Lil Miss Hot Mess vs. Marjorie Taylor Greene

Marjorie Taylor Greene Showed My Photo In A DOGE Hearing And Called Me A Monster. Here's Why I’m Fighting Back. Late last month, I was surprised to wake up to a flurry of text messages: “Girl, you’re all over Congress!” As I opened link after link, I was met with a surreal array of photos showing Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene leading a DOGE subcommittee hearing, and to my surprise, behind her was an oversized portrait of me. I rolled my eyes and dreamed about going back to bed.

As a drag queen who reads and writes children’s books, this was certainly not the first time I have faced attacks, by politicians and otherwise. My books have been challenged and banned, events have been protested, and my name and likeness have been used in myriad disingenuous attempts to stoke fear about LGBTQ+ people, including by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. However, it was the first time that I had been directly referenced in the halls of Congress.

My first thought to myself was: At least she chose a gorgeous photo. Ironically, it was one of my own headshots depicting a friendly smile and red, white and blue sequin stars — a stark contrast to Greene’s own scowling face that dominated press photos of her testimony. My second: It’s funny that Greene and other MAGA Republicans have yet to learn that it’s a bad idea to pick a fight with a drag queen. Still, Greene’s comments were no laughing matter: Given her long track record as a conspiracy theorist and anti-LGBTQ+ crusader, Greene unsurprisingly spread not only slanderous hate but also defamatory disinformation. She cited me as a reason to eradicate federal funding for PBS and NPR, contending that NPR and PBS “push some of the most radical left positions, like featuring a drag queen on the show Let’s Learn.”

She continued: “[A]s a mother who raised three children, I felt confident that I could leave the room while my own children were watching children’s programming on PBS. But … if I had walked in my living room or one of my children’s bedrooms and seen this child predator and this monster targeting my children, I would become unglued.”

Needless to say, her already highly unglued name-calling insinuates claims about me that are patently false. She is correct that I once appeared on the public television program “Let’s Learn,” reading my picture book “The Hips on the Drag Queen Go Swish, Swish, Swish” — a playful parody meant to encourage kids to express their inner fabulousness. But the reality, as PBS CEO Paula Kerger made clear, is that the show was produced by local affiliate WNET, not by PBS itself.

Additionally, her rhetoric suggesting that LGBTQ-affirmative media is a form of “sexualizing and grooming … brainwashing and transing children” is not only false, but offensive. As I noted in my initial response: This rerun is tired and boring. That is, it is part of a well-worn playbook that goes back decades, as exemplified by Anita Bryant’s “Save Our Children” campaign of the 1970s, and which has sadly been mainstreamed by Republicans in recent years.

https://www.lilmisshotmess.com

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Rich Wexler

Editor - Otter Castro

Producer/Interviewer

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* This is part of a new series called Live and unedited which are recorded live and then put out. This one was lightly edited