issued by the Association of Flight Attendants-CWA, President Sara Nelson called for those who participated in the attempted coup to be banned from flying, saying they posed a threat “to the safety and security of every single person onboard.” 

Now, as violent MAGA rioters are attempting to travel back home, they’re learning that they are subject to existing airline zero-tolerance policies that mandate mask wearing and bar harassment and unruly behavior against airline crew members and passengers alike. Needless to say, they are not happy. 

One Twitter user, @RayRedacted, shared a now-viral video of a white man crying in an airport, yelling, “This is what they do to us. They kicked me off a flight, they call me a f*cking terrorist, and they want to rule my life.” The tweet was captioned, “People who broke into the Capitol Wednesday are now learning they are on No-Fly lists pending the full investigation. They are not happy about this.” 

People who broke into the Capitol Wednesday are now learning they are on No-Fly lists pending the full investigation. They are not happy about this. pic.twitter.com/5GfHo1eVU8

— Ray [REDACTED] (@RayRedacted) January 10, 2021

Another Twitter user shared a video of a white woman exiting an airplane. In the video, a man claims that they’re “all on a no-fly list for being radical white terrorists.” 

But the factual reason for the removal of specific passengers is being disputed. Snopes described one of the viral videos of a man reportedly kicked off a plane for attending the riot at the Capitol as “mislabeled,” stating that the original video was shared on TikTok with a caption describing the man as having a “toddler level meltdown” after he was asked to wear a mask. And Yashar Ali, a HuffPost and New York Magazine contributor, quote-tweeted the video, writing, “This has nothing to do with the US Capitol Building or no-fly lists as it relates to domestic terrorism.” In a statement to Newsweek, a spokesperson for the Transportation Security Administration said they don’t discuss details surrounding passenger removal for “security reasons.” 

Hahaha. #Republican terrorist put on the no fly list. pic.twitter.com/Zo8LsIpHSh

— John Holland (@johnholland) January 11, 2021

Whether these terrible 2-year-old type tantrums are the result of being placed on a no-fly list for participating in a coup attempt, or the selfish refusal to wear a mask the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), as well as countless infectious disease experts, has said reduces the spread of COVID-19 (which is now killing more than 3,000 Americans a day), one thing is clear: Republicans and/or conservatives are steadfast in their faux victimhood: They’re either convinced they should be free to fly to D.C., stage a deadly insurgency, then fly back home and pick up their lives as if they were returning from a weekend in the Poconos, or they believe they have the innate right to sneeze in a pressurized metal tube. 

The self-victimization of the Republican party has long been on display. Most recently, you can find it in First Lady Melania Trump’s statement on the Jan. 6 insurgency, the slew of Republican politicians and pundits lamenting social media companies finally holding people accountable for inciting violence, and domestic terrorists themselves — who, in the middle of an attempted coup told reporters, “This is not America. They’re shooting at us. They’re supposed to shoot BLM, but they’re shooting the patriots.” 

And given the number of high-ranking Republican politicians who care more about losing Twitter followers than they do an attempt to overthrow the government or over 370,000 Americans dying from COVID-19, this victimization is, sadly, here to stay. Perhaps the only silver lining here are the videos of MAGA trolls insulting Lindsey Graham.

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Over the weekend, former Governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger made a video addressing the attacks on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, when a slew of Trump supporters-turned-domestic terrorists stormed the building in an attempt to overthrow the government. In it, Schwarzenegger detailed his experience as a child in post-WWII Austria, saying he was “surrounded by broken men drinking away their guilt over their participation in the most evil regime in history.” Schwarzenegger went on to say that his father would come home drunk once or twice a week and would “hit us,” something he had “never shared… so publicly” until that moment, because it was a “painful memory.”

