As she watched MSNBC’s coverage of the government shutdown on Monday, Rosie O’Donnell had a question. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., was speaking on the floor of the Senate, and she wanted to know who the woman sitting behind him was.
O’Donnell crowdsourced the answer, tweeting a picture of her screen captioned, “who is that woman and why is she always frowning.”
who is that woman and why is she always frowning pic.twitter.com/rKywMfsnwC
— ROSIE (@Rosie) January 22, 2018
The woman, of course, was Sen. Patty Murray, D-Wash., who, given O’Donnell’s constant political blustering, you would think she might know. After all, Murray has been in the Senate since 1993 and is a prominent member of the Senate Democratic leadership.
Nevertheless, some people had other problems with the comedian’s tweet.
It wasn’t long before a Twitter moment popped up with the headline, “Rosie O’Donnell gets schooled about women being expected to smile.” A Yahoo headline accused O’Donnell of “sham[ing]” the senator for frowning.
Because everything is sexist and Twitter is weird, O’Donnell’s simple query was used as an opportunity for people to demonstrate their wokeness, graciously enlightening the public on the menace of women wondering why other women never seem to be smiling. Feminists have long been convinced women today are unfairly subjected to a male-driven cultural expectation that they keep a smile on their faces, so O’Donnell’s tweet was something of a goldmine to that end.
For her part, the former eponymous talk show host insisted she didn’t “expect” Murray to smile, but “was just curious.” And that’s a perfectly plausible explanation. (O’Donnell, by the way, never actually said anything about Murray smiling — only that she always seemed to be frowning.)
“…I have only seen her sitting behind chuck – worst seat ever – I had no idea she was a senator – gonna go donate to her now,” O’Donnell tweeted.
You live and you learn.
