the silly narcissism of McCain’s negativity is so insipid - McCain doesn’t want to seem like he’s the bad person that he is, so he leaks fights about going negative that show him in the best light but also push forward the narrative that he’s allegedly debating over. 

No one knows what its like
To be the bad man
To be the sad man
Behind blue eyes

No one knows what its like
To be hated
To be fated
To telling only lies

But my dreams
They arent as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
Thats never free

No one knows what its like
To feel these feelings
Like I do
And I blame you

No one bites back as hard
On their anger
None of my pain and woe
Can show through

But my dreams
They arent as empty
As my conscience seems to be

I have hours, only lonely
My love is vengeance
Thats never free

Assuma Obama wins it will be a full-time job debunking the right-wings BS

There is no equivalence and it is ridiculous that conservatives want to pretend there is an equivalence.  Where is the Secret Service?

On the other hand, fuck the sexist fucks who are wearing “Palin is a Cunt” shirts.  They have just proved they are not progressives.  These types of shirts should be widely condemned and their wearers booed at every opportunity.  Because that’s the RIGHT thing to do.

What sucks is that, while the base and the party as a whole is marginalizing itself as completely howling lunatics, they’re not reaping the full public penalties they should be getting, because the press insists on pretending that the Republicans aren’t that crazy, since some Democrats wear T-shirts.

How McCain sleeps at night is a mystery to me.

“On top of a pile of my wife’s money, with many beautiful ladies.”

[/obligatory Simpsons reference]

Obama became famous and took the lead with his politics of positivity, to break with the negative divisiveness that has been dominating political discourse for quite awhile.  McCain’s not a demon or a warmonger.  He’s a decent guy who is wrong about a lot of things.  McCain seems genuinely uncomfortable with the mob mentality that has surfaced on his side of the fence.  Stewart has it right with the analogy to Dr. Frankenstein, having created the monster it is damned hard to control it.  I hope the tactic will be soundly rejected by the electorate.  Polls seem to indicate it will, but the public mood is a fickle thing.

McCain seems genuinely uncomfortable with the mob mentality that has surfaced on his side of the fence.

If he were uncomfortable with it, he’d denounce it, loudly and furiously.

But he’s happy with it. This is part of his plan. Just because he pretends not to be in charge of his own campaign, doesn’t mean any of us have to buy into his act.

Why would someone want to appeal to this loathsome demographic in the first place?  It is a minority, albeit a noisy one.

When the more intelligent supporters are leaving in droves and making their views public, it is way past time to give your head a shake.  Three weeks ago or more, somebody should have read the Riot Act to the campaign team and to the offensive and unqualified Veep candidate and shut this shit down.

McCain can’t win this way.  The real question is, if it were possible, why in hell would he even want to? “Hey, look at me everybody!  The bottom-feeders, bigots and ignoramuses think I’m great!”

And why the comparison to Dr. Frankenstein?  Are the looney wingnuts going after McCain with pitchforks and torches?  What can they do to McCain that he hasn’t already done to himself?

I think the point of the analogy is that the wingnuts are the monster that Dr. Frankenstein/McCain created.

If anything, the angry mob would be the “non-wingnut Republicans” who should be chasing the monster out of their community for all the damage it caused.

Liberals are more like Mary Shelley’s audience, listening to the whole tale with gasps of horror, unable to believe it’s true.

Or maybe Frau Blucher…

The calculus has been that the social-cons (fundnuts) and the money-cons (Big Business) have nowhere else to go.  So if you whip up enough of the looney fringe…profit!

So the Underpants Gnomes are running McCain’s campaign? It does explain a lot…

Liberals are more like Mary Shelley’s audience, listening to the whole tale with gasps of horror, unable to believe it’s true.

Or maybe Frau Blucher…

(whinny)

I saw the clips of McCain at his rallies where folks were spouting their venom and he looked SCARED!

I saw the clips of McCain at his rallies where folks were spouting their venom and he looked SCARED!

Scared that it would end up embarrassing him on TV yet again, maybe.  He doesn’t care.

I wholeheartedly agree that these arguments about “equivalence” coming from the right are insane, but seriously…

Some random people at an anti-McCain rally wore mean t-shirts.

I seem to recall a hell of a lot of justifiable anger on our side earlier this year when Republican troglodytes were proudly displaying anti-Hillary C.L.I.T. t-shirts (I don’t remember what the acronym means).

Offensive is offensive.  The t-shirts being worn at the anti-McCain event are HIGHLY offensive and extremely misogynist.

