Quote of the Day
To McCain’s credit, he has tried to correct his audience — when, for example, a woman said she couldn’t trust Obama because he’s an Arab. Gosh, wonder where she ever got that idea? But the McCain-Palin bad cop-good cop routine is what it is. The hot babe lathers the crowd; the noble soldier hoses them down. This isn’t a campaign; it’s a sideshow.
There has not been one shred of a suggestion on the part of the McCain campaign that Obama is an Arab or Muslim. For Parker to imply otherwise is disgraceful. It is the same sort of feeble appeal to the perpetual-victim mentality that forms the basis for her entire column, and it is the single LEAST appealing quality of Obama’s supporters.
Comment by Rojas — 10/22/2008 @ 7:01 pm
True. Were the media to scrutinize the underbelly of Obama’s supporters, you would find equally ridiculous assertions and hyperbole. But like THAT is gonna happen.
Comment by James — 10/22/2008 @ 7:39 pm
You’re kidding right? I’ve seen plenty of whining from the McCain campaign too, and believe it’s no more savory coming from their quarter either. Let’s also acknowledge that this Obama “supporter” is a Republican. Let’s also acknowledge that while McCain’s campaign has not explicitly suggested that Obama is an Arab they’ve used suggestive imagery and phrasings to the contrary. You can go ahead and hide behind some wall of plausible deniability, that’s certainly what his campaign has done, but I don’t find it very persuasive.
Comment by tessellated — 10/22/2008 @ 7:42 pm
Nor I.
Most of the Schmidt’s team’s entire electoral strategy is in large part in talking up Obama’s “other”ness. One doesn’t have to be a raving victim-card-playing partisan lunatic to see that as readily apparent. That is part and parcel with negative campaigning, of course, but where the McCain campaign has explicitly pushed forward the talking points that he’s “cozy” with terrorists, that Islamic terrorists most want Obama in office or that he wants to give drivers licenses to terrorists (both circa yesterday, btw), where Palin is going on a “pro-American vs. anti-American” tear, where a good portion of the opening speakers at McCain rallies continue to over-emphasize the middle name, and on and on and on, I grow less and less interested in it being incumbent on me to cleave McCain from one of the over-arching thrust of McCain supporters, and indeed much of his campaign’s own allusive message. If you can find a more central thrust to the McCain campaign message than “Barack Obama is not ‘one of us’” from July to present, I’d like to hear it. It’s a toxic soup they’ve been stewing, and they, and you, damn well know it. Some of these “Obama is a muslim” things would surely have spontaneously generated themselves regardless, but riding that wave has been part of the McCain campaign idea all along.
It’s similar, to me, to the fact that George W. Bush never claimed that Iraq and 911 had any connection. “Oh dear, many of our supporters seem to think so. Where have they gotten that idea, because surely it wasn’t from us, responsible and careful speakers that we are!”.
Comment by Brad — 10/22/2008 @ 7:56 pm
Balderdash.
When Barack Obama’s supporters were engaged in an all-fronts smear campaign following the Palin nomination, the candidate himself got a pass based on his statements disavowing the smear. All of us on the blog, Obama supporters and McCain supporters alike, were in agreement on this.
Now John McCain has done the exact same thing–repudiated a smear by his unsavory supporters in no uncertain terms–and we’re expected to treat it as if McCain is responsible for trotting out the stalking horse. That’s as brutal and ridiculous a double standard as I’ve seen applied to the two candidates.
This whole imbecilic meme got its start due to the work of Democratic operatives in the employ of the Clinton campaign. It’s been a rallying cry for exactly the same group of troglodytes for well over a year. And now we’re expected to pretend that the whole business sprang Athena-like from the head of McCain’s campaign director as a conscious choice of strategy.
Here’s my alternative theory: John McCain associates Obama with terrorists because he believes the voters will see association with terrorists as bad. You know, just like George Bush did to John Kerry, and as has been done to poltician after politician since 2001. You can and will dislike this as much as you want, but to see it as an attempt to portray Obama as an Arab flies in the face not only of seven years of political history but of the candidate’s explicit statements to the contrary. This is the victim card, pure and simple, and it’s a damned shame that smart people are buying into it.
Comment by Rojas — 10/22/2008 @ 9:23 pm
Horse shit. Yes, there has been the “Ayers/domestic terrorist, wacko lefty connection” accusations (still a mystery to free thinkers like me), but I am unaware of any official McCain effort to link Obama to Islamic terrorists, let alone suggest he is an Arab.
