You hate to see it—except when you love to see it. A conservative author promoting her conservative book is getting roasted online after appearing on The Hill's online show Rising and failing to clearly define the term "woke" after outright denouncing it.
Stolen Youth, the book Bethany Mandel co-authored, is about America's youth being indoctrinated by "radicals." As reported by Forbes, there's an entire chapter of the book explaining what "woke" means, but during the interview, Mandel came up short. Maybe the other author tackled that portion?
Related: Racists Have Ruined "Woke" for the Rest of Us
When Rising co-host Briahna Joy Gray asked for a specific definition of woke, which had been thrown around several times in the interview, Mandel choked. She took a long pause, stumbled, stammered, and said, "This is going to be one of those moments that goes viral" (correct!). Then she conceded. "It's hard to explain in a 15-second soundbite," she said, even though Mandel was given a lot longer than 15 seconds to speak.
Of course woke has become a catch-all term that conservatives have appropriated from AAVE and pinned to all things progressive—it’s even got Florida legislation and at least one comedy club that are diametrically opposed. And of course Mandel’s explanation for why she couldn’t answer what should be a simple question for a published author is taken straight out of the Karen playbook.
Mandel hopped onto Twitter yesterday to claim Gray made some disparaging remarks about parents before the interview—and naturally, as a mother of six, she was personally offended. She told Fox News Gray this “rattled” her. [Eye roll]
Just before we went on air, Briahna Joy Gray was on a hot mic. I heard her demeaning parenting in general in colorful and nasty terms, stating parents only have kids in order to perpetuate their own narcissism. Robby responded, "There are some good ones and some bad ones."
— Bethany S. Mandel (@bethanyshondark) March 15, 2023
“I logged on thinking, 'This woman is about to come at me very personally, and I have to be really careful because one day my kids are going to see this, and I don't want them to be hurt by whatever she says and whatever I say,'" she said. "I was already very anxious when the call started, and you can tell, my goodness.”
My goodness, this sounds suspect—and very much on-brand. While there’s no recording of the alleged pre-interview comment, we’re expected to believe a White woman was made to feel threatened and intimidated by a Black woman, which ultimately led to her flimsy POV falling apart like the First Little Piggy's house. A likely story.
We like Jemele Hill's take best: Every pundit who throws "woke" around should be asked to define it on the spot and give examples. It's only fair.
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