What Harrison Butker Taught Me About Motherhood
And so much more
A critical compenent of my highly complex system for writing this newsletter is a google doc entitled “newsletter,” in which various topics and ideas and middle-of-the-night memories are organized not at all. Here’s a screenshot.
Incredible peek behind the curtain, right?!
So today, because I’m STRUCTURED, I’m going to “write about the asshole from chiefs commencement speech” not because it’s necessary—approximately 1,374 people have already beautifully torn this guy to shreds online with great gusto and skill—but because I like to have fun!
As research, I found the video of the speech.
Within thirty seconds, I paused it and frantically googled “Harrison Butker transcript” because wow, my blood pressure rose to an alarming degree when confronted with the deadly combination of shellacked head-hair, aggressively groomed facial hair (it’s giving Jafar), and smarmy, self-assured vocal delivery. I could not so I did not.
Before aquainting myself with the cursed transcript of the cursed speech, I had read the utterly dick quote about “young lady” college graduates surely wanting to do nothing more with their engineering, pre-law, and poly-sci degrees than become a trad wife to their very own version of Harrison Butker. Content warning - rage!
I would venture to guess that the majority of you are most excited about your marriage and the children you will bring into this world. I can tell you that my beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say that her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.
Thanks to this quote circulating through every corner of the internet no matter how hard I tried to hide from it, I knew “asshole from the chiefs” was a rank misogynist, but I was truly impressed by just how many vile takes this dude was able to cram into one lowly graduation speech. Like, legit all the greatest hits. Say what you will about AFTC (“asshole from the chiefs”) but the man is THOROUGH.
Let’s do a little close-reading, before we dive into 5 Pretty/Ugly takes on AFTC.
Things AFTC taught me: