No surprise that this edition is a lot about Palin & McCain, but there’s some on the economy and religion in politics. If you want a brief reprieve from the Race to 270, this may provide a few diversions.
John McCain should top-deck his POW card… and fast. Now that the “is Obama ready to lead?” theme is off the table on account of Palin, McCain’s latest campaign ads have shifted into the culture war themes, attempting to tie Obama to a bill that sought to teach sex education… to kindergartners. The problem? The allegations – which sound vaguely perverse and at least controversial – are completely false.
Actually, that may not be so much of a problem, at least for McCain. His campaign has shown a shocking ability to purvey lies openly and without shame, even admitting their falsity, while letting the American public believe what they will. As commenters here will no doubt soon remind me, I’ve imagined that this campaign would include the average amount of bending of the truth, and encouraged Obama to do the same. I never, however, sanctioned or suggested outright lying, which is the course that McCain has taken. For a candidate’s team to admit to deliberately lying to the public is shocking in the extreme.
McCain’s characterization of the bill in question – Illinois SB 99 (2003) – is doubly ingenuous, and distorts the truth beyond recognition. First and most importantly, Obama supported the bill because he understood it to include provisions that, if they affected young children, would only affect them by teaching them how to avoid pedophiles: that’s a goal we ought to all agree is, albeit not without controversy, at least worth pursuing. While McCain’s website acknowledges this purpose, his ad does not, allowing him to be honest to the few visitors to his site while significantly greater number of voters who will see only his ads. Shame.
Second, the completed bill never added any sex ed programs – it only defined & expanded extant sex ed programs – and it only reached “kindergarten” in the sense that it affected all extant sex ed programs in grades K-12. Read the bill yourself: it’s remarkable only for its moderation, emphasizing abstinence, requiring that instruction be age appropriate, and allowing parents to opt out.
Who here will defend this outright, knowing embrace of falsity?
Okay, now I’m actually out, I promise.
Apparently the Catholic Church has, in the past, canonized 12-year-old girls for choosing death over rape: wow (read another abuse survivor’s commentary). Certainly the idea that purity is more important than life has ancient roots: Lucretia of the Brutii, in Roman mythology (sorry Livy, can’t fairly call you 100% historical), killed herself rather than live with the shame of rape, but Lucretia’s torch is only carried today by Islamic fundamentalists… and, apparently, some Popes.
Surprise! Another medical study disproves the autism/vaccine link, but it doesn’t matter. As long as there are scurrilous public speakers to play on the fears of over-protective mothers, we’ll still be debating the existence or lack thereof.
Undercutting her attempt to frame herself as a staunchly anti-corruption maverick, the Washington Post uncovered sketchy billing practices in Palin’s first 19 months as Alaska’s governor: apparently, she’s billed time at home and time with the kids and travel for the kids to Alaska.
I know, right? Major admission coming from this author on this site, but true, nonetheless. At a campaign event in Virginia yesterday, Obama – attempting to paint the “maverick” pair as still more of the same – dropped some fateful metaphors:
That’s just calling the same thing something different. You can put lipstick on a pig – it’s still a pig. You can wrap an old fish in a piece of paper called change, it’s still going to stink after eight years. We’ve had enough of the same old thing.
Clever wordplay, right? Wrong. Sarah Palin’s entrance into the race, and her RNC speech, where she styled herself and other hockey moms as “pitbulls with lipstick,” makes Obama’s “lipstick” metaphor into something decidedly different. Dare I say it? PUMA blogs are correct to construe the remark as, if not sexist, at least in poor taste. Sarah Palin may call herself animal names, but for Obama to pick an insulting animal for her was, if not deliberately sexist, clearly calculated to inflame. To suggest otherwise insults the man’s intelligence. I’m disappointed by Obama’s willingness to walk headlong into a media fraças that has, thankfully, not yet emerged (frak!).
It goes without saying that McCain has said worse: his Chelsea/Reno “joke” redefined tasteless humor. But McCain acting like a bad guy doesn’t fit the dominant media narrative. For some time now the mainstream media have been happy to paint a tale that casts McCain as the venerable old man and Obama as the potentially sexist gaffe-prone whippersnapper – nevermind that Obama’s “sexism” is entirely of the media’s own creation. In any event, owing to the narrative, McCain gets a pass on tasteless jokes, and Obama does not (the media are quite willing to tilt at sexist lib’rul strawmen: seriously, what “liberal” makes the “mother ergo too busy” argument against Palin?). Quite apart from the question of whether or not he meant to insult Palin, he should’ve known and balanced the risks better.
And this will be my last post for the rest of the week: I’m traveling (or not; depends on this guy), ergo unable to guarantee constant internet access, and somewhat burnt out and frazzled by politics. A break will help (it’s not you, it’s me!!). Frequent contributor Matt will be taking over for me for later today, tomorrow, and Friday, but I’ll still be around, so enjoy!
