JD Vance hasn’t had the smoothest entrance onto the national political stage thanks, in large part, to rumors that he has had carnal relations with a couch — and also because of the resurfacing of an old interview with former Fox News host Tucker Carlson.
"[The country is being run by] a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made," vice presidential nominee Vance said in 2021. “So they want to make the rest of the country miserable, too. … It’s just a basic fact.”
The inflammatory comments, made while Vance was mid-campaign for a Senate seat in Ohio, have received a burst of recent attention. In the interview, Vance called out current Vice President Kamala Harris — along with prominent Democrats Pete Buttigieg and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez — for being childless.
“How does it make any sense that we've turned our country over to people who don't really have a direct stake in it?" Vance asked.
What also caught our attention was a tweet, also from 2021, din which Vance once again turned to the phrase “weird cat lady” as an insult. Clearly, this beef goes past Vance simply being a dog person.
Paul Krugman is one of many weird cat ladies who have too much power in our country. We should change this. https://t.co/uylzHsm6WT
— JD Vance (@JDVance) July 25, 2021
But what’s so wrong with being a cat lady?
“I think the stereotype is the raggedy looking lady with the long stringy gray hair that walks around in a cardigan year-round, covered with fur and looks disheveled and rumbled. Maybe that's what he's going for,” Leigh Sessler, founder of the Dallas Cat Lady rescue, told the Observer. “But in reality, I think we provide a very valuable service to the community.”
Sessler said her rescue, which runs thanks to the help of primarily female volunteers, helps cat owners pay for food and veterinary services, takes part in trap-neuter-return programs and helps educate the public about adoption and fostering efforts. And, she adds, most of the volunteers she works with do have children.
“I thought it was hilarious, but on the other hand, it just shows general contempt for a specific type of female out there and it shows this general contempt, I think, for people that aren't like you. And that's an important thing to realize,” Sessler said. “Dismissing people as basically lunatics just because they aren’t like you, I think, was a pretty silly statement to make.”
Vance has since defended his comment, saying it was "obviously... sarcastic.” He maintains the comments were meant to critique anti-family and anti-children policies within the Democratic Party, and are now being taken out of context.
Debbie McClendon, a member of DFW’s Buddies Place Cat Rescue, is a Republican who is a “childless cat lady, by choice.” She agrees that Vance’s comments are being taken out of context and are a “small sentence within the larger speech.”
“I’m a proud childless cat lady and that remark did not offend me in the least,” McClendon told the Observer. “I care more about what any candidate from either side says to the American people concerning the economy and the border, two things I care about and am very worried about.”
Finally, we asked Jordan Maddox, our resident childless cat lady and social media editor for the Observer, to see where she stands on Vance's interview.
Maddox penned nearly 400 words on the "ignorance" of Vance's statement, pointing out her personal fulfillment as a childless cat lady with a successful career, the rising costs of childcare that make motherhood unsustainable for many women and the threats of school shootings and social media facilitation of child abuse. But we think she summed it up best here:
