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Woman Who Never Heard Of White Power Symbol Until This Week Goes Right Back To Using White Power Symbol

Zina Bash just keeps making things worse.

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On the first day of the Kavanaugh hearings, Zina Gelman Bash, senior counsel to the criminally indicted Ken Paxton and a key part of Kavanaugh’s confirmation team, made waves by subtly flashing the “white power” sign for the cameras.

For the unfamiliar, the white power sign is a subtle salute popular in alt-right and white nationalist circles. Basically, the person using the sign creates a “W” and a “P” with their hand. If you think this just describes an “okay” sign, well, you’re not wrong. It’s absolutely the old “okay” sign and that was kind of the point. By coopting a symbol that appears relatively innocuous, nationalists creep it into pictures with unsuspecting folks as a wink and nod to their compatriots. Is it unfortunate that a cool gesture has been sullied by these people? Sure, but there are a lot of things in this world that are unfortunate and just charging ahead as if they aren’t true isn’t really an answer.

On the other hand, conservatives make a compelling point that this symbol is just an innocent “okay” sign and the social justice warriors need to stop reading meaning into random gestures. It doesn’t matter what some other people mean by it, it just is what it is. Imagine, for example, deciding that kneeling as one would in a church is somehow disrespectful. That would just be crazy talk!

Anyway, so on the first day of the hearings, Bash was caught doing this:

Is that a sign or just the random way she’s resting her arm? Try as I might I can’t get my arm to naturally rest that way, but it’s possible. Her husband, U.S. Attorney John Bash, blasted the suggestion that she could possibly have intended to make the sign because they “weren’t even familiar” with it until after the controversy broke.

https://twitter.com/USAttyBash/status/1037091983532220416

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It’s actually quite disturbing that a U.S. Attorney is clueless about the symbology of domestic terror groups — especially when some of these groups operate in his jurisdiction — but let’s take him at his word that the Bash family was blissfully ignorant of the baggage this symbol had taken on and she was accidentally caught with her hand in that pose.

Fast forward:

Look, even if we assume this was just meant as a standard “okay” sign to, I don’t know, her buddy Ted Cruz (whom she’s worked for too), after becoming the center of a mini-firestorm and the subject of pieces from Time Magazine to the Daily Mail over this, she’s now inviting the media harm. There’s no more “I just didn’t know” excuse and no “random way she rested her arm” excuse either. Upon being accused of displaying a white nationalist symbol even accidentally, normal people with basic media savvy would sit on their hands the entire rest of the hearing out of sheer paranoia. But, here we are.

Honestly, the conservative media and her husband’s remarks had done a decent rehabilitation job. And then she had to go and do this.

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As the great George W. Bush put it, “Fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can’t get fooled again.” Armed with newfound awareness of the sign’s baggage and the intense scrutiny she’s under after Tuesday, she brought us all in to hash this over again. If this was intentional, it’s overtly racist trolling. If this was an unintentional slip after everything that happened this week, it’s a display of shocking levels of stupidity. Neither of those outcomes are a good look.

I guess to be generous we’ll assume she’s a dolt?

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news.

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