Sleazy Politics

Is There Any Other Kind?


From the "If you disagree with me you are evil" school of politics.

On Monday, Teddy Kennedy endorsed Barack Obama for president. From the reaction of NOW's New York chapter, you'd think that Kennedy had ordered women and children to the gas chambers.

Say the penis-enviers at NOW:

“Women have just experienced the ultimate betrayal. Senator Kennedy’s endorsement of Hillary Clinton’s opponent in the Democratic presidential primary campaign has really hit women hard. Women have forgiven Kennedy, stuck up for him, stood by him, hushed the fact that he was late in his support of Title IX, the ERA, the Family Leave and Medical Act to name a few. Women have buried their anger that his support for the compromises in No Child Left Behind and the Medicare bogus drug benefit brought us the passage of these flawed bills. We have thanked him for his ardent support of many civil rights bills, BUT women are always waiting in the wings.

“And now the greatest betrayal! We are repaid with his abandonment! He’s picked the new guy over us. He’s joined the list of progressive white men who can’t or won’t handle the prospect of a woman president who is Hillary Clinton (they will of course say they support a woman president, just not “this” one). ‘They’ are Howard Dean and Jim Dean (Yup! That’s Howard’s brother) who run DFA (that’s the group and list from the Dean campaign that we women helped start and grow). They are Alternet, Progressive Democrats of America, democrats.com, Kucinich lovers and all the other groups that take women’s money, say they’ll do feminist and women’s rights issues one of these days, and conveniently forget to mention women and children when they talk about poverty or human needs or America’s future or whatever.

“This latest move by Kennedy, is so telling about the status of and respect for women’s rights, women’s voices, women’s equality, women’s authority and our ability – indeed, our obligation - to promote and earn and deserve and elect, unabashedly, a President that is the first woman after centuries of men who ‘know what’s best for us.’”

Could it possibly be that Kennedy thinks Obama would be a better president that Hillary? Or that he thinks the guy has a better chance at winning in November?

Naaah. He's a betrayer and hater of women.

The "my opponents are crazy and evil" school of politics is nothing new. Mark Twain observed it more than a hundred years ago when he wrote in his book Christian Science: "We know exactly where to put our finger upon his (our opponent's) insanity: it is where his opinion differs from ours ... The rule is perfect: in all matters of opinion our adversaries are insane."

News Media Demands Blandness and Hypocrisy From Politicians

All of us need to start telling the fools in the news media to shut up, to turn of their cameras and tape recorders and to put their pens back in their pockets and purses. Now the big story of the president's State of the Union speech is that Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton didn't talk to each other in the Joint Chambers when President Bush gave his speech. That's right, they didn't talk to each other! Why would they? And who cares? By now they hate each other's guts. That's normal. If my political opponent's husband sneakily tried planting in voters minds that I was a dumb polack, I'd be pissed. I'd fight back. And I wouldn't be shaking the opponent's hand and smiling and joshing like we were good friends. I'd try poking out his eyes and and ripping out his intestines. So would most of you.

But to the jerks in the media, normal human emotions and feelings are forbidden. They demand "authenticity," from candidates, but then shriek and howl in disbelief and outrage when politicians act like normal people. It's normal to get pissed off and angry when someone messes with you. It's normal to try to get back at them.

The news hypocrites criticized Bill Clinton for getting angry at their often stupid an annoying questions, and they used to dump all over John McCain for having a temper. Well, guess what? We've all got tempers. We've all got people we hate and dislike. But to please the media types, we should not take our anger out on the people who've dumped. That would be wrong. In order to show them that you're not unduly angry at your opponents, go out and smash one of them in the face. It'll make you, and probably them, feel better.