Maddow: Someone Should Tell Proud Boys and Oath Keepers Their Names 'Sound Really Gay'

[LetMyPeopleVote]

Link to tweet

It was already pretty fair to assume that MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow was not the far-right’s favorite news anchor—and her comments late Tuesday are almost certain to infuriate them. On Tuesday night’s The Rachel Maddow Show, the host shared with fellow MSNBC host Lawrence O’Donnell that she’s always found the names of right-wing militias the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers to be “inadvertently funny” because “they both sound really gay.” Maddow said: “They both seem like they’re referring to gay stuff—whether it’s the Proud Boys in terms of gay pride, or the Oath Keepers thing around a lot of the gay politics around gay marriage and about being able to say your ‘I dos’ with your beloved—both of those things, they have such a poorly derived sense of camp and understanding about American subcultural text that they both ended up naming themselves something that could have been a 90s affinity group of, like, the lesbian avengers.” Maddow went on to suggest that O’Donnell could help to neutralize the right-wing groups by only referring to them as “the lesbian avengers” on air. He responded: “Alright, we’ll try that.”

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[msongs]

1. not funny there rachel n t

[PJMcK]

7. I agree, sort of

The problem for me is that by finding something to snicker about, the focus on this serious subject is lost. The Proud Boys are a very dangerous military group outside of any authority or control that threaten to destabilize our government. To make a schoolyard joke about their name is to miss the very real threat that they present to our society.

Aside from that, other considerations seem trivial to me. Rachel can (and does) do better.

[The Magistrate]

2. Bit Of A Stretch For The One, But Dead-On For 'Proud Boys'

They need to relax with some Village People hits and let nature take its course.

[FoxNewsSucks]

5. Yeah, I don't really see the "Oath Keeper" thing

but the Proud Boys name always made me snicker.

I guess they didn't learn anything from back when they called themselves Teabaggers before someone told them what that was.

[Xipe Totec]

13. The first time I saw "Oath Keepers" I thought it was some chastity club. nt

[FoxNewsSucks]

14. I'm sure they have one of those too.

The "Promise Keepers" always creeped me out.

[Xipe Totec]

15. That explains my confusion.

[jcgoldie]

44. it is.

Just not intentionally perhaps

[msfiddlestix]

38. ✔️

definitely.

[Oneironaut]

3. Im sorry, but, "Proud Boys" sounds totally gay.

It sounds like a meetup group for twinks, ngl.

[LakeArenal]

4. And.... Rachel is allowed to say such a thing because she's gay?

Kind of a double standard?

[spike jones]

11. Rachel is gay? n/t

[vanlassie]

25. She mentions her wife Susan regularly.

[MurrayDelph]

29. Yeah, it's sort of an unwritten rule

If you're a woman, and your wife is gay, odds are you are, too.

[spike jones]

35. I meant it as a joke. There is no timing in the message boards.

Which is why I should use the emotes.

[vanlassie]

36. Yes. Cuz I looked. 😉

[Omnipresent]

6. We really don't know their sexuality.

There could be gay members

[gay texan]

16. Judging by the Oath Keepers I had contact with

Some of them are VERY deeply closeted and not surprisingly seriously homophobic.

[Ilsa]

8. I was surprised by her comments and think

she was commenting on the irony of their language choices.

It's amazing how assignment of words' definitions, like "gay", change so much in culture. For example: Is there any woman under age 50 named Gay any more? Is it ever used to mean happy or carefree any more?

Yeah, "Proud Boys" makes me wonder if they are a group with a different sexuality, for example.

[Progressive Jones]

32. Something from the past along the lines of what you're saying here.

Here in Chicago, from the early 1950s through the late 1990s, there was a very large, and actually very tough, youth gang known as the "Gaylords". Legend on the street had it that they took the name in a time when the word "gay" was akin to "cool" in the slang of that time. Now, my info is strictly anecdotal, but an uncle of mine knew some of those guys in the '50s, and he told me that the story I heard was likely true.

They took a lot of guff over that name through the years, but they hung onto it.