Come on! Are the lunatics running the asylum now? Seems so.
Comment by James — 10/22/2008 @ 9:23 pm
James, that’s the point. You are not going to find a smoking gun. What you will find is Palin saying that he “pals around with terrorists.” Notice the plural. Well if Ayers counts as one terrorist who are the others? Perhaps those shadowy foreign funding connections that the campaign keeps alluding to? McCain, himself, will explicitly say large amounts of money leads to corruption; Republican operatives (i.e. NewsMax) bogusly points out that donations not in whole dollars must mean he’s receiving *foreign* donations (some ridiculous rationale about exchange rates); Meanwhile righty bloggers blah blah about PLO donors or whatever other “horse shit” as you put it are funding the crypto-islamic candidate. And this is just with the question of funding. There’s also the several attempts this cycle to suggest that the terrorists want Obama to win the election. Or the recent mailer that goes on at length about terrorists with the catchy black on caution-yellow text which states at the top:
“Barack Obama thinks terrorists need a good talking to.”
and then at bottom in the same text:
“Barack Obama. Not who you think he is.”
The flip-side of the mailer is an ominous image of a jet airliner with the text “Terrorists don’t care who they hurt.”
It’s not hard to see why someone already pre-disposed to an insular and fearful worldview would take this suggestive material and run with it. The campaign is NEVER going to make an explicit connection, that would be suicidal, but they’ll certainly lay all the pieces out there in a shape almost but not quite recognizable…
BTW, these are just recent examples and not at all an exhaustive list. I can’t — and wouldn’t want to — to catalogue all of it.
Parker’s point, and it’s one I agree with, is that it’s not hard to see where these dark ruminations take shape. I agree with Rojas that this shit happened in the Democratic primary too. Some ugly shit was perpetrated by Clinton supporters for the same reason. People will prey upon a perceived weakness. I don’t know what evidence Rojas has to support his charge that they were in the Clinton’s employ. That seems to me to about as likely as these same sorts of people now are in McCain’s employ.
Comment by tessellated — 10/22/2008 @ 11:42 pm
Her paid staffers were identified as the authors/publicizers of several of the early emails.
Which is not to excuse the later advocates of this dumb-assed argument, of course.
I maintain that it is possible to make the argument “Barack Obama is soft on terror” without inevitably fostering the conclusion “Barack Obama is an Arab.” Nobody ever thought that George Bush was saying that Michael Dukakis was an African-American murderer, or that George W. Bush portrayed John Kerry as Vietnamese.
Comment by Rojas — 10/22/2008 @ 11:53 pm
Tessellated, it requires a significant amount of inference to reach the conclusion you and dunces who connect the Obama Osama dots together from such statements seem to arrive at.
Comment by James — 10/22/2008 @ 11:56 pm
This is why I have used terms like “plausible deniability” in a previous comment. Regardless, people ARE making those connections and given the amount of shit being thrown against the fan I don’t think it’s hard to see why. I don’t think it’s provable given what we know that the McCain campaign specifically aims for people to conclude that Obama is an Arab. I’m not saying that. I don’t think the quoted author is saying that. What is clear from the evidence, though, is that the current climate fostered by the campaign and its sundry surrogates makes that connection much MORE likely to form in certain individuals minds.
Comment by tessellated — 10/23/2008 @ 12:08 am
Well, then, I guess we will have to hope that they do something to counteract that.
Like have the candidate repudiate that view, specifically and directly, in front of a bunch of TV cameras, at one of his rallies. Twice.
Comment by Rojas — 10/23/2008 @ 12:23 am
Well yes, and you’ll remember I find the 2002 election to have been the most depressing, disgraceful, and reprehensible in my lifetime, for precisely this tactic. I have also found the political rhetoric of the Bush years, including like Bush did to Kerry in 2004, to be equally reprehensible. How many cycles does something have to be regular practice before we’re no longer allowed to object to it?
