Tomi Lahren Is an Alternate Universe Version of Me
My favorite trope in science fiction and fantasy is the alternate universe, the idea that every time we make a decision, a parallel universe is created in which we made a different choice, leading to infinite versions of ourselves. From what I know of quantum mechanics and string theory, it’s a gross oversimplification, but it’s fun and presents endless possibilities. Even people who have never seen an episode of Star Trek know about Evil Spock having a goatee.
I find this idea incredibly appealing! I like to think of all the different versions of myself that exist in other universes. Older, younger, female, non-binary, one who became a fitness guru, one who went to grad school, one who finally published that novel. Every moment I stand up here not vomiting from nerves spawns another version of me who has. But one version of the person I was has somehow been transported into our universe; I have seen an alternate universe version of myself in the person of one Tomi Lahren.
She is only 25 years old, from South Dakota, with a BA in broadcast journalism and political science from UNLV. She applied for an internship at the One America News Network, but instead was given her own show. After receiving softball questions from Trevor Noah while working for Glenn Beck, she became a Fox News contributor. Her Facebook rant against Colin Kaepernick garnered 65 million views, and she currently has more than one million followers on Twitter. The best thing that can be said about this person is the very funny feud she got into with D.C. rapper Wale who referred to her in a song as “Tammy Lauren” and sparked a trend of people giving her the incorrect name that has lasted for more than a year, and which I will continue here.
Tameka Lowery made the news in mid-March by talking about kicking her dog on Instagram, on which she has 1.2 million followers, which led to protests from PETA and confrontations with TMZ. My first thought was that of course a person like this kicks her dog; it’s probably a hobby. I also wouldn’t have been surprised if it turned out that she doesn’t have a dog, and had made the whole thing up to be in the news. But her time to shine came in the wake of the March for Our Lives, when she tweeted, “Simply being anti-NRA is not a solution. March FOR something, not just against everything” despite that what they were marching for was literally in the name of the march. She was also mocked for wearing a gun with her yoga pants, but I feel that’s less important.
When I was 25, I was working at the unemployment office in New Jersey. I had earned the ire of PETA while working for the pharmaceutical industry, but that had gotten the attention of significantly fewer than one million people. I interned at the March of Dimes but did not get my own TV show. I belonged to a conservative church and got my BA in English from a state school.
People told me I was destined for greatness. Teachers, preachers, prophets, priests, family all said I was so smart and talented, obviously touched by god. At first, I thought this showed how easily impressed people in New Jersey are, but, no, this is a problem everywhere: white people will rush to elevate the most mediocre person they can find lest a talented nonwhite person prove they can be supplanted. “Oh, you like to read? You must be the goddam chosen one!”
I was supposed to be the next Billy Graham or C. S. Lewis, and to those people that was a good thing. I was very frustrated with the very wide gulf between these expectations and my reality, and it was one of the contributing factors to two botched suicide attempts, my first stint of homelessness, and my leaving behind the whole mess of Christian evangelicalism and Republican politics.
I’d like to think that I would not be a party to the current trends of those movements if I had stayed on the course I’d been on, that, despite George W. Bush being the first president I ever voted for and my attendance at a church that thought Kirk Cameron was too liberal, I would not be a supporter of Donald Trump, and would abhor his racist, fascist agenda. But Tamryn Lora supported Marco Rubio in the beginning, and has said she’s pro-choice. So, I take back what I said earlier: She’s right about ONE thing!
I have always been against capital punishment, but I remember how awful I was with everything else. I would not let friends of mine speak Spanish in my presence. I believed HIV was a god-ordained plague to rid the world of gay people. I owned more than one book by James Dobson, the man Mike Pence considers a mentor. And these are just the things I feel comfortable telling you-all about!
If YouTube had existed back then, I would have done exactly what Tabitha Lorax does. All my creative aspirations would have found their expression online in hateful bile-spewing for the masturbatory fantasies of alt-right trolls. It’s no surprise that most of these far-right douchebags are failed entertainers. Stephen Miller wanted to be a stand-up comedian, Dana Loesch sent a failed TV sitcom pitch to an NCIS producer. If you look at a lineup of Fox News commentators, it’s a Who’s Who of failed 90’s Evening at the Improv guest performers.
They believe in white supremacy and that the world owes them everything, and when they do not get rewarded as any other white person’s mediocrity, they lash out. That’s part of why they do what they do: It’s easy. They don’t have to think about why they feel angry or why the world is the way it is, or why they feel so entitled. They prey on hysteria, hate, and fear, and turn it into gold.
Tandy Lancelot is a pretty, blond white girl with dead eyes who’s been given everything. She is the perfect spokesperson for white privilege even as she denies it exists, and her followers and Donald Trump’s followers eat it up. She may be a female version of my younger self in another universe, but she is very much a product of the white supremacy in this one.
When I was thinking about this topic, friends of mine worried I wouldn’t be able to talk about it because Takeshi Lasorda hadn’t been in the news for a while, but I knew it was only a matter of time before she said something stupid and evil. Like Ann Coulter before her trying to stay relevant by being more racist. And like Ann Coulter, maybe she’ll just start running out onto college campuses or into the waiting arms of Bill Maher, another irrelevant white hatemonger, to shout stupid and horrible things. When her star fades, maybe she’ll see how empty her life is.
I lose sleep sometimes thinking about the people I hurt when I was Tameka Landry’s age. I wonder how many gay teenagers committed suicide because of things I said. Part of me is happy for that shame. That self-awareness is what prompts me to make up for what I’ve done, to work at undoing the hurt I’ve caused.
Tormy Lakshmi lacks all self-awareness. Her hypocrisy is on full display as she admits to benefiting from an Obamacare provision and does not react to the news that her great-great-grandfather was an undocumented immigrant arrested for forging immigration papers. She is as famous as people said I would be one day, but she is miserable and making the world a worse place. People tell me I should be optimistic. If I changed, that means anyone can, right? But I know what it took for me to change, and I don’t know if she will ever experience anything like that. I see who I was in her, and I am happier for being myself.
