Platform Dive

By Abe Greenwald

Tuesday, April 01, 2025

 

I lament the effect of viral videos on our politics and culture as much anyone else who came of age before smart phones and social media and all the rest of the Internet’s supposed blessings. The people in the clips are usually recorded without their consent, at least someone is going to get publicly humiliated, and the evidence of their embarrassing act will last for as long as the planet exists. So, yes, it’s bad.

 

But…

 

Once in a while, a video comes along that captures an important aspect of our society, and it goes viral not only because it’s (cruelly) funny. It’s also clarifying. Which brings me to a clip that went insanely viral clip last week. By now, you’ve probably watched it.

 

Here’s the bare-facts version: The scene is a New York City subway car. A woman is yelling at a man in a MAGA hat, accusing him of racism.

 

“If you f—ing voted for Trump, you're a racist!” she says.
“How can I be racist?” asks the man, turning to onlookers, “bro, look at me.”
“Just watch the news,” she says.
“I’m highly educated,” he responds.
“Oh, are you?” she says. “Then why are you wearing that hat? Only uneducated people wear that hat.”

 

The car pulls into a station, the man gets off, and the woman runs after him. She launches into the air to grab his hat, face-flops onto the subway platform, and the man runs off.

 

From an entertainment standpoint, it’s an exquisite little scene. There’s conflict, moral tension between the accused racist and the public scold, and an exciting resolution when the latter gets her painful comeuppance. But the clip is interesting for reasons that go far beyond its portrayal of instant karma. What’s most striking is who is scolding whom, who is witnessing the drama, and how they react as the scene plays out.

 

Here's a fuller, more contextualized version: The woman is a 55-year-old Italian American who, the New York Post reports, is an extremely liberal “creative director for several luxury brands.” We don’t know the age of the unidentified man, but he’s at least two decades younger than his harasser. And he’s clearly not white, which is why he pleads before his fellow passengers, “How can I be racist? Bro, look at me.”

 

The subway car is full of typical New Yorkers, which is to say it’s a kaleidoscope of ages, ethnicities, and social stations. And no one seems to be on the woman’s side. What’s more, they vocally support the young man. One off-camera witness who—there’s no sense in dancing around it—sounds like a black man, tells the woman, “That’s why he [Trump] won. Because of people like you.” The woman then turns on this guy, asking him if he’s “okay” with the MAGA-hat passenger. “I’m so okay with it,” he says. “I’m [expletive] okay with it. Leave him alone.” He goes on to criticize the Democrats and praise Donald Trump for pulling the rug out from under them. And finally, when the woman lands on her face, the car erupts in cheers.

 

So the clip is a portrait of the country’s politics in microcosm. In the 2024 election, Trump gained support among almost every demographic, including ethnic minorities. And while Kamala Harris lost Democratic support among women overall, she brought in more women over 65.

 

Okay, the subway scold is 55, but it’s close enough to make a larger point: Americans of every conceivable stripe have given up the grievance politics and doom-casting that dominated   Trump’s first term. And they no longer give liberal narratives the benefit of the doubt. Even New York subway riders root for the man in the MAGA hat over the liberal Karen. The only ones who didn’t get the memo are represented by a small, coastal elite. And they fell flat on their faces.

 

The woman shouldn’t suffer the rest of her life for her foolishness. Among other reasons, she played the starring role in a small masterpiece