I find the tactic, on the face of it, to be a Bad Thing. As it applies to McCain v. Obama, I find it more depressing, both because McCain is purported to be a man of integrity who, we were led to hope, was going to be a different kind of nominee and run a different kind of campaign from those aforementioned, and also because, let’s face it, Obama being black and there being some confusion among a certain class of voter as to his “American-ness” makes the issue more charged. McCain knows this, his campaign knows this, and yet they choose to plod that course anyway. I gave McCain all the credit in the world for the very recent week when he finally went on the offensive personally about it, but let’s be honest, if you don’t believe these are fans the McCain campaign and GOP partisans more generally have deliberately fanned the flames in a way to take advantage of Obama’s specific “otherness”, I have to side with tessellated, I think that’s just being obtuse, and I think most people watching this election agree with me, and not just because they’re Chicken Little victim card playing hysterics.
Comment by Brad — 10/23/2008 @ 12:25 am
Okay: so is your objection now that McCain is trying to make Obama seem like an outsider, or that he’s trying to make people think he’s an Arab? Parker is arguing the latter.
Comment by Rojas — 10/23/2008 @ 12:27 am
McCain seemed genuinely surprised and disturbed when that lady called Obama an Arab.
My question: should he have been?
Comment by Brad — 10/23/2008 @ 12:29 am
“Well, then, I guess we will have to hope that they do something to counteract that.”
Isn’t that the point, of the lampooning quote, Rojas? The Good cop/bad cop routine? I think McCain deserves credit for what he did, bravo. Just as I think his campaign deserves credit for the environment they have fostered. Well done, guys.
Comment by tessellated — 10/23/2008 @ 12:33 am
John McCain’s behavior indicates, has indicated, and continues to indicate, that he thinks the American people are capable of distinguishing between “he is soft on terror” and “he is an Arab” as arguments.
Kathleen Parker has dedicated a column to the idea that McCain and his campaign are deliberately conflating the two in an overt appeal to racial and religious prejudice. Her “bad cop” is Palin, who she asserts is fostering the argument listed above.
Parker’s column has been approvingly cited on this blog as “quote of the day.” I find it weird that nobody is willing to defend Parker’s argument; particularly so in that, if false, Parker’s argument is slanderous.
It’s the same ol’ same ol’. The other team is a pair of demons in the guise of human beings, bent on fostering all that is worst within us. Our man is an innocent victim of forces beyond his control. This time, as it happens, the Democratic candidate is formidable enough to win on his own merits; but oh, how tiresome and obnoxious these arguments are when marshalled on his behalf.
Comment by Rojas — 10/23/2008 @ 12:51 am
Quotes of the Days shouldn’t be seen as an explicit endorsement. I just post whatever strikes my fancy at the time.
If we’re talking about the Parker quote specifically, I sort of agree with you. I don’t like the clean line she’s drawing. I pulled it as much for the good cop bad cop line.
My large point: no, I do not think John McCain or Sarah Palin are explicitly advocating that Obama is an Arab or terrorist. In a court of law, there’s no doubt in my mind that such a case would lose, and deservedly so.
In the court of political rhetoric, I think it’s naive to think that McCain and his inner circle are genuinely aghast and surprised at the level his supporters have been marshaled towards in regards to these things, and I think it’s also naive to think that he McCain campaign doesn’t just know that, but on a certain level appreciates it, and on occasion work to actively foster that kind of mentality. That isn’t a cardinal sin in and of itself, of course—if that’s where the votes are coming from, that’s where they’re coming from, and who is going to turn them away—but nor is the McCain campaign running a kind of principled oblivion to it.
They are, and have been, actively pushing as a central argument of their campaign that Obama is less American than McCain. McCain’s campaign is not, and has not, been a thrust of ideas, but impressions. And no, I do not believe that to be equally true of all campaigns at all times either.
Again, what I keep coming back to is the 911 – Iraq link. Your same arguments apply in that case too.
Comment by Brad — 10/23/2008 @ 1:02 am
Oh, and regarding your last paragraph: as far as evaluative criteria, I do not find this evidence that McCain is a demon, nor do I find this a compelling, in itself, positivist case for voting Obama.
What I find in it is disappointment. McCain, I might have hoped, would lead us past those post-911 cycles you mention, and the tactics and basic strategy contained therein. His was the promise of being a different kind of Republican candidate, and what the Republicans need to get back to is running on ideas, not shady impression-makings. That promise has not in any way materialized, and the Parker quote speaks to that, albeit in a pretty oblique way. I find it less a reason to vote for Obama, but I have found it a reason to be offput by the McCain campaign. Both of us were of the hope that McCain would be able to lead people away from that 911 election mentality. But, as in other things, McCain has proven he is not That Guy.
Comment by Brad — 10/23/2008 @ 1:06 am