Does Kristi Noem know what habeas corpus is? One thing we know for certain: She would very much like Americans to believe she does not. On Tuesday, the head of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) used a Senate hearing to insist the legal term means the opposite of its actual definition. “Habeas corpus is a constitutional right that the president has to be able to remove people from this country and suspend their right to,” Noem said through her unnervingly Botox-inflated lips. She was interrupted by Sen. Maggie Hassan, D-N.H., who explained to a smug-looking Noem that, no, habeas corpus “requires that the government provide a public reason for detaining and imprisoning people” and is the reason it’s illegal for Donald Trump to round up immigrants and imprison them in foreign gulags without offering a legal reason why.
In the world of MAGA, stupidity is a badge of honor for both sexes, but the heads of women need to be thoroughly empty.
Was Noem legitimately confused? Jonathan Chait of the Atlantic thinks so, writing that Noem’s “ignorance appears to be utterly genuine.” After all, “habeas corpus” is a Latin term used by lawyers but not much by laypeople, especially those, like Noem, who got a college degree through online courses at age 40. But I’m not so sure that Noem, who has been neck-deep in this debate about basic human rights for months, is as dumb as she seemed in that moment. Those who keep watching will notice that Noem doesn’t act embarrassed when she’s corrected, like normal people do when they get something so terribly wrong. Instead, she insists that “the President of the United States has the authority under the Constitution to decide if it should be suspended or not.” In this lie, Noem admitted that Trump is trying to suspend habeas corpus, not uphold it. It suggests that she knows full well what the actual legal battle is about.
There was much mockery of Noem for being so dumb in mainstream and left-leaning media, but notably, neither Noem nor her allies have shown any shame or defensiveness about her alleged mistake. Whether Noem comes by her confusion honestly or she was just play-acting, she’s there to play the role of the proud MAGA bimbo, in the grand tradition of figures like Sarah Palin. The MAGA bimbo isn’t just ignorant. She’s contemptuous of people who actually know what they’re talking about, especially if those facts-laden human beings are fellow women.
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In the world of MAGA, stupidity is a badge of honor for both sexes, but the heads of women need to be thoroughly empty. Book learning, in MAGA-land, is for lesbians and cat ladies. Intelligence gets in the way of the true duties of MAGA womanhood: keeping up your highly artificial appearance and, crucially, defending the man you serve with your whole heart and soul. Especially if said man, in this case Donald Trump, is himself dumber than a box of rocks. It’s so much easier to be a yes-woman for such a man if you turn your own brain off completely.
For decades in pop culture, the figure of the bimbo has boosted the egos of men who need women to be dumb to feel smart. Being dim means she’s not threatening, which makes the bimbo sexy. The allegiance of the bimbo is assured. She has to be loyal to her man because she cannot survive without him. But the bimbo was always more fantasy than reality. Marilyn Monroe could get laughs with her dumb bunny act. Yet, offscreen, she was an avid reader with strongly held leftist political views, who chose divorce when her husbands tried to limit her professional ambitions.
The 20th-century version of the “bimbo” was dim, but almost always good-hearted, exhibiting a childlike generosity to others. The innovation of the MAGA movement, however, is to make the bimbo a nasty figure, as cruel as she is dumb. In the past, what men wanted from a bimbo was someone with dog-like loyalty. For the right-wing man of our time, the craving is more for an attack dog, someone who will charge in to fight your battles, unconstrained by intellectual concerns about whether doing so makes sense.
Palin set the standard in 2008, when she was plucked out of obscurity as the governor of Alaska to serve as the presidential running mate to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. We can be more assured that Palin came by her empty-headedness naturally. During her infamous interview with Katie Couric, Palin seemed uneasy about her inability to answer basic questions about the news or civics. Soon, however, her shame turned to defiance, as crowds of base GOP voters — the kind of people we now understand to be MAGA — cheered lustily for Palin. Her fatuousness became a source of strength with that crowd because it fueled what they really loved: her ability to demonize anyone she didn’t consider a “real” American. Even as she turned on McCain, Palin morphed into the fantasy attack dog the voters wanted. Ignorance is bliss, at least for bigots.
The mean-spirited bimbo isn’t just a right-wing political project. It draws on another 21st-century innovation: the rise of shrill reality TV like “The Apprentice.” There is, of course, plenty of good-natured reality TV like “Great British Bake-Off” or “Queer Eye.” But MAGA’s aesthetic is closer to the “Real Housewives”-style shows, where petty and cruel behavior is rewarded over human decency. It’s in reality TV where the bimbo morphed from the sweet-but-stupid image portrayed by Monroe to the vindictive trophy wife who takes out her pointless grievances by throwing glasses of wine. Noem drove this home Thursday night by tweeting “Suck it” in response to a small court victory in her campaign to illegally detain and imprison immigrants.
The vision of the wine-throwing real housewife is the stereotype that Noem has shaped herself around, pairing her expensive clothes and plastic surgery with displays of breathtaking sadism, all performed as if she is literally too stupid to know better. That’s how we get pictures of Noem in full makeup with a $60,000 Rolex parading around in front of half-naked men in a torture prison, like she’s a real-life “Ilsa, She Wolf of the S.S.” Or wearing various uniforms with full makeup and a blowout to conduct raids, earning the nickname “ICE Barbie.”
Is she smart enough to know better? Is it all an act? Is she really this brainless?
It’s hard to say, but in a sense, it doesn’t matter. During her Senate hearing, Noem was perfectly clear on one issue: Trump has an absolute right to rule like a dictator, and lock up whoever he wants without regard for laws, evidence and especially human rights. Being — or at least acting — too dumb to understand what she’s saying helps her. It works like a shield, deflecting serious questions about her sociopathic behavior into a discussion about her IQ. After all, no one expects higher moral reasoning from someone too stupid to learn what “habeas corpus” means before testifying publicly about it. Her intelligence, as portrayed, falls below the threshold of moral accountability. The bimbo can only act on impulse, never information. In this MAGA narrative, it’s liberals who are the meanies for asking more of a woman viewed as mentally incapable of handling it.
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