Schwarzenegger also compared the insurrection carried out on Jan. 6 to Kristallnacht, known as “the Night of Broken Glass.” “It was a night of rampage against the Jews carried out in 1938 by the Nazi equivalent of the Proud Boys,” Schwarzenegger said. “Wednesday was the Day of Broken Glass right here in the United States. The broken glass was in the windows of the United States Capitol. But the mob did not just shatter the windows of the Capitol, they shattered the ideas we took for granted.” 

Theatrics aside (at one point, Schwarzenegger holds up the “Conan Sword” as music swells in the background, comparing tempering the steel of a sword to tempering U.S. democracy), Schwarzenegger’s heart was in the right place, even if his metaphors were questionable. He was clearly upset about the insurgency, and as a Republican, he is one of the very few who is doing the bare minimum of publicly denouncing Trump and those who supported the attempt to overturn an election result. 

My message to my fellow Americans and friends around the world following this week’s attack on the Capitol. pic.twitter.com/blOy35LWJ5

— Arnold (@Schwarzenegger) January 10, 2021

But Schwarzenegger’s invocation of Kristallnacht also seemed to have opened the door for self-victimizing Republicans to compare losing their Twitter followers to Kristallnacht — a contrast that is as deeply insulting as it is factually inaccurate.

From Nov. 9 to Nov. 10 in 1938, in what is now known as Kristallnacht, Nazis in Germany “torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools, and businesses, and killed close to 100 Jews.” In the wake of the destruction and loss of life, 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Many historians cite the violence of Kristallnacht as being the first step of the Nazi’s “final solution” to what they referred to as the “Jewish problem,” leading to the systematic murder of 6 million Jewish people in the Holocaust.

Now, Republican politicians and political talking heads alike would like us all to believe that losing a few thousand Twitter follows is akin to the carefully orchestrated attempt to destroy an entire population of people. “I have lost 8,000 followers on this twitter account in one day,” Rep. Steve King (R-IA) tweeted. “Apple, Google, Facebook, & others have cancelled many conservatives. Last night was cyber god’s Kristallnacht!” And after Apple, Google, and Amazon kicked Parler — a social media cite growing in popularity among conservatives and white supremacists — off their platforms, Fox News commentator Jeanine Pirro said, “Now that they’ve won, what we’re seeing is the kind of censorship that’s akin to a Kristallnacht, where they decide what we can communicate about.” 

Fox’s Jeanine Pirro says the deplatforming of Parler, a haven for white supremacists, “is akin to a Kristallnacht,” an infamous night of Nazi hate crimes against Jewish people. pic.twitter.com/D3L6JrkD1X

— Bobby Lewis (@revrrlewis) January 11, 2021

These claims of victimhood by Republicans and conservative commentators is hardly new. It is the very victimization that fueled the insurgency at the Capitol: the idea that white men and women are “owed” full control of this country, and anything less than complete control is somehow an affront to their god-given rights. But comparing private companies upholding their terms of services to the night that helped pave the way for the Holocaust takes that faux-victimization not only to a disgusting level, but a dangerous one. 

The coup at the Capitol was fueled in no small part by white grievances — the idea that something is being “stolen” from white people. Trump was able to harness that toxic white fragility and turn it into votes. Now, he has successfully taken it a step further and is doing the work of long-standing white supremacist organizations by radicalizing predominantly white Americans and convincing Republicans that they are the real victims in a violent attack that could have very well ended with the live execution of sitting congresspeople. This is no more apparent confirmation of this than the recent PBS NewsHour/Marist College poll, which found that 47% of Republicans believe the rioters’ “actions were mostly legitimate.” 

Yes, those who stormed the Capitol were wearing Nazi-affiliated T-shirts and waving Confederate flags. Yes, many were known members of white supremacist domestic terrorist groups. But not everything needs to be compared to Kristallnacht. Not the terrorist attack on the Capitol, and certainly not Republicans losing followers on Twitter.

