The disgusting remark about Mrs. Obama last night was not an aberration.
For many years, the rightwing has been pushing a deeply racist conspiracy theory that sheโs a trans woman, which is, of course, drawn from a dehumanizing and thoroughly absurd-on-its-face trope that Black women canโt be feminine.
This particular slander against Mrs. Obama has been going on for many years, and watching some quarters of conservative media pretend to be offended by the same remark that theyโve enabled in online spaces all this time strikes me as pretty goddamn pathetic and dishonorable.
But itโs not surprising. I would expect nothing different from Trump and his most ardent supporters.
Any woman they donโt likeโlet alone hateโparticularly Black women, arenโt โreal women.โ
This is what they do. Itโs not accidental.
Donโt let them claim otherwise.