One day Chicken Little was pecking around in the yard when she read something misleading in the Daily Mail and decided it meant that Joe Biden was coming to take everyone’s meat.
“Goodness gracious!” said Chicken Little. “Joe Biden is coming for everyone’s meat! I must go and tell the king!”
So she went along and went along until she met Cocky Locky. “Where are you going, Chicken Little?” Cocky Locky asked.
“Joe Biden is coming for everyone’s meat!” Chicken Little exclaimed. “He is going to rip all the hamburgers off the grills, and if you are eating more than your allotted steak, he is going to fling you to his hand-reared pack of hungry Amtrak regional trains, and that will be the last anyone hears of you.”
“Oh no!” Cocky Locky said. “I will come with you and spread the news!” Cocky Locky was very active on Facebook and immediately posted this news there, and soon enough Ducky Lucky read it.
“What’s this you’re posting, Chicken Little and Cocky Locky?” Ducky Lucky asked.
“Oh,” Chicken Little said, “Joe Biden is coming for everyone’s meat! He is going to stop everyone who is eating New York strips and turn them into a windmill, and if you try to object, he is going to put you in an enclosure where you will have to sit while Greta Thunberg makes withering remarks.”
“You’ll be lucky if you get four steaks a year!” Cocky Locky added.
“This is terrible!” Ducky Lucky said. “I will come with you!”
Ducky Lucky listened to a lot of AM radio, and he called in immediately to tell his favorite host, Goosey Loosey, about everything that was going on. “Why are you calling, Chicken Little, Cocky Locky and Ducky Lucky?” Goosey Loosey asked. “Oh,” Chicken Little said. “Joe Biden is coming for everyone’s meat!”
“Not only that!” added Cocky Locky, who had been refreshing his Facebook feed the entire time and had read an incorrect New York Post article, “but they are giving EVERYONE who comes to the border FREE COPIES OF KAMALA HARRIS’S BOOK!”
“Are they?” Chicken Little asked.
“Well, a single person donated a single copy,” Cocky Locky said, “but I liked what I said first better!”
“This has got to be stopped!” Goosey Loosey cried. “First the meat, now the children’s books! We must tell everyone!”
Goosey Loosey was a contributor to Foxy Loxy, uh, Newsy Woozy, and they decided that would be a good destination to go to next. So they went along until they met with Foxy Loxy. “Where are you going in such a hurry, Chicken Little?” Foxy Loxy asked.
“Oh,” Chicken Little said, “I just found out that Joe Biden is coming for everyone’s meat, and I must go tell the king! He is going to come to everyone’s homes and take all the sausage out of them, whether they are done using it or not! He is making everyone drink plant-based beer instead of the meat-based beer we are all used to! It is a grisly day for America — or would be, if he had not banned gristle! It is just awful what is happening — or would be, if he had not banned offal!”
“This is indeed terrible!” said Foxy Loxy. “I will tell everyone! Come into my burrow with my friends here; we know just the way to get this news out there.” And he started to display a graphic indicating that Joe Biden would soon be rationing everyone’s hamburgers.
“Don’t forget the children’s books!” added Goosey Loosey. “Why, it’s like North Korea, and I’d like to say that on your airwaves!”
“I would never forget anything that could possibly be a source of outrage!” Foxy Loxy said. “That is what I feed on! In fact, if you will just come a little deeper into my burrow, I will show you something even more outrageous!”
They went deeper into Foxy Loxy’s burrow. “Is it much farther?” asked Ducky Lucky.
“Not much farther,” said Foxy Loxy, but his voice was muffled, as though it came from all around them. And the ground beneath them squelched as though they were walking into a giant gullet.
“Is it much more outrageous?” asked Goosey Loosey.
But Foxy Loxy didn’t answer. The ground beneath them undulated, as though they were all being moved along a conveyor belt into an enormous stomach.
And Chicken Little never did get to tell the king that Joe Biden was coming for their meat, or that Kamala Harris was giving out books just like North Korea, but it did not matter, because neither one of those things was accurate. But Foxy Loxy and his friends ate very well that day.
