Faux-outrage and fake P.C. sensibilities aside, isn’t it obvious “whore” was meant in the same sense one might call Mitt Romney a “whore”? RT @mzemek: @brendanloy: I call Nancy Pelosi a whore – it’s whoring for power and $$$$. Everybody – including righties – knew exactly what I meant then. I mean, does anyone actually think the Brown staffer was saying, “Meg Whitman likes to sleep with lots of men”? No. It had nothing to do with her sex. It’s a rude comment, obv, but not a sexist one. “Whore” is used, in THAT context, re: men all the time. I know, I know, if it was a Republican saying it about a Dem woman, THE LIBERAL MEDIA WOULD BE OUTRAGED!!! Except, guess what, when you… …adopt the hypersensitive P.C. crowd’s tactics for balance/media-criticism purposes, pretty soon you BECOME the hypersensitive P.C. crowd. .@jimmiebjr Conservