Politics - News Analysis

Bette Midler Apologizes After Calling West Virginians ‘Poor, Illiterate and Strung Out’

Bette Midler had a point, she just made it in one of the most offensive ways possible, so offensive that it came right around to hurting her cause rather than helping. We are all mad at Joe Manchin, really mad, but we shouldn’t be so mad as to lose our sense of judgment and insult people while expressing our anger. Bette lost her sense of judgment.

Midler put out a tweet that read:

What #JoeManchin, who represents a population smaller than Brooklyn, has done to the rest of America, who wants to move forward, not backward, like his state, is horrible. He sold us out. He wants us all to be just like his state, West Virginia. Poor, illiterate and strung out.

Ugh, Bette. No.

There is a small sliver of truth to what Midler is saying, had she just left it at poor, and under-funded education, but packaged together, it is offensive and she is smart enough to have known – no matter how angry – that she wasn’t helping in putting it out.

Of course, she ended up apologizing:

I apologize to the good people of WVA for my last outburst. I’m just seeing red; #JoeManchin and his whole family are a criminal enterprise. Is he really the best WV has to offer its own citizens? Surely there’s someone there who has the state’s interests at heart, not his own!

In case you were worried about how Joe Manchin would get by without the package, don’t, he’ll be fine – thanks:

While Manchin’s deep ties to his state’s coal industry have been scrutinized, the 74-year-old senator stands accused of no criminal activity. CNN reports that the $491,000 he made from his holdings in the West Virginia energy company Enersystems more than doubled his annual $174,000 Senate salary. CelebrityNetWorth puts his value at $8 million.

Just the type of guy who would know what it’s like to worry about having enough money to feed children, what happens when one gets sick, and holding up national policy while representing what amounts to less than a small city.

Midler’s tweet was wrongly and meanly worded, it doesn’t mean her overall point is wrong.

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meet the author

Jason Miciak is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is originally from Canada but grew up in the Pacific Northwest. He now enjoys life as a single dad raising a ridiculously-loved young girl on the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He is very much the dreamy mystic, a day without learning is a day not lived. He is passionate about his flower pots and studies philosophical science, religion, and non-mathematical principles of theoretical physics. Dogs, pizza, and love are proof that God exists. "Above all else, love one another."

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