Getty Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Eddie Scarry is a media reporter with the Washington Examiner, a conservative newspaper based in DC. On November 15, Scarry was getting a lot of attention for a photo he tweeted of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Some people were even calling Scarry a “stalker.” Turns out that this isn’t the first time that Scarry has faced that kind of accusation.
Here’s what you need to know:
1. Scarry Tweeted About Ocasio-Cortez’s Outfit & Said She Didn’t Look Like She Was Struggling
Scarry has been getting a lot of attention for a tweet he put up about Ocasio Cortez. To put the photo in context: after the midterm election, Ocasio-Cortez told the New York Times that she couldn’t afford to pay rent on an apartment in DC until she got her first paycheck for serving in Congress. Ever since then, Ocasio-Cortez’s opponents have been looking for every piece of information they can find about her finances. Fox News dug into her financial records, which show that she has thousands of dollars put aside in a savings account. And social media has been buzzing about Ocasio-Cortez’s clothing, with many of her opponents asking why she’s so well dressed when she claims to be too poor to make rent.
That’s why Eddie Scarry’s tweet got so much attention: the Examiner reporter put up a photo of Ocasio Cortez in DC and said, “I’ll tell you something: that jacket and coat don’t look like a girl who struggles.” In other words, Scarry thinks that Ocasio-Cortez’s clothes looked expensive — too expensive to jibe with her claim that she couldn’t afford to pay rent in DC yet.
2. Some People Say the Photo of Ocasio Cortez Amounts to Stalking
Scarry got a lot of push-back for the tweet of Ocasio Cortez. People wrote, “did you expect her to show up to work in a burlap sack or something?” Others reminded Scarry that Ocasio-Cortez might have bought her clothes second hand, or that she might have received them as hand-me-downs or as gifts.
Some people went so far as to say that Scarry was acting like a stalker. Just to be clear, Scarry didn’t actually take the photo of Ocasio-Cortez; according to him, a Hill staffer snapped the photo and forwarded it to him. But some argue that even putting up the photo, which shows Ocasio-Cortez walking from behind, amounts to stalking.
3. Scarry Has Been Accused of Bad Behavior Before, Especially Because of the Photos He Took of Women’s Backsides
Scarry used to work for FishbowlDC, a media gossip blog. He wrote about social and political events in DC, and he earned himself a lot of enemies because of some of the photos he took at the time. Scarry took some surreptitious pictures of women’s rear ends — both during parties and out on the streets — and posted them to social media, along with snarky commentary. Scarry was also accused of homophobia, after he wrote a story about a group of gay Republicans, GOProud, deciding to endorse Mitt Romney. The headline read, “GooProud Gets Behind Romney.”
Scarry also made enemies when he tweeted about how, in his opinion, many lesbians are “overweight.”
You can see some of Scarry’s odd, or even disturbing tweets here:
4. Ocasio-Cortez Says She’s Just Tuning It All Out
If I walked into Congress wearing a sack, they would laugh & take a picture of my backside.
If I walk in with my best sale-rack clothes, they laugh & take a picture of my backside.
Dark hates light – that’s why you tune it out.
Shine bright & keep it pushing.✨
Ocasio-Cortez finally responded to Scarry’s tweet on Thursday evening. She wrote that she was just tuning out the needless criticism in order to focus on her work — especially since, according to her, her critics are going to complain about pretty much whatever she wears.
Ocasio-Cortez wrote,
If I walked into Congress wearing a sack, they would laugh & take a picture of my backside.
If I walk in with my best sale-rack clothes, they laugh & take a picture of my backside.
Dark hates light – that’s why you tune it out.
Shine bright & keep it pushing.
5. Scarry Wrote a Take-Down about Michael Wolff’s Account of the Trump White House
Earlier this year, Scarry published his first book: “Fraud and Fiction: The Real Truth Behind Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House.” The book was a response to the Michael Wolff account of life inside Trump’s White House. Even Scarry’s title was a reference to the Wolff book, Fire and Fury.
Scarry’s book won the praise of conservative commentator Ann Coulter, who said, “I loved Fire and Fury, but even the author admitted that he only wrote what the president’s advisors told him. Eddie Scarry, one of Washington’s best political writers, shows where they were wrong.”
—Ann Coulter, Twelve-Time New York Times Bestselling Author