My 92 year-old mother is South Carolina lowcountry tough. She gets it honest, having been raised in a matriarchal family filled with educated, strong, tough women who took no guff and no nonsense from the men in the family, even though the latter, being lawyers and politicians, were the “face” of the family. Growing up in that milieu, I never doubted the dynamic: The men may have been the “face” of the family, but the real power rested on the distaff side.
My mother despises Donald Trump, seeing him as what she alternately terms “a weak blowhard,” “a bully without b***s,” and “a pig.” I’ll leave the other designations she uses to the reader’s imagination.
It should come as no surprise that she is a big fan of Nancy Pelosi. Neither should it come as a surprise that she applauds the Speaker’s tough, in-your-face resistance to Donald Trump’s attempt to extort funding for the totemic, monument-to-himself #TrumpWall by using federal and federally-contracted workers as hostages. Hence her comment during a phone call with me earlier today:
“Unlike Lindsey Graham, she’s got a spine of steel. She won’t back down and she shouldn’t. You know that woman senator from Iowa who got elected because she grew up on a farm and castrated hogs [Joni Ernst]? She could learn a few things from Nancy Pelosi.”
Classic.