What about questions have played a number of supporting roles in the literature on topicality. Gundel (1974, 1988) proposes a what about diagnostic for topichood, where alignment with a what about question indicates which entity is the "pragmatic topic" of a subsequent utterance. What abouts have also been taken to cue contrastive topics (Jackendoff 1972; Buring 2003; Beaver et al. 2017), and Ebert et al. (2014) reduce aspects of left-dislocation constructions to what about questions, discussed (very briefly) in terms of the introduction of QUDs (Roberts 1996; Ginzburg 1996; Beaver & Clark 2008). The goal of this project is to contribute to the understanding of the role of both entity-style and discourse topics (QUDs) in semantics and pragmatics by homing in on the what about construction itself, which is analyzed here using a structured meaning approach to questions (von Stechow 1991; Krifka 2001). As a bonus, we offer a new linguistic analysis of "whataboutism", a defensive rhetorical strategy (used extensively in political discourse) whereby a speaker deflects criticism of one of their policies/actions (etc.) from an interlocutor by making a counteraccusation that attempts to discredit this interlocutor or some other relevant party.