Some Constructive Criticism for Katie Porter After That Disastrous Interview

Let's triage this

Above: A freeze from the last moments of Katie Porter’s political career.

Dear Representative Porter:

Your campaign for governor of California is suddenly in trouble after a calamitous interview that spread like wildfire on social media. In terms of disastrous political media moments, this interview probably ranks up there with Howard Dean’s scream, Sarah Palin’s Katie Couric interview, and the time in 1838 that Congressman Jonathan Cilley insulted a newspaper editor and was shot dead in a duel. Except that this is probably worse than the Cilley case, because Cilley was shot by someone else, whereas you possibly just Old Yeller’d your own career.

But maybe not! Let’s attempt triage, and I have good news: I’m going to offer my services free of charge. I don’t claim to be a miracle worker, but I’ve been a speechwriter, have worked on campaigns, and have worked in communications of one sort or another for twenty years. Let’s go through this interview bit by bit and see where there might be room for improvement.

Okay, for starters: I don’t think that “ma'am” is coming off the way you want it to. I think you’re thinking “Look, I said ‘ma’am’, I’m being polite!” But we all know that “ma’am” can be a stand-in for a much nastier word. When someone in customer service starts throwing around the “ma’am”s, that’s typically a euphemism for the b-word, the c-word, or “you cum-gargling, shit-for-brains slut box”. And that’s how this particular “ma’am” comes across.

But the bigger problem is that you seem to believe that you’re entitled to people’s votes on account of being a Democrat. You’re all but daring people to vote for someone else. You may think that you’re making a factual point about electoral math, but you really just told voters: “We’re a one party state, dickheads. You’re gonna vote Republican? Fine: Good luck making eye contact with the wine moms in your neighborhood association after that. That ‘D’ next to my name stands for ‘Don’t you dare downgrade your social standing by voting for someone else,’ or ‘Deez nuts are available for sucking if you even think about not voting Democrat, because it’s California, bitches, and I’m gonna be governor whether you like it or not.’” And — unless I dramatically misunderstand your campaign — those impressions are off-message.

Let’s keep going:

For a moment, your words could have be interpreted to imply that you’re going to…how do I put this?…murder people to keep them from running against you. It just wasn’t immediately clear what “I don’t intend to let [other people run against me]” meant. That could mean a campaign of intimidation, it could mean striking back room deals to clear the field, but remember: These are the less menacing interpretations of your vague words. And that’s a problem.

The good news is that you immediately clarified what you meant. The bad news is that your clarification was so arrogant that “I plan to murder people” might have been a better message. Saying “I have the support already in terms of name recognition” is only a half-step away from bleating “Do you know who my father is?” It’s another sign of entitlement, and it suggests that you think this race is in the bag. And the race might have been in the bag at the beginning of the interview, but you managed to change everything in under 30 seconds.

Still, all was not lost…yet.

This is better! You’re making a salient point about your ability to win Republican votes! At least…your mouth is. Your eyes are still saying “How dare you lead with this insulting line of questioning you airheaded bitch.” And you might believe that appearance and tone shouldn’t matter, but remember: People who listened to the 1960 Nixon-Kennedy debate thought that Nixon won, but people who watched the debate wanted to see Nixon beheaded and for his body be devoured by hogs.¹ Appearance and tone matter.

Even so: This was your best portion of the interview so far. Unfortunately, having righted the ship a bit, you proceeded to do this:

This seems like a good time to point out that the initial question was not even difficult. The question that ignited this inferno was: “What do you say to the 40 percent of California voters who you’ll need in order to win who voted for Trump?” That’s not even a softball: That’s one of those cantaloupe-sized felt balls that you give to a toddler, it plays music and has a picture of Elmo on it, that ball has been placed on a tee with “FREE HIT!” written on the side. And you didn’t just swing and miss — you swung, missed, and threw the bat into the girder beam of a orphanage that then collapsed, killing hundreds. It’s like you melted down at the Kids Choice Awards under questioning from a six year-old reporter for Sprout TV — why should voters trust you with power if you can’t handle a reporter asking “What do you want to say?”

Was the premise of the reporter’s question correct? No. But it’s important to remember that your job is to appeal to voters, not to try to dunk on a local TV reporter over some pedantic point. Some things people don’t like include pedantry, politics, numbers, and know-it-alls. One thing they do like is videos of two women fighting, and you gave them that.

And one last thing on this section: Those metal-and-plastic things with the lenses on the front are TV cameras. If you say “I don’t want to do this” when those things are pointed at you, it’s too late: You’re doing it. The “this” includes you saying “I don’t want to do this,” and if the thing you don’t want to do is have a meltdown on TV, then don’t have a meltdown, because the “on TV” horse is out of the barn. Saying “fuck this” and storming out of an interview might work if you’re Johnny Rotten, but unless you’re planning to rebrand as an anti-establishment punk iconoclast, this was a misstep.

And yet, you could not stop yourself from throwing more uranium rods on this career Chernobyl.

It’s funny that you brought up leadership, because leadership is highly relevant here. People like it when their leaders show toughness and resolve; they don’t like it when their leaders throw a tantrum because an interview was insufficiently softball. You don’t exactly look like a take-all-comers pugilist when you demand that a reporter stick to a list of pre-approved questions, and you come across as slightly brittle when a reporter asking “What would you like to say?” causes you to react like she kicked down your door and peed on your Thanksgiving turkey. If I was running a focus group for this interview, I wouldn’t even ask “Do you like this person?”; I would ask questions like “How much money would this person need to give you in order for you to start liking her?” or “How much cow dung would you like to pelt this person with?” Any answers short of “a million dollars” and “all the cow dung in existence” would feel like major wins.

But things — and I did not think this was possible — went downhill from there.

Oh my fucking God: You’re using the language of a sexual encounter gone bad. This is what happens during a drunken hookup when one person crosses a line in what they hoped would be a sexy, adventurous way, but the other person flicks on the lights and says “What the fuck was THAT?” It’s painful to watch you try to therapy-speak your way through this couples-fight-in-an-Ikea, and the fact that your PR team didn’t tackle you and whisk you away like when Reagan was shot means they’re incompetent.

Let’s wrap this up so that we can call in the fire departments from five states and have them start searching for the black box.

There’s only one follow-up question to ask after an interview like this: “How much will you pay me to bury this?” The fact that this interview saw the light of day tells me that they couldn’t agree on a price.

But never fear, Katie Porter — I know just what to do. Enroll in this program at the Central Georgia Technical Institute. Get certified in electrical engineering. Become an electrician — there’s good money in the trades, and those jobs can’t be replaced by AI. I recommend Georgia because the weather is good and housing is cheap, it’s a perfect place to start over. The clock is running out on Katie Porter, politician from Georgia, but a new day might be dawning for Khloe Portero, Master Electrician from Valdosta. Kind of a shame how your political career ended, but in a decade, you might look back at all this and laugh.

And to every Democratic office-holder in California: Why are you reading this? You should be filing paperwork to run for governor. Stop poking the corpse of Katie Porter’s career with a stick — it’s completely fucking dead. And the door is open for someone — anyone — with a bit of political acumen and common sense to win.

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1. It is not actually true that people who listened to the debate thought Nixon won, but it is also not true that people who watched the debate wanted Nixon to be beheaded and have his body be devoured by hogs. It’s comedy, folks.