Making fun of Tomi Lahren has become so easy, we’re starting to feel like this is some elaborate trap. Like she’s the carrot at the end of a stick that goes all the way to the top of American life, keeping us distracted and smug and tweeting nail-polish emojis while oligarchs strip-mine our political system for profit. Or maybe she just never bothered to look into what the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. The Dread Pirate Obamacare, actually says, and has no idea that, without the bill’s provision requiring insurance providers to allow kids to stay on their parents’ health insurance until age 26, her ass would have lost her healthcare along with her job at The Blaze.
But then again, why should we be surprised at the staggering sense of entitlement behind Lahren—who weaseled her way onto the public stage by telling campfire tales about the evils of Obamacare to shrieking Republicans—responding to a question from Chelsea Handler at Politicon this past weekend by saying, “luckily, I’m 24, so I’m still on my parents’ [health care plan]”? Bitching that a system that’s designed to benefit her isn’t rigged enough in her favor is part of Lahren’s shtick.
It’s a trait she shares with her target audience: Year after year, the states that rely the most on federal aid are also overwhelmingly Republican. Interpret it as rank hypocrisy or the breakdown of traditional community-based support systems (a.k.a. “family values”), but the fact of the matter is that, statistically, the same people who rail against lazy welfare queens mooching off of the government will also be first in line when the entitlements train pulls up to their town.
And why not? They worship gain—literally, in the case of those who follow the “prosperity gospel” popularized by celebrity evangelicals like Joel Osteen—and sincerely believe that rich people are #blessed not by luck or accident of birth, but by God himself. If Donald Trump’s inherited wealth can be interpreted as a sign of God’s favor, then it’s not that much of a stretch to just unquestioningly accept that whatever you have, you deserve, because you’re a bottle-blonde Christian with a MAGA hat, and God likes to give people like you presents. Even if that present was really from a black guy named Barack.
[via Jezebel, which, like The A.V. Club, is owned by Univision Communications.]