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On January 6, the U.S. Capitol was taken over by violent extremists in an attempt to overthrow the government and subvert a free and fair election. These domestic terrorists erected makeshift gallows — complete with a noose — in the lawn of the U.S. Capitol Building. White men in tactical garb carrying restraints “hunted” for congresspeople. White supremacists, waving Confederate flags and wearing disturbing T-shirts, chanted “Hang Mike Pence!” and yelled “Where’s Pelosi?” An officer in the Capitol Hill Police was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Another was dragged down the steps outside the Capitol and attacked with a flag pole. 

Meanwhile, First Lady Melania Trump was reportedly overseeing a photo shoot of White House rugs. And it wasn’t until today, January 11, that she finally said something about the violent attempted coup. In her statement, the First Lady claimed she was “disappointed and disheartened by what happened last week,” while simultaneously “sending her heart” to the domestic terrorists who died while storming the Capitol, and painting herself a victim in the aftermath of the insurgency, writing: “I find it shameful that surrounding these tragic events there has been salacious gossip, unwarranted personal attacks, and false misleading accusations on me – from people who are looking to be relevant and have an agenda.”

But this comes as little surprise to anyone who has really paid attention to Melania Trump over the last four years. A White House source told CNN that Melania is “checked out,” and her silence as the Capitol was under siege was the result of her not “being in a place mentally or emotionally anymore where she wants to get involved.” Perhaps that’s true, but that’s not an excuse for Melania to make an insurrectionist attack that resulted in the death of six people all about her.

The First Lady also described the violent rioters as “passionate” — completely disregarding any responsibility her husband had for invoking what could have led to televised executions of members of Congress.

The fact that the First Lady chose to explicitly avoided immediately denouncing an insurrection she has, at the very least, been complicit in inciting is hardly new. But this is not news to us: Melania has a long history of siding with her husband, then bucking any responsibility when her support and complicity come to fruition via half-hearted, hypocritical statements. She was an avid participant in the racist “birther movement” that questioned the citizenship of the first Black president of the United States, only to claim she has “reflected on the racial unrest in our country” during her speech at the 2020 Republican National Convention. She stood by her husband’s side as he announced his intentions to run for president by calling Mexicans “rapists and criminals.”

When tasked with visiting the detention centers at the border where immigrant children were forcefully separated from their parents, she wore a green jacket with the words, “I really don’t care, do you?” on the back. Later, she claimed she was “blindsided” by her husband’s “zero tolerance” immigration policy that took more than 5,400 children away from their parents.

And on Nov. 8, she tweeted, “The American people deserve fair elections. Every legal — not illegal — vote should be counted. We must protect our democracy with complete transparency,” supporting her husband’s outright lies about the 2020 presidential election outcome. Then, on Jan. 6, silence.

Like the entire Trump family, who feel victimized by social media crackdowns that are finally holding those responsible for inciting violence via Facebook, Twitter, Parler, and other social media platforms, Melania would like us all to believe that she is a victim, as worthy of our sympathy as the more than 370,000 people who have died from Covid-19 as a result of her husband’s ineptitude, or those who lost their lives at the hands of her husband’s supporters. 

But we really don’t care about the Trump family’s hurt feelings. Do you?

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On Monday, conservative commentator Meghan McCain rejoined her The View colleagues after giving birth to her daughter, Liberty, in September, 2020. In her post-birth debut, the daughter of late Senator John McCain gave viewers a candid insight into her postpartum experience: “When I gave birth I actually had postnatal preeclampsia, and I was in the hospital for a week after on a magnesium drip and it really, really kicked my butt. And I was planning on coming back on the show for the election in six weeks after I gave birth and I was physically unable to.” The conservative commentator went on to say that her husband and mother-in-law had to help her shower and eat, calling the entire experience “deeply humbling.”

“The whole time I was thinking what a privilege it is to have this kind of maternity leave,” she exclaimed. 