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Headshot of Alexandra Petri Alexandra Petri Follow Alexandra Petri is a Washington Post columnist offering a lighter take on the news and opinions of the day. She is the author of the new essay collection "Nothing Is Wrong And Here Is Why."
When discussing qualities that people demand of their leaders, “easy to work for” rarely comes up — if the candidate is a man.
The catchphrase “You’re fired!” helped propel Donald Trump, star of “The Apprentice," into the ranks of mega-celebrities. Repeatedly invoked in his 2016 campaign for the presidency, those two words came to represent decisiveness, toughness and a low tolerance for those who do not perform.
When Rahm Emanuel ran for Chicago mayor in 2011, his well-known propensities for infighting, rage and swearing were seen as evidence he was fit to follow in the footsteps of the legendarily volatile Richard J. Daley.
As senator and then president, Lyndon B. Johnson was known to throw things — including drinks that had not been mixed to his specifications — at his terrified assistants.
But when a woman is in charge, or wants to be, a different and contradictory set of standards comes into play, something political scientists describe as “role incongruity.” Women are expected to conform to gender norms as warm nurturers, even as they break the mold.
We saw that during the 2020 presidential campaign, when Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) was hit with a spate of stories that described her as a difficult and sometimes abusive boss. While no one should excuse mistreatment of employees, Klobuchar was the only presidential contender who received that degree of scrutiny, or who had the internal workings of her Senate office raised as a gauge of her fitness to sit in the oval one.
In 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions got flustered when then-Sen. Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) hit him with a line of rapid-fire questions during a Senate Intelligence Committee hearing. That kind of aggressiveness would hardly have been noteworthy in a male senator, but an obviously surprised and offended Sessions told Harris she made him “nervous.”
Now, of course, Harris is vice president, and under a spotlight as the first of her gender to hold the office, as well as having the pole position to run for the Democratic nomination to succeed President Biden.
A June 30 Politico story — quickly picked up in other outlets — told of “dysfunction” roiling Harris’s vice presidential office. The publication, relying on anonymous sources, described Harris’s operation as having “low morale, porous lines of communication and diminished trust among aides and senior officials.”
It is worth noting that it has been only 24 weeks since one of the most chaotic presidential transitions in modern history.
Even if the handoff of power had gone smoothly, Harris would hardly be the first high government official to make some early stumbles or require an adjustment period. Add to that the fact that she and her new staff are being handed some of the thorniest issues that confront the Biden administration, including fixing the chaos at the border, voting rights and police reform.
Much of the anonymous carping about Harris’s operation has centered on the vice president’s chief of staff, Tina Flournoy — who, like Harris, is a woman of color. One beef against Flournoy: She tightly controls access to the vice president. Well, that is pretty much the primary requirement of an effective chief of staff.
Among those reported to be most incensed are political donors, though it is hard to imagine they would have such expectations of access to Biden. “Either she can be out there doing the job she was elected to do, or she can sit around having tea with you. Which would you prefer?” asks veteran fundraiser Kimberly Peeler-Allen, co-founder of Higher Heights for America, a national organization aimed at building the political power of Black women.
Meanwhile, just as the profile of Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) is being raised as a key moderate vote in the Senate — and a potential roadblock to Biden’s agenda — there come reports, again anonymous, of a “demoralizing” work environment in her office.
According to a list of supposed grievances detailed by Business Insider: Sinema’s interns feel underpaid, overworked and stressed out from dealing with hostile incoming phone calls to the office. Such has been the lament of interns since … forever.
It was hard to figure out what to make of the fluctuating staff turnover statistics cited, which used data compiled by the congressional-staffing database LegiStorm.
Sinema ranks 29th out of 100 senators for the most turnover this year, which puts her well in the mid-range, but was 94th out of 100 in 2020, which meant she had one of the best records in the chamber.
Calling out double standards is important, but there is only one thing that is likely to get rid of them: Seeing more women in charge.
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