Let Her Dance
We don't have to be sour about EVERYTHING
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Kamala Harris has finally worked through her boxed wine supply and is inching back into the public square, as rumors of a California gubernatorial run circulate. That means the word salad clips are back in the social media cycle.
It’s clear we dodged a bullet last November.
A quick perusal of this substack will reveal I have never been a fan of Harris. The archives are for our paid subscribers, but if you have the spare $6, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed if you want to go back and read some of it. I’ve spent a lot of time breaking down her quirks and weaknesses.
This week, as Harris dips her toe back into public waters, a video is circulating of her doing a TikTok dance with a staffer. It’s a benign video, with Harris offering her typical cackling and an unseen group of admirers clapping and cheering out of frame. She is stereotypically awkward but everyone seems to be having a good time.
Except the conservatives on social media. That clip has been making the rounds today with a lot of denigrating commentary. Harris looks awkward. Harris is an embarrassment. This is stupid. The usual complaints.
That’s what social media is, and I get it. We make fun of each other. We mock public figures. We say things in ones and zeroes that we’d never say aloud to a person’s face.
But I don’t know why we need to be nasty, negative-Nellies about every single fun thing a Democrat does online.
The biggest problem in our political discourse right now is the deep division between ideological sides. For too many people politics have become personal, even religious. That leads us to take each other very personally, even when we don’t have a genuine personal connection.
And that is dangerous.
What, exactly, is Harris doing wrong here? She’s not at work (thank God). She’s not at a funeral (although we shouldn’t put it past her to be inappropriate at one). She’s not even running for anything right now (let’s hope it stays that way). She’s making a public appearance on her own behalf and enjoying the company of her fans.
It’s a bit classless to be bitter about it, or to act like it’s some superior act of cringe. It’s just an unemployed rich lady dancing on social media.
The humiliation mob also belittles the experience of the other people involved in such things. Harris is famous, so naturally the video is focusing on her and her experience. But what about the others? They’re not disgraced politicians who only know how to speak in word salads. They’re normal, working Americans who want the chance to get next to the celebrities they admire, the way we all do. When you have the chance, you take it.
For us, and for Harris, this is just another public spectacle. For the others in that video, it is the moment of a lifetime. It is a story they’ll share at parties and the Thanksgiving table. It is an experience they’ll draw on for the rest of their lives.
What should Harris have done? Should she have told those people to pound sand? That she’s too serious for fun? That they can just gaze upon her and that should be enough?
This is a celebrity giving her fans what they want - access and experience.
It’s a nice thing to do.
Context matters. If we were watching Harris flail about doing TikTok dances while she watched America burn from the White House, that’s one thing. I’ll never forget the ridiculous cavalcade of TikTok dances from hospital doctors and nurses in the middle of the pandemic. Somehow they were overwhelmed heroes who were saving the world and yet had enough time to plan social media dance routines that included entire departments.
That is certainly something to be perturbed about. If those doctors and nurses are dancing on their own time, and not simultaneously complaining about all the lives they have to save, that’s something different.
Harris may be awkward and weird and fake, but there’s nothing wrong with her taking a moment to give her admirers a personal experience that brings a little joy to what is an exceedingly joyless sector of our society - politics.
We don’t need to be angry about everything all the time. We don’t need to pretend our counterparts in the opposition aren’t actual human beings, who like things like food and drink and fun, like the rest of us. We don’t have to complain about everything.
As long as Kamala Harris isn’t dancing in the White House…or the Governor’s mansion…let her dance.
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You are 100% correct. It’s sad when a person is so nasty and rigid their reaction isn’t a smile and “she DOES look like she’s having fun! Good for her!” but rather a cold sneer. It’s like that video of AOC when she was still a bartender, twirling on a roof and smiling - the human reaction is “awww, adorable” not some rejectful huff. Life is too short not to let other people be happy.
Great piece. Well said.