McCain then said that in the aftermath of her experience, she grew angry. “As I thought about it, the more angry I got that there weren’t women in the rest of America that had the same kind of luxury that I had working here at The View.” McCain, who is married to Ben Domenech, co-founder and publisher of The Federalist (a site that has published such pieces as “How Paid Family Leave Restricts Parents’ Choices”) said she also grew even more angry with the Republican Party that she continues to subscribe to, despite the fact that the current leader of the party has continually attacked her now-deceased father.

“Conservatives, in particular, given that we’re the party of ‘family values’ and that everything about our ideology sort of stems from the nucleus of the family, that we are leaving women in this country without the capacity and ability — unless you have an employer that allows you to — to take care of your child and to heal physically, which is something that needs to happen,” she said.

She then regurgitated statistics that have long-been known to anyone who has ever paid attention to the plight of pregnant people in this country. The United States is the only developed nation in the country that does not mandate paid family leave. The absence of paid family leave actually plays into the rising maternal mortality and infant mortality crisis, especially for Black women who are three times more likely to die from pregnancy-related complications than white women (something McCain did not address).

McCain also briefly touched on the limited amount of time women have with their newborns postpartum — one in four moms return to work just two weeks after giving birth, a statistic that was published in 2015 that seemed to be “new information” for the former Senator’s daughter. 

“There’s a lot of dangers that happen and I just can’t believe that we, as Americans, still have this kind of crisis,” McCain concluded.

In response to McCain’s “ah-ha” moment, her The View-host Whoopi Goldberg said, “That’s funny, we have been fighting for this for years: begging, screaming. And people keep saying, ‘We can’t afford it, we can’t do this.’ As far back as I can remember, people have said: ‘You know, women have babies, and you punish us.’” 

And perhaps what Goldberg touched on is a symptom of a larger issue. Is McCain’s personal postpartum experience worthy of empathy? Of course. Is her sudden enlightenment as to the plights of pregnant and postpartum people worthy of praise? No. Instead, it’s indicative of a long-standing Republican tradition: a problem isn’t a problem unless it impacts me, personally. And a systemic solution isn’t necessary unless it will help me, personally. 

We don’t have to look far back into the country’s history to see a myriad of examples of this very same self-centered mindset in action. Take former Gov. Chris Christie (R-NJ), who urged Americans to wear a mask to prevent the spread of COVID-19 only after he contracted and was hospitalized for the virus himself. Or Nancy Reagan, who became an advocate for stem cell research only after her husband developed Alzheimer’s in 1999. And Sen. Rob Portman (R-OH), who reversed his stance on marriage equality after his son told him he was gay. 

McCain is no different, now, in suggesting that paid family leave is suddenly important. Whether it’s the Republicans who now take issue with the outgoing president’s bully tactics — the ones that they’re suddenly on the receiving end of — or conservative commentators like McCain who have long ignored the cries of pregnant women, mothers, and families — especially Black and brown women and their families — the tradition of the Republican party carries on into 2021 and likely beyond, unless we resist the urge to congratulate someone like McCain for doing the bare minimum.

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It took just two days for the first Bad Take™ of 2021 to consume Twitter, when the now-notorious “Bean Dad” became our first online villain of the new year. But before we dive in, let’s unpack how “Bean Dad” came to be.

On Jan. 2, musician and podcaster John Roderick shared a story about his 9-year-old daughter who was hungry for a can of beans but unable to figure out how to open them with a can opener. And like any extremely online father, he decided to share how he handled (what he considered to be) a “teachable moment” with the internet — a fantastic idea any parent who has ever shared any one of their child-rearing decisions with the masses could have advised against. 

“So, yesterday my daughter (9) was hungry and I was doing a jigsaw puzzle so I said over my shoulder ‘make some baked beans,’” Roderick’s first tweet, which has since been deleted, began. “She said, ‘How?’ like all kids do when they want YOU to do it, so I said, ‘Open a can and put it in pot.’ She brought me the can and said ‘Open it how?’” 

