Saturday, February 2, 2008

Political Insensitivity

Obama advisor says Obama "doesn't go on t.v. and have crying fits" and that he "didn't just find his voice at age sixty." Only a man would fail to understand the extent to which voicelessness is an ongoing theme in women's lives, even those who have lived for more than sixty years. The Obama campaign has apologized and distanced itself from this guy. Good. The guy is still a jerk.

On the other hand, this representative of the New York chapter of N.O.W. who called a debate between Clinton, Edwards, and Obama a "verbal gang-bang" is also ridiculous. Come on. It's a debate. Hillary Clinton is tough enough to stand up for herself with those guys, and thank god! They did nothing that was in any way out of bounds and Marcia Pappas, you're making us all look foolish - feminists, women, serious followers of politics, debaters, and advocates for women against pornography, prostitution, and abuse of all kinds. Get a grip!

And then, there's this fun collection of weird recent statements by politicians and their advisers. Some are Freudian (when Romney says "my mother" and then realizes he meant his wife), some are scary (Huckabee says that in college they used to fry squirrels in popcorn poppers), some laughably faux-hip (McCain says he's trying to be sure he's, in his daughter Meghan's words, "keeping it real"). And I like the one where the Obama adviser says, "Polls are shit."

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