Marjorie Taylor Greene: The $12 million dollar woman

Marjorie Taylor Greene is an angry woman. She feels embarrassed, aggrieved and humiliated. In last night’s ‘60 Minutes’ interview with Lesley Stahl, her eyes gave it away. They smoldered with rage when she was cornered over her vast record of idiotic pronouncements and divisive statements. More than anything, she is a type of human parrot whose foul mouth isn’t a function of anything more than geographic proximity to a polluted source. She didn’t like being shown video of herself chasing down a teenager who survived a mass shooting. She doesn’t have to run after attention anymore. She doesn’t need to.

Marjorie Taylor Greene was also a lonely woman. She found a community through CrossFit. She fit in, and for the first time in her life she felt seen and undiminished. She excelled and was accepted. Like she said, she went down the QAnon rabbit hole in 2017, and came out the other side as a bonafide extremist ready for civil war. She is a dogmatic zealot, created by the internet and marinated in imaginary grievance.

She has blended the ethos of CrossFit, the insanity of the internet and the cynicism of the era into an incandescent political ‘celebrity.’ She is perfectly matched for our low standards and neediness to see some version of the same attractions P.T. Barnum invented. She is a self-reflection of the ignorance of the American people, the cravenness of right-wing media, the cynicism of legacy media and the hollowness of the Republican/MAGA Party.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is the focus group crazy, who most Washington, DC, politicians have only encountered through one-way glass, while snickering at her convictions and thinking about how to manipulate, incite and energize her. She’s like a velociraptor that broke through the glass, and now lives amongst her captives seemingly unaware of their fear, nervousness and disdain.

Two of Lesley Stahl’s many exasperated reactions to Marjorie Taylor Greene during their ‘60 Minutes’ interview on April 2, 2023

Yet, she senses her power. The problem is that she knows so little that she is open to the idea that she is right about things, as opposed to simply being loud about them. She has found a CrossFit cooler where no one has the respect for her to tell her she is full of shit. Instead, they tell her she is powerful and likely to be vice president if she stays in line.

I laughed when I read the reactions to the ‘60 Minutes’ interview of MTG — both before it ran and afterwards. “COMPLICIT!” “Delete your TV show!” I feel duty-bound to mention that MTG’s appearance on ‘60 Minutes’ is a function of her fame and influence. ‘60 Minutes’ has a long history of featuring despots, authoritarians and other newsmakers, from Ayatollah Khomeini to Manuel Noriega. Marjorie Taylor Greene is certainly a newsmaker.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is on ‘60 Minutes’ because of what she’s doing in Congress. She’s not in Congress because she’s on ‘60 Minutes.’ Like the Ayatollah, she didn’t make it until she made it, and her making it is a type of mirror that Lesley Stahl stood up for the rest of us. Everybody who shares MTG’s passions around pedophilia and conspiracies certainly has a new champion. She is a Trump Davidian who found herself a calling. She wants to be in charge.

What do you think America, should we put MTG in the driver’s seat and give her command of the nuclear weapons arsenal and the world’s most potent military? Someday? Soon? She’s definitely more coherent than Trump, whom she didn’t defend over and over again. Instead she indicted him as a big spender and part of a failed status quo, which is certainly accurate. ‘Seinfeld’ character Mr. Pitt once explained to Elaine that either one has poise or does not. Marjorie Taylor Greene does not. That is certain. She has found the cheap celebrity that comes from “look at me” freakery in an age where, no matter the clown on center stage, a greater imagination lurks off it readying for a turn. She is not to be displaced.

It’s clear she doesn’t read, study or have much interest in discerning fantasy from reality, or recognizing danger from abroad versus imaginary conflict from Fox News. She doesn’t have the depth to grasp why the United States is affected by the Russian border moving west by a thousand miles. She doesn’t know about what happened to Czechoslovakia in 1938 and Poland in 1939. She didn’t know about the Holocaust and the world that was remade from the ashes. She was simply present, here and oblivious until one day, all of the pieces came together as she clicked her way on the internet through the fog until the “truth” was staring her in the face.

Marjorie Taylor Greene appearing on ‘60 Minutes’ is not a tragedy. What is a tragedy is the fact that she is in Congress. She has power, authority and influence. She has new outfits, and last night she wasn’t in the Laura Ingraham news ghetto. She had the two camera set-up and all the fancy lights. Lesley Stahl didn’t give her that — the American people did. Maybe seeing her in action might give them some pause about how much more power she and her friends should get.

Marjorie Taylor Greene is worth $12 million. She’s a member of Congress. She’s pissed off. Why? Because she found the internet, and now she’s ready to lead. That’s what I learned last night and it was more than enough. No thanks.

By the way, that’s journalism. It’s just that it’s so rarely practiced that it’s shocking to see. There were hours worth of questions to ask Marjorie Taylor Greene, and there still are. Everyone got to see something important and it was non-verbal. Watch again if you missed it. MTG, as she’s known, is simmering. She’s enraged. Why? She feels attacked over the things she has said. She’s someone else now. She’s powerful and misunderstood, which, historically, is never a great combination. Her words were mostly nonsense as per usual. It was interesting to see the look in her eye. It’s chilling to see so much of American society enthralled to idiocy and pettiness.

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