“So I said, ‘How do you think this works?’ She studied it and applied it to the top of the can, sideways,” a follow-up tweet read. “She struggled for a while and with a big, dramatic sigh said, ‘Will you please just open the can?’ Apocalypse Dad was overjoyed: a Teaching Moment just dropped in my lap!” 

Rodrick, though priding himself on insisting that his 9-year-old just “figure out” how to use a can opener for the first time so she could eat, concluded his Twitter thread by detailing how he made her wait to learn how to open the can on her own, telling her no one would eat until she does. And finally, after six hours, the little girl was successful. 

In case you missed Bean Dad aka john roderick before he deleted his Twitter account, this is what started it all. pic.twitter.com/KCKRP3099c

— ManiacalV (ColinT) (@ManiacalV) January 3, 2021

The condemnation from fellow Twitter users was obvious and swift. “You’re an asshole, dude,” one Twitter user wrote. “From one Dad to another, this story is nothing to be proud of.” A number of people pointed out how long the child had to wait to eat in order to “learn” her lesson. “All I’m hearing is ‘that time I told my dad I was hungry and he wouldn’t let me eat for another six hours for no good reason,”’ someone posted. (SIX HOURS, in all caps, trended on Twitter for most of the day and through the holiday weekend.)

Others took issue with the term “teachable moment,” noting that Roderick didn’t really take the time to energy to actually teach his child anything. “Teachable moment means explaining how the can opener works, walking her through the process, and then letting her try on her own next time,” another wrote. And, of course, plenty of people took the more direct approach: “Just open the can and give your child beans you psycho,” someone else tweeted. 

Roderick eventually responded to the backlash: “The only thing people are touchier about than parenting style is dog ownership.” He then attempted a few more follow-up tweets, defending his parenting decision as well as his choice to share it with the public, before deleting his Twitter account entirely. Of course, deleting his account only fueled the backlash fire. “Wow. Imagine going out known as ‘Bean Dad’?” one Twitter user wrote.

But leaving children to fend for themselves doesn’t foster independence — in fact, just the opposite. Studies have shown that children learn best by watching and mimicking their parents. Studies have also shown that stress, overwhelm, anxiety, and hunger can all impact the learning process, stifling a child’s ability to learn a new skill. 

And as a parent to two children, ages 6 and 2, I’m not in the business of slinging mud at others for their personal parenting decisions. Trying to climb on any high horse would only be embarrassing at best, and at the very least hypocritical. But forcing your hungry child to wait six hours to eat and calling it “essential education” feels cruel. Even in the best of circumstances, that choice on the part of “Bean Dad” appears to be less of an informed parenting decision and more like laziness masquerading as “edgy fathering.” 

If the Bean Dad saga taught us one thing, it’s that the whole “pull yourself up by your bootstraps, figure it out for yourself” mindset — in parenting or in literally any other aspect of life — is better left in 2020.

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At 6:30 a.m. CST on Christmas morning, an RV exploded in downtown Nashville, Tennessee. Three people were injured as entire city blocks were ravaged by the sudden attack. At the scene, investigators also found the remains of 63-year-old Anthony Quinn Warner, a white man who authorities believe to be responsible for the blast. But as the investigation continues, and law enforcement attempts to establish Warner’s motives for the now-dubbed Nashville Christmas bombing, a long-standing pattern of media coverage is emerging — one we’ve all seen countless times before. 

As outgoing president Trump has yet to make so much as a passing comment on the domestic attack — a silence that many pointed out wouldn’t likely follow a bombing carried out by someone who is Black or brown — reporting on the bombing is under fire from both social justice advocates and Twitter pundits. Although Warner has been named by FBI as the man responsible for the bombing, long-standing legacy publications are refusing to describe Quinn as a domestic terrorist or suicide bomber. Instead, he’s “the man who set off Nashville explosion,” as one New York Times’ headline read. Another local paper named Quinn a “lone bomber.”

