The J.D. Vance Joke That Celebrities Couldn’t Stop Making at the Emmys
Between a walk down nostalgia lane (reminiscent of the last Primetime Emmys in January) and a sweep of expected wins from heavyweights like The Bear, Shōgun, Baby Reindeer, and Hacks, the 76th Primetime Emmys could’ve been predicted down to the second. The ceremony, which aired on Sunday on ABC, hit all of the regular beats while honoring industry titans like producer Greg Berlanti and beloved small-screen archetypes like television moms, dads, villains, doctors, and cops. One thing that wasn’t anticipated? Celebrities’ feline-like fixation on an infamously sour comment from our Republican vice presidential candidate.
When a video resurfaced in July of a 2021 Fox News interview in which J.D. Vance told Tucker Carlson that our country is run by Democrats, “corporate oligarchs,” and “a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices they’ve made” who “want to make the rest of the country miserable, too,” people scoffed at the sensational generalization. Vance’s comment, which found new life on social media after Kamala Harris replaced Joe Biden as the Democratic presidential candidate, goes on to name Harris, Pete Buttigieg, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez as emblematic of “the entire future of the Democrats” being “controlled by people without children.” Despite the fact that this smear is untrue—Harris is a stepmother, while Buttigieg and his husband adopted twins—it became a flashpoint in the culture war that is the 2024 election. Vance’s denigration of both cats and people without children drew vocal opposition in the form of op-eds, statements from congresswomen, and comments from a smattering of celebrities, including Chelsea Handler, Jennifer Aniston, and, most recently, Taylor Swift—who signed her recent statement endorsing Harris with “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.”
Now, the Emmys have added a handful of additional jabs at Vance’s ill-natured remark. It started off with Emmy nominee Selena Gomez—who presented the first award of the night, for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series, alongside her Only Murders in the Building co-hosts Steve Martin and Martin Short, and is famously besties with Swift—saying: “And let me say what an honor it is to work with two guys who are this far away from being childless cat ladies.” Then, Candice Bergen, star of Murphy Brown, came to the stage to present for Best Actress in a Comedy Series. While presenting, Bergen reminded us of when the show upset the then-vice president, Dan Quayle, when Bergen’s titular character became pregnant and chose to raise her child as a single mother. Bergen followed up her throwback with: “Oh, how far we’ve come. Today, a Republican candidate for vice president would never attack a woman for having kids. So, as they say, my work here is done. Meow!” (Dare I say, it was the meow heard ’round the world.) And, as a bonus, when The Bear’s Ebon Moss-Bachrach won for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for the second year in a row, he thanked his parents, who he commended for “taking such nice care of my cat.” Was that a political reference or merely a note of gratitude to his parents? Unclear, but we’ll take it.
Overall, the ceremony was rather light on sociopolitical statements compared to awards ceremonies of recent years, although Reservation Dogs’ D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai wore a red handprint over his mouth to raise awareness for #NoMoreStolenSisters, while Bridgerton’s Nicola Coughlan wore an Artists4Ceasefire pin, and Baby Reindeer’s Richard Gadd wore a pin in support of the U.K.–based organization We Are Survivors. Still, the Emmys found time in their tidy three hours (a miracle!) to incessantly remind the audience to vote, celebrate the awards’ most diverse nominee list ever, and validate the hardworking feline-parents among us. It wasn’t all a cat party, though—dog owners were also represented in the form of a simultaneously touching and unserious acceptance speech from Last Week Tonight’s John Oliver, who compared himself to Sarah McLachlan as a music cue played him off the stage while he eulogized his late pooch.
In short: for better or for worse, the Emmys have ensured that pets (a subject that has headlined numerous news dispatches this past week for rather unsavory reasons) will remain the topic of conversation. To that, I take the final word from Murphy Brown herself: meow.
