^ Of all the phrases and sayings in the English language, ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ is arguably one of the most neglected today.
Instead, the cover is now frequently judged more important than the book’s contents. Take, for instance, the election of Kamala Harris as US vice president. She is celebrated because she will be the first black American to hold the position.
Time magazine named her its joint person of the year.
Forbes anointed her the third most powerful woman of the year.
Yet behind Harris’s glossy front cover, many outside the political-media bubble find the pages make for uncomfortable reading. Indeed, her role in the
mass incarceration of African Americans – as San Francisco’s district attorney and then California’s attorney general between 2004 and 2015 – arguably cost her a chance to run for the presidency itself. Because, as Hillary Clinton found out in 2016, when she desperately tried to play the
identity card, voters tend to look at the things you do and say, rather than your chromosomes or skin pigment.
Still, for the Twittering classes the obsession with identity seemingly informs their approach to, well, everything. Even a pandemic. This led to some claiming that female leaders were handling the Covid crisis better than male leaders
because they were, er, women. It was on these grounds that New Zealand premier Jacinda Ardern, Taiwan president Tsai Ing-Wen and German chancellor Angela Merkel were all celebrated this year. Their sex has supposedly made them more caring and more willing to listen to expert advice, which allowed them to lock down earlier and save lives.
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