In making the case that the absolutely vile, incendiary, and potentially dangerous rhetoric and tactics coming from the McCain folks are in no way equivalent to whatever is coming from our own side, you do the progressive argument a disservice by brushing off an obviously misogynist attack as nothing more than harmless “mean t-shirts.”

If the situation involved McCain supporters wearing something identical but referring to Obama with an obviously racist epithet, would you brush it aside as nothing more than “mean t-shirts”?

I think not.  Nor would I expect you to.

So yes, I agree with your argument that the two things are not equivalent in their offensiveness, but I disagree with the dismissive attitude you take towards the offensive nature of referring to a powerful (albeit totally unqualified and corrupt wingnut) woman as a “cunt”.

It’s not just a “mean t-shirt”.  It’s a symbol of the offensive amount of misogyny still acceptable in our society, even among us progressives.  I wish that would be recognized here of all places.  Call the woman a godbag, a charlatan, a kook, a wingnut, Bible Spice, Mooselini, whatever… but “cunt”?  Srsly?

He’s an old man.  He doesn’t have an entire political career ahead of him.  If he had any principles at all, he would drop out rather than give tacit approval to the idiots calling for leftwing blood.

The left has its share of lunatic fringe, as catalogued by Malkin

http://michellemalkin.com/2008/10/12/crush-the-obamedia-narrative-look-whos-gripped-by-insane-rage/

McCain doesn’t have to disavow all of it any more than Obama has to disavow our loonies.  But McCain has corrected it when it’s in front of him. 

Angry folk get angrier when they are losing.  I think fanning the anger drives the undecideds away from McCain.  I hope so anyway.  Some of the shit on the wall will likely stick in some minds, though.

sorry but offensive and incendiary are not the same.

The cunt shirts are in poor taste (at best) but they are in no way equivalent to the hateful rhetoric that incites people to start vocalizing a fantasy of violence (and, possibly, even act on it).  I can wear a T-shirt that says “Jesus hates Fundamentalist Christians” and, while offensive, it’s not a call to get people to join in shouting kill fundamentalist Christians. Using fiery rhetoric that insinuates Arab = evil, Muslim = satanic, liberal = terrorist, not Christian = unpatriotic and then tying that to a vote for candidate or party that will put us at risk for terrorist attacks (vote for us and be one with g-d approach) is just not the same.  This is the rhetoric of nazis and pogroms; this is the speech that leads people to think victims should have been attacked for being different than “us”.  Calling Palin a cunt, while tacky and offensive, is not that incendiary.

The cunt shirts are in poor taste (at best) but they are in no way equivalent to the hateful rhetoric that incites people to start vocalizing a fantasy of violence (and, possibly, even act on it).

I wouldn’t be too hasty to dismiss the t-shirts.  It’s part of our culture’s history of objectifying women in order to make violence against them less heinous.  While certainly not equivalent to outright threats of violence, it is the first step toward that type of behavior.

This shouldn’t be complicated for supposed progressives and feminists.

sorry but offensive and incendiary are not the same.

I agree completely, and I said as much in my post.

There is no equivalence between the actions of the anti-McCain t-shirt wearers and the anti-Obama violence inciters.

None whatsoever.

But I have a problem with the dismissive nature of Jesse’s characterization of said t-shirt wearers:

Some random people at an anti-McCain rally wore mean t-shirts.

The shirts read: “Sarah Palin is a cunt.”

Would his reaction be the same if it were anti-Obama folks wearing shirts that read: “Barack Obama is a stupid negroid.?

I imagine no, it wouldn’t.

Yes, there is a difference between angry progressives who probably don’t harbor the deep-seeded misogyny of angry biblecons but wearing a misguided shirt such as the one being worn, but the very language and tone of the message being conveyed by the shirt should not be dismissed simply because we all find Sarah Palin to be an extremely disagreeable human being.

I find it akin to similar references made toward Condi Rice referring to her as an “Aunt Jemima” character because of her complicity in the entire Bush Doctrine.  And those references were coming largely from progressives.

Offensive is offensive.

The vile, abominable nature of the hate speech being spewed forth by the pro-McCain crowd is without question the most disgusting stuff I have seen this entire election season.  And in comparison to that despicable sludge, I can see how the “cunt” t-shirts can be dismissed as harmless in comparison.  And in comparison, yes, they are “relatively harmless.”

But there’s the key… “relatively harmless” does not equal “harmless.”  And the tone of this post seemed to brush off the shirts as being fairly harmless.  They aren’t.  They are highly offensive.  Does the highly offensive nature rise anywhere near the magnitude of the offensive nature of the crap coming from the McCain folks?  Not remotely.  But that doesn’t cancel out the fact that the shirts are still highly offensive.

