Last week, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez made history as the youngest woman to ever be elected to Congress in the U.S. Soon after, she made headlines for a reason much closer to home for other young adults. In an interview with The New York Times, Ocasio-Cortez revealed that she could not afford housing in Washington, D.C. for the three months leading up to her term.
Media coverage of this announcement ranged from sympathy to blatant mockery. Many understood that the money she had managed to maintain while bartending in the Bronx – a job she held prior to her election – simply could not compete with the rent in D.C., generally $2,000 per month for a one-bedroom apartment.
Fox News had a less tasteful response. In a segment addressing this announcement, anchors laughed while discussing how her statement must have been a political line to strike out against the wealth in D.C. to promote her platform. They only briefly touched on her job as a bartender and never acknowledged that she is a recent college graduate struggling with student debt. One commentator claimed that her story did not ring true, given that she lived part of her life in Westchester, a wealthier suburb of New York. While she did not make this readily apparent during her campaign, Ocasio-Cortez clarified in an interview for The Daily Mail that her father remained in the Bronx when she moved at age 5. She even cited the trip between such vastly different towns as a moment of awakening to how “the ZIP code a child in born in determines much of their opportunity.”
You would think a conservative network would, at the very least, respect a candidate who lives up to their ideals of pulling themselves up by their bootstraps, even if her policies reject the notion. Ocasio-Cortez started her campaign with self-made fliers and filmed her ads with the help of her family. She has been heavily involved in political movements since her graduation and managed to win a seat as a more left alternative to her more established opponent. Still, the Fox segment decided to paint her as dishonest and entitled for not accepting the inaccessible cost of housing. They understand real-estate is expensive but say so over laughter that could not come from someone who has felt the very real fear of finding next month’s rent. This response exposes a sentiment that blames young people for inheriting a housing market that is stacked against them.
Millenials are constantly under fire for their inability to work for themselves, classically shown as frivolous spenders who are simply too irresponsible to afford the cost of living. Ocasio-Cortez shows the fault in this image. The family one is born into plays a tremendous role in how much money and opportunity they have access to, and an entire generation should not be conflated to reflect a fractured picture. While some can afford high-quality products, many more are struggling to make ends meet. Ocasio-Cortez brought this issue to the news and represents a much larger problem for her generation that should not be taken lightly, but met with genuine concern.
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