The Anger of Amy Klobuchar
Don’t sell cruelty and pathological behavior as a feminist victory.
6:00 AM ET
Caitlin Flanagan
Contributing writer at The Atlantic and author of Girl Land
Amy Klobuchar has a problem. Apparently it’s been an open secret in Washington and Minnesota, but because she didn’t have much of a national reputation, the press lacked occasion to expose it. But when she made a name for herself during the Kavanaugh hearings, suggesting that a presidential campaign was likely, the press had the necessary occasion, and now we all know about it.
Her problem is rage, easily uncorked, and directed not at the various forces that might thwart the needs of her constituents, but at the people—many of them young—who work for her. During Klobuchar’s first senatorial campaign, the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees decried her “shameful treatment of her employees†in the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office; in March of 2018, Politico reported that she had the highest staff turnover in the Senate. But it has been the recent reporting of BuzzFeed News, HuffPost, The New York Times, and others that has provided the vivid and ugly details of what apparently lies behind those facts. Although many of the staffers and former staffers provided their reports anonymously, the senator has mostly not disputed the specifics, instead seeking to frame the behavior as part of the high expectations she has of herself and her staff.
According to BuzzFeed, Klobuchar “demeaned and berated her staff almost daily, subjecting them to bouts of explosive rage and regular humiliation within the office.†The articles quote staffers alleging that in fits of anger, she threw things—including binders—in the direction of staff members, accidentally hitting an employee on at least one occasion. The accounts of her cruelty are astonishing. She once allegedly forced an employee to say to another senator’s staffer, “I’m supposed to tell you Senator Klobuchar is late today because I am bad at my job.†For Klobuchar, the dark night of the soul arrives right on schedule: She is known to fire off scathing emails to her staff between the hours of 1 and 3 o’clock in the morning. (“In a real dark night of the soul,†wrote another unstable Minnesotan, F. Scott Fitzgerald, “it is always three o’clock in the morning.â€)
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https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/03/telling-reactions-tales-amy-klobuchars-rage/584104/?utm_medium=offsite&utm_source=yahoo&utm_campaign=yahoo-non-hosted&yptr=yahoo