[Sympthsical]

9. I don't get the Oath Keepers thing

I'm a gay man who was growing up in the 90s. Kind of tilting my head at that one.

Proud Boys, yeah. That was co-opted online like two years ago. Lots of gay couples posting pics of themselves with the Proud Boys logo and things.

But what am I missing about Oath Keepers and lesbian avengers?

[Wounded Bear]

21. I think it derives from the "Promise Keepers" from the 90's IIRC...

the thing being that supposedly they were an organization of men who were supposedly 'fighting' to defend their wedding vows or something. What they really were was a RW organization spouting 1950's versions of what marriage should be with a strong "Christian" strain of the Father is the Head of the Household and the wife and children are bound to follow Dad's orders and directions in all things. Pretty draconian definitions of relationships.

More along the RW "we're fighting to preserve the real America" bullshit.

I think Rachel kind of made up that Lesbian Avengers moniker on the fly, lending a bit of comic book level philosophy to the whole thing.

[FoxNewsSucks]

10. She did get a lot of mileage out of ridiculing the Teabaggers

Nothing will likely ever top Cox' comment at 1:05 there.

[gay texan]

17. Oh god I remember that

I fucked with SO many hard core RWNJ at work over that one.

Fun times, fun times!!!!

[multigraincracker]

20. I still call them that. You can see

them getting pissed off.

[Progressive Jones]

33. Same here. I've updated it. Now I call 'em, "Teabagging Q-Balls"... nt

[7wo7rees]

12. Sadly, it's come to this.

Potshots like this are the only thing they understand. And it will hurt their fee-fees.
Unfortunately, they will likely retaliate even harder. Thanks, Rach.

[leftstreet]

18. No doubt they're thrilled for the free publicity n/t

[Hortensis]

30. Sadly, the sun went down. North America's going dark,

and they're going to blame us and retaliate. Thanks, Rach.

[mikeysnot]

19. the proud to be ignorant boys totally look like

Bears.

[Progressive Jones]

34. I've often thought that myself. nt

[JHB]

22. When it comes to semantic infiltration, this is chicken feed

What about the normalization of the wildly-expansive definition of "socialism" that was once only the purview of right-wing ranting cranks? The ones which include the US during WW2 and the Cold War.

[Shermann]

23. Oathkeeper was a badass sword in Game of Thrones...so no on that one nt

[David__77]

24. That strikes me as ineffective.

Now, if you had a story about one of their leaders’ homosexual activity, that’s another thing entirely. I guess the thing is: who would one be trying to influence with that? Leveraging people’s backwardness can be tricky when the goal is to transform people’s thinking.

[vanlassie]

26. I think Rachel was just letting her hair down and

having a chuckle. She certainly does her part speaking truth to power.

[FakeNoose]

27. I hope she mentioned the Proud Boys' kilts

I read somewhere they were ordered from Amazon.

[Skittles]

43. JAYSUS!

MY EYES!!! WTF, FakeNoose

[FakeNoose]

46. This was a news bureau photo from last year

... just so you know.

I'm not making this stuff up.

[ecstatic]

28. I hope LO didn't try that. lol

I saw that exchange and laughed out loud. Rachel is trying to get LO jammed up. Unfortunately, I didn't have the patience to watch his show last night. Also, their handoffs are always soooo painfully awkward. The conversation doesn't flow naturally like the handoffs between Chris Cuomo and Don Lemon.

[PurgedVoter]

31. Proud Boys, there's a place you can go!

I said, Proud Boys, there's a place you can go!

[LeftInTX]

37. Are Proud Boys, the Hawaiian shirt ones?

[MustLoveBeagles]

39. No

That's the Boogalo Bois.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boogaloo_movement

[LeftInTX]

40. So many groups. So much confusion..lol

Thx

[MustLoveBeagles]

42. You're welcome

It is confusing sometimes. There are way too many groups like this.

[ForgedCrank]

41. So now these folks are calling

others "gay" in order to insult them?
I find this quite distasteful and worthy of scorn.

[Raine]

45. Seems counter productive. 🙄 nt