But it wasn’t until the New York Times ran another article titled “A Quiet Life, a Thunderous Death, and a Nightmare That Shook Nashville,” in which Quinn is described as a lonely, single elderly man who claimed to have been diagnosed with cancer, and who gave away his car and his home before carrying out the bombing, that criticism erupted, particularly on Twitter and all over social media. When it was reported that Quinn played the song “Downtown” by Petula Clark before detonating the RV, MSNBC contributor and former federal prosecutor Jill Wine-Banks tweeted: “This detail may reveal Nashville bomber’s loneliness, explain his action and rebut @waltshaub conclusion that even without a warning or manifesto, blowing up RV in a city makes you a terrorist. What do you think? And does it matter what bombing is called?”

It’s unclear of the New York Times has any official rules on the language around domestic terrorism, though past reports indicate that it’s a widely covered. In response to the Times and Wine-Banks, advocates were quick to explain how much this does matter — and how it’s so strikingly different from reporting around other types of bombings and domestic attacks. Because, in truth, this is not just about the delineation of it all, but rather the way large platform media groups are willing to give a white suicide bomber the benefit of the doubt where Black and brown people are not afforded the same.

Editors and political talking heads dragging their feet to name a white domestic terrorist accordingly is hardly new. White supremacist groups pose the highest terrorist threat to the United States, yet attacks carried out by Muslims, on average, receive 357% more media coverage than other attacks. When attacks or would-be attacks planned and carried out by white men are covered — like the plot to kidnap and kill Gov. Gretchen Whitmer — the perpetrators are described as members of a “militia” or “watchmen.” Much like mass shooters are described as “mentally ill lone gunmen,” white domestic terrorists have a history of being covered as misunderstood loners; freedom fighters gone awry; a complicated, sad person who went astray due to the moral, ethical, and social failings of those around him. In other words, they’re covered as humans. 

Many of those same talking heads — along with a number of social justice advocates — were quick to rebuke the Times’ editorialization of Anthony Quinn Warner, saying that this is a clear cut example of white privilege — even when it comes to terrorism.

If a bomber commits suicide with a bomb wouldn’t you call that person a suicide bomber?

— Molly Jong-Fast🏡 (@MollyJongFast) December 28, 2020

White privilege is having a white man blow himself up in the middle of a major American city and no one in the media calls him a suicide bomber/terrorist.

— Chicano Marine 🇲🇽🇺🇸🧩 (@kingsrush) December 28, 2020

If a suicide bomber did the same thing that Anthony Warner did in Iraq or Afghanistan, it would be considered a suicide bomb terrorist attack, so why is it not being labeled as such because a white American did it on American soil? #Nashville

— David Weissman (@davidmweissman) December 28, 2020

I can tell from this headline that Warner is white. If he were anything else, the words “suicide bomber” & a negative word to describe him like deranged, thug, animal, etc. would appear in the headline. https://t.co/wjGK7UESkK

— Midwin Charles, Esq. (@MidwinCharles) December 28, 2020

While Warner is described as a “man who set off the explosion,” an entirely made up massacre claimed to be carried out by Iraqi refugees was used to justify the current president banning a whole religious population from entering the United States at the beginning of his administration’s tenure. The violent acts of a few immigrants was used to justify the Trump administration’s family separation policy. The attacks on Sept. 11 were used to condone the unlawful arrest and detainment of 762 Muslim Americans. Americans pointed to Pearl Harbor as justification for Japanese internment camps.

This refusal to hold white men to the same standard — to the same level of villainization — plays a large part in the culture of hate crimes that runs rampant in America. Hate crimes towards Muslims (and other people assumed to be and/or who are mistaken for Muslims) increase every time an attack is carried out by someone claiming be Muslim. It’s the same reason why anti-Chinese and other anti-Asian hate crimes have increased since the president of the United States called COVID-19 the “China virus.” It’s one of the reasons why, in the year 2020, the country continues to grapple with systemic racism and its many repercussions, be it a pandemic disproportionately impacting Black and brown people, Black women dying from pregnancy-related complications at three times the rate of white women, and the ongoing slayings of unarmed Black and brown people at the hands of the police.

