Politics, briefly

[tahnan]

I really don't intend to start talking politics, because that's a big sucking black hole that'll destroy me faster than the Hadron collider could.

But I have to get this off my mind: the McCain campaign is already sickening me. An ad that claims Obama's one accomplishment [was] legislation to teach "comprehensive sex education" to kindergarteners? Horrid manipulation of the truth. (He voted in favor of age-appropriate sex-ed in K-12, which for kindergarteners wouldn't be "comprehensive", it would include things like warning them about sexual predators and inappropriate touching.)

And calling Obama sexist and claiming that he's attacking Palin when he says of McCain's policies "I think they put some lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig"? Stupid, insulting, distracting. Oh, no, wait, sorry; Obama phrased it as "You can put lipstick on a pig—it's still a pig"; the other quote was what McCain said about Hillary Clinton's health care plan.

Seeing the 30-second ads on TV are bad enough; anything you say in 30 seconds is going to be an attack of some sort, though Obama's at least have been about McCain's policies, not his character. I'm not sure I can take two more months of this kind of horrible swift-boating reality-twisting context-ignoring crap.

Comments

[530nm330hz.livejournal.com]

I keep waiting for the Obama campaign to start running Daily-Show-like juxtaposition ads, letting McCain-Palin hang themselves with their own words. And waiting, and waiting, and waiting....

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

For real! Why is Jon Stewart the only guy doing this?

[lilisonna.livejournal.com]

Election years always make me extremely grateful that I do not see TV ads or hear radio-ads. I used to think that there was a down-side to not participating in the mass media advertising circus. When I encounter such advertisements, I have a nigh overwhelming urge to smack someone into next week. Perhaps, I thought, a higher exposure rate would blunt this urge. Posts such as this reassure me that this is not so, and that even if I were watching such things 24/7, I would still be overcome with the Fist of Death compulsion.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Most ads--in general, not just in politics--eventually kind of fade into background noise. (Some make me want to hit somebody every time I see them, e.g. Axe ads and most Burger King ads.) The problem is that they're constantly putting out new ads, so there's always something new to create the face-punching desire.

[sensational.livejournal.com]

The spinning that the GOP does alarms and sickens me all the time. They are scary masters of it.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

And it says something that I've practically stopped noticing when the Bush administration does it. Or have stopped enough that it surprises me anew to hear McCain do it.

[sensational.livejournal.com]

Well, McCain was supposed to be different, somehow. Not that I would've voted for him, but I wasn't as afraid of him as I was of Bush, not until I started seeing ads and then he picked a book-banning anti-choice god's-army type for his VP.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think that's the thing. McCain used to live on the set of the Daily Show. He seemed like a cool guy who was aware of these things. And then, as the video on the Daily Show said, he's spent two years going back on everything he's believed in and seems to have become a Standard Republican, the kind who'd take on a running mate designed to appease the far right. Feh.

[zougwa.livejournal.com]

I don’t know if it’s a good thing or bad that I live in a solidly blue state. We get occasional McCain ads in Mass. that try to target New Hampshire but none of the really incendiary shit the swing states get.

I wrote a letter to the Boston Globe about the lipstick-on-a-pig ridiculousness, which at least felt good. But on the other hand, it’s frustrating to know that here I’m mostly preaching to the choir.

[prog.livejournal.com]

The funny thing about the Palin Truth Squad (or whatever they're called) is that, to my ears, it's as if I said to someone "You know what, I really can't stand stupid people" and then they said "How dare you talk about my mother that way!!"

[rubrick.livejournal.com]

The Republicans have been sickening me in this way for a very long time. But I don't really blame them. What really disgusts me— at times drives to deep fuck-it-all despair— is that it works. It's my fellow citizens who sicken me. We are, largely, a nation of ignorant dickheads. As people who realize and care that the McCain campaign is being blatantly deceitful, you and your readers are part of a tiny elite. The fact that he might win the election using such tactics upsets me less than the fact it's even close.

[in-parentheses.livejournal.com]

Exactly. This is what upsets me every time I allow myself to think about it -- and has ever since Bush won in 2004. We really do feel like two countries at this point, and have for long enough that I'm afraid our face has frozen that way. I don't understand, empathize with, or have any respect for close to 50% of my fellow citizens, and I'm not sure how to deal with that.

[tahnan.livejournal.com]

This is why I like Barack, in the end. It's because he gives genuinely intelligent answers to things: when McCain starts yelling "sexism!", he says, "Look, is this what we're really going to be talking about?" I'm hoping that, as president, he can genuinely elevate the level of political discourse.