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.