×

Slow News Week: Vice President Kamala Harris Trending For Not Using Bluetooth Headphones

By Lance Strong Dec 7, 2021 | 10:50 AM
US-POLITICS-HARRIS

Source: JIM WATSON / Getty

Maybe because the news week was slow or someone needed to get some traffic going on their site, Vice President Kamala Harris made the trending rounds for reasons not exactly tied to her political duties. The former senator was the talk of social media after a news piece came out noting that Harris uses wired headphones instead of Bluetooth wireless headphones for reasons that should make sense yet piqued the interests of grizzled journalists all the same.

POLITICO released a newsletter on Monday (Dec. 6) with a portion of the release titled “Kamala Harris is Bluetooth-phobic,” which was seemingly framed to elicit the kind of chatter that followed. The tone of the story almost came from a snarky place but that’s hard to prove. Take a look at a portion of the newsletter below.

From POLITICO:

While wired headphones have re-emerged as a hip vintage accessory among Gen Z, Harris’ embrace of them is less about fashion than caution. Former aides say that the vice president has long been careful about security and technology — with some describing it as prudent and others suggesting it’s a bit paranoid.

It’s a recurring theme. An aide on her 2016 Senate bid said Harris often preferred texting to email for security reasons. And another former aide when she was attorney general in California said that when a person arrived for a meeting, staff were instructed not to allow them to wait in Harris’ office alone. Instead, the person was asked to wait outside.

That caution and vigilance has not stood in the way of Harris’ meteoric rise to the vice presidency — the first woman of color to do so.

But still, should someone who travels with the nuclear football be spending time untangling her headphone wires? The American people deserve answers!

According to experts, Harris might be correct in her caution considering she is the second most powerful person in the country and cyberterrorism is an actual thing. It could also just be a matter of overall preference as everyone isn’t necessarily beset with FOMO because they don’t have the latest audio buds.

Of course, there are more important matters of note happening with President Joe Biden’s administration and beyond, but Bluetooth headphones are definitely trumping all of that now at the moment. See how silly that sounds?

We’re not alone in our astonishment that an outfit like POLITICO would waste keystrokes on this non-issue but hey, we all need folks to click. We get it.

Check out the reactions below.

—

Photo: Getty

1.

2.

3.

Good point.

4.

Really good, clever tweet.

5.

6.

7.

8.

9.

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

15.