Thursday, March 10, 2022

Q Toon: It's Also Her Verb


Congressloon Lauren Boebert (R-CO), whom you may have seen screeching at the President during last week's State of the Union Address, followed up that performance by tweeting "My pronoun is patriot."

As one of the more prominent members of the fascist wing of the Republican Party, Boebert's claim to be a patriot can only be respected while recalling Samuel Johnson's observation that "Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel."

Others have pointed out that "patriot" is not a pronoun; but once one acquiesces to the practice of using "they/them/their" as singular pronouns, or argues that language is historically flexible, one has to concede that any word can be a pronoun if people decide that it is one. As soon as other people start actually using "patriot" and "Lauren Boebert" interchangeably in conversation, well, quod erat demonstratum.

Last year, Boebert publicly scorned Mr. Potato Head for coming out as non-binary. Does one dare to hope that "My pronoun is patriot" is meant to signal that Boebert has suddenly developed an understanding of the transgender, non-binary, and accepting community?

I do hope she — oh, I'm sorry, I meant patriot — doesn't have difficulty finding a public bathroom when patriot has to empty patriots bladder. Some places are fussy about folks using a bathroom that doesn't align with the gender on patriots birth certificate.

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