Member-only story

Why Do White Guys Love To Call Kamala “Cum-La?”

Seems like a very misguided power play herein.

Ted Bauer
4 min readAug 16, 2024

I live in Texas, which is a purple state in most urban areas and a red state in most rural ones, and that probably colors what I’m about to say, but I know a lot of different middle-aged guys who pronounce Kamala Harris’ first name as “Cum-La,” which seems like a very misguided power play potentially aimed at the various rumors that she “Hawk Tuah’ed” her way to the top.

I understand it is hard to pronounce “Kamala,” although it really isn’t. I think Trump has a few campaign rally rants about it.

I understand the pain that the Trump campaign must feel — they were crushing Biden, and then a more youthful person came in, so they lost that immediate advantage. They wanted to try different lines of attack, but it’s hard to attack an African-American female in the modern ideological climate, so they failed at a lot of initial attempts. Trump cannot stay on script (look at his GOP Convention speech, his interview with Elon, or even his Mar-A-Lago press conference a few weeks ago) and often menaders into boring the people around him. He looks older and deranged now without the Biden foil. Plus, J.D. Vance seemed like a good pick, but all the old clips of him are backfiring on Trump now. All that last part said, I’m not sure how much a VP even…

--

--

Ted Bauer
Ted Bauer

Written by Ted Bauer

I write about a lot of different topics, from work to masculinity to relationships and social dynamics, I.e. modern friendship. Pleasure to be here.

Responses (2)