This is a feminist blog, correct?  I would hope that a feminist blog would avoid being so quickly dismissive to obvious instances of misogyny such as the “Sarah Palin is a cunt” t-shirts.

Sarah Palin is a religious nutjob.  Sarah Palin is a powergrubbing politician.  Sarah Palin is an unethical hack.  Sarah Palin is a completely unqualified cynical VP choice.

There are so many nuanced, non-misogynistic ways to go after this woman.  And while Jesse isn’t guilty of promoting the tone of the t-shirts, his choice of words in characterizing the behavior of the offenders is misguided.

With good reason, we cannot stand it when Republicans are quick to dismiss the bad behavior of their denizens with the tired IOKIYAR excuse.

Let’s not behave hypocritically by employing an IOKIYAD strategy.  We’re better than that.

Jesse could have simply denounced the behavior of the t-shirt wearers by saying “while I can’t condone something so obviously misogynistic as the cunt t-shirts, to compare it to the vile shit being thrown Obama’s way is offensively absurd.”

I wish he had.

If hateful activity occurs at your rally, and you are aware of it, you are obligated to point it out and disavow the sentiment.  True for McCain, true for Obama.

Precisely.

While I did post upthread my concerns about being overly dismissive of the anti-Palin t-shirts, I don’t believe Obama (or Biden) has a duty to repudiate every occurence of hateful, irresponsible expression against McCain or Palin anymore than I expect that of McCain or Palin.

I do expect any presidential candidate - regardless of political stripes - to immediately condemn this type of rhetoric when it is in front of them at a rally, and when it is being propagated within the ranks of the campaign.  Sure, one could argue that the candidate doesn’t have the personal ability to seek out and admonish every bottom-rung offender in their campaign offices throughout the country, but they can make sure that the folks who oversee those people (or the folks who oversee them) are running a tight enough ship that such instances of this BS are being immediately dealt with.

The left has its share of lunatic fringe, as catalogued by Malkin.

And yet she doesn’t have one documented case of someone making death threats against Palin or McCain at an Obama rally, or one of the speakers at an Obama rally calling either one of them names.  Which is, you know, what we’re discussing.

When you claim that things Madonna says are exemplars of Democrats making death threats against Palin, I think you’ve already lost the argument.  Seriously—the best you can come up with is something an attention-seeking celebrity said?  Really?

Jesse, the only mistake you may have made (or you didn’t) was expecting Marty Peretz to be worth your time.  Peretz is the race-baiting Ur-Concern Troll.

Ah, California Republicans.  Apparently they see no problem with posting “Waterboard Obama!” on the official website of the Sacramento Republicans website, but Madonna saying she’d like to kick Palin’s ass is the Worst Thing Ever.

That’s what gets me about these things.  People are saying and doing these things at official Republican Party events.  Sandra Bernhardt got bounced from an event benefiting a women’s shelter for saying Palin should be raped, but having an official Republican website call for Obama to be waterboarded is A-OK?

(And, yes, I do think they were right to fire Bernhardt for what she said.  That was just vile.)

Why does it not surprise me that the head of the Sacto GOP runs an insurance-defense firm?

You know, if we televised Madonna vs. Palin Total Smackdown as pay-per-view, we could pay for the bailout. Why haven’t the Republicans thought of THAT free-market solution?!

Bernhardt vies with the Mariana Trench for “low”.  And she ALSO is filled with whale shit.

Maybe those guys were Brits.  In the UK, cunt applies to both sexes, they use it the way we use asshole.  It’s not really sexist but it is a pretty strong word to use on a shirt, I mean, where are you going to wear that?  To the grocery store?

Better choices would have been Palin is a Liar, Animal Abuser, Flake, Airhead, Illiterate, Racist, Opportunist, Hypocrite or maybe ShitHead, Douchebag or Anal Stenotic.

Sacramento County Republicans call for torturing Barack Obama.

Some random people at an anti-McCain rally wore mean t-shirts.

According to Marty Peretz, these two things are probably roughly equivalent.

Which is, to anyone who knows how not to be stupid on purpose, a patently ridiculous argument. But when we’re talking about someone whose job it is to say dumb things to dumb people in exchange for totally unreasonable amounts of money, you can see how the logic works:

1) Normal people don’t do Thing A.
2) Normal people don’t do Thing B.
3) Therefore, Thing A and Thing B are the same.

This is where the failure (nearly universal in wingnuts) to make the critical distinction between the logical concepts of validity and soundness is the most glaring. Of course, it’s also pretty glaring in nearly every other argument they make, but that’s a bit beside the point at the moment.

Also, Sandra Bernhardt said something cruel and wildly inappropriate in public? Color me shocked. [/sarcasm]