White people, as a whole, do not have to fear being victims of prejudicial hate crimes in the wake of the Nashville suicide bombing. They didn’t after Dylan Roof, either. Or Timothy McVeigh. Or Charlottesville. Or Patrick Crusius. Or Kyle Rittenhouse. They likely won’t have to after the next white domestic terrorist carries out a plot, either. Even though white men perpetrate the majority of terrorist acts on U.S. soil, they are not considered by the public to be threatening as a demographic.

Black and brown people cannot say the same. The demonization of Black and brown people is not extended to white people, even when white people are at their absolute worst. So when a Black child is shot and killed by police officers for holding a toy gun in the park, he’s just a soon-to-be “thug” who should have known better. But a white elderly man who leveled entire city blocks in a successful domestic terrorist plot? Well, he’s just a sad, lonely man who died a “thunderous death.”

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After an 11th hour public tantrum and threatening his own party with a veto, outgoing President Donald Trump signed the second COVID-19 relief package, avoiding a government shutdown and extending unemployment benefits to millions of Americans. The $900 billion package comes after eight months, over 240,000 American deaths, and more than 22 million jobs lost since the first coronavirus relief package was passed. In addition to providing one-time stimulus checks, the relief bill also extends two COVID-19 relief programs, eviction protection, and provides $25 billion in rental assistance. 

Trump, who has been notoriously absent during the months-long debate over the bill, signed it just days after he made it a point to publicly mock Democrats and Republicans alike for securing only $600 in COVID-19 relief to eligible Americans, instead of $2,000 — something House Democrats have been proposing for months.

In a video shared via Twitter, Trump called the bill a “disgrace,” saying, “It’s called the COVID relief bill, but it has almost nothing to do with COVID.” He went on to say, “I am asking Congress to amend this bill and increase the ridiculously low $600 to $2,000, or $4000 for a couple.” Trump also took the time to demonize immigrants, blame China for the ongoing pandemic, and undermine the results of the 2020 election. And, it should also be noted that Democrats attempted to increase the amount of aid from $600 to $2,000 after Trump’s comments, but House Republicans blocked their efforts.

So, what exactly does this mean for the millions waiting on a second stimulus check? While Trump and Co. were able to avoid a completely unnecessary government shutdown by signing the bill, the lengthy and purposeful delay in signing has put millions of Americans in continued financial duress. Those who receive Pandemic Unemployment Assistance or financial help via the Pandemic Emergency Unemployment Compensation Program likely won’t receive any relief for the remainder of the year, as reported by CNN.

And while the benefits are retroactive, because Trump signed the bill on Saturday, there is likely to be a significant delay in pandemic payments — some estimate as long as several weeks. As Michele Evermore, a senior policy analyst for the National Employment Law project, told The New York Times, “There will be very permanent things that can happen to people that can’t be fixed by a check in three weeks.”

Those who are eligible to receive the $600 one-time stimulus check, and have already provided the IRS with their bank information, can expect to receive the funds in their bank accounts within a few weeks. If you are not set up and/or eligible for direct deposit, a paper check or pre-loaded card will be sent via mail. Jan. 15 is the cut-off day for the IRS to send out checks as part of the second stimulus bill, meaning if you don’t receive all or just part of your check via direct deposit, paper check, or EBT, you have to claim all or part of the missing amount when you file your 2021 taxes. 

While Trump publicly criticized the amount of “pork” on the bill — i.e. non-COVID related federal spending — much of what was added to the second stimulus bill came directly from the Trump administration’s annual 2021 budget. And while Trump returned the signed bill with “red lined” items and post-signing demands, Congress has signaled that it will downright ignore the lame duck president’s last-minute requests.

In other words, Trump’s last-minute decision to delay signing the bill did nothing but harm the very people he hypocritically and erroneously claims he’s “fighting for” as he steps onto another golf course. Again.

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