When I read Maureen Dowd’s column about vice presidential candidate J.D. Vance’s debate night smirk, I was reminded of my canceled academic career and reading literary journals that went in-depth into such things as “phallogocentrism” and the “male gaze.” Over the past decade, such fears have migrated from campuses to the everyday world.
Dowd was complaining about the fact that presidential candidate Kamala Harris is being portrayed in Trump campaign ads as incapable of protecting Americans from foreign threats — a continuation of the sexism faced by the “bubbly” Geraldine Ferraro and by the “hawk”-ish Hillary Clinton (and perhaps Michael Dukakis). It would have nothing to do with such statements like “We’re not going to stop pursuing what is necessary for the United States to be clear about where we stand on the need for this war to end.” As I learned in graduate school, logic is phallic.
Dowd also complained that when Trump returned to Butler, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 5, he was “martyr-milking” the assassination attempt, the one moment where he had shown courage. Otherwise, he lives in a “miasma of self-pity.” In “Trumpworld,” “sympathy is weakness.”
Same for Vance, who like a “chameleon” had “ambitiously code-switched into a Trumper.” He represents the “future of the [Republican] party”: “lies piled on lies, and darkness swallowing darkness.”
During the debate, did Vance in Trump/Hitler fashion snarl and shout, pound his fists, with flames of fire shooting from his bloodshot eyes? No, there was something more “chilling,” according to Dowd. Vance
