Y’all got played

There were two unread posts on LGM when I woke up this morning. The first was about how the supreme court was able to gut a half-century-old precedent establishing constitutional protections for abortion with an unsigned, poorly-argued paragraph because there is, in a large chunk of the population, the perception that reproductive justice and all other “women’s issues” are fundamentally trivial and unimportant. The second was about Elizabeth Bruenig, the most prominent anti-choicer on the alleged left, tweeting pro-ivermectin nonsense the day after this ruling came down.

There are ~450 comments on the second post. Every one is about ivermectin and vaccine hesitancy. Not a single one—until mine—points out the obvious: that Bruenig is being entirely cynical, playing twitter (and this blog) like a fiddle. Everyone is having fun dunking on her for something she probably doesn’t even believe. No one is asking a woman with a NYT opinion column to express an opinion on the most important civil rights issues of the week. No one is challenging her over her—always quite dodgy—insistence that anti-abortion views are consistent with left-wing views (a claim she bolstered with the same argument that Republicans use: Roe is settled law so who cares what my personal opinion is?).

I think most of you would have been able to spot an obvious play like this if it were on any other subject. Do better, people.