The insidiousness of White Guy Magic

I briefly freelanced for a company under a wealthy, golf-coded white guy named Jeff who reminded me vaguely of Ed Helms in his Office era. This was during the height of COVID, and when forced to make small talk over Zoom from his obviously large, well-appointed home office with a large picture of a gun on the wall behind him, he seemed to enjoy mentioning COVID and how crazy everyone was being about it, which raised my hackles every time. When I would firmly offer facts about hospitalizations, he would come back with “oh, those people were going to die of something else anyway” and talk about “feelings verses facts.”

This is the energy that Rep. Brian Harrison (R-middle of nowhere) brings to all of his House hearings. He is one of the smuggest, most self-righteous pieces of trash I’ve witnessed this session, so it makes perfect sense that he was chief of staff of the United States Department of Health and Human Services in the first Trump administration and once had a labradoodle breeding business — a most loathsome combination. All of this by the age of 42 with only an economics undergrad degree from A&M!

I’m going to start calling this White Guy Magic.

While I was watching the goings-on in the Senate yesterday, Harrison, member of the House Appropriations committee, laid into Texas Water Development Board Chair L'Oreal Stepney about race-based hiring decisions as she testified on Thursday.

Representative Brian Harrison repeatedly questioned the board's hiring decisions, claiming there were race-based hiring policies. However, TWDB leadership said they are following Governor Abbott's executive orders.

Stepney: "If there are things that aren't where they need to be in our policies and procedures, we need to take a look at them and we will."

Harrison: "That I agree with, and I plain language read your document, and boy, I don't know any other way to read this. Race is being used in employment determinations."

Chair Stepney is a Black woman who was appointed by Gov. Abbott in 2023. Some of her bona fides:

Stepney has participated in the group from Texas that meets with Mexico and the International Boundary and Water Commission to negotiate water deliveries under the Rio Grande 1944 Treaty. She is a board member for the Mickey Leland Environmental Internship Program and a graduate of the University of Texas Governor's Center Executive Management Program and the University of Texas Center for Public Policy Dispute Resolution Fellows Program.

Stepney received a bachelor of science in aerospace engineering and a master of science in civil engineering from the University of Texas at Austin.

His questioning of her integrity — and no doubt the relentless, racist attacks on DEI initiatives — broke her down during the hearing. She began to cry through her testimony. At first you’ll see Rep. Armando Walle (D-Houston) and Rep. Nicole Collier (D-Fort Worth) leave the dais to comfort Stepney, then I clipped a small section of her testimony:

“But what have I done? I have protected the drinking water supply of 31 million Texans.”

“Wastewater treatment facilities? I was responsible for issuing 600 of them a year. There's 3,500 in Texas. There's 7,000 drinking water facilities in Texas. It was my responsibility to make sure that they were done. They not only protected the environment, but they protected the economy of Texas.”

Collier and Walle both had words of support for her during the hearing, which you can watch all of here:

Brian Harrison is the class of person who would yell over or drag a woman out of a town hall for speaking out in opposition to…anything, really. He managed to piss off Greg Abbott, Dustin Burrows and Dan Patrick, something I assume he enjoys doing.

Has he apologized or showed any shame? Of course not. “In an interview on Friday, Harrison said he never challenged Stepney's qualifications and he defended his line of questions as ‘perfect.’” And here he is on Twitter today:

That’s it, right there. That laughing/crying emoji. If you’ve ever been belittled because you’re a woman at work, doesn’t it feel familiar? You’re more educated than the men around you, you’ve excelled in your career, you’ve spent your life working on behalf of others, and yet you’re still talked down to and made fun of by a much lesser man who has been coddled and emboldened by America’s bro era.

What will ever shame these men? Who will take away their power?

Brian Harrison’s phone numbers, if you’re feeling inspired are:

Austin: (512) 463-0516
Waxahachie: (972) 923-0264
Send an email: https://house.texas.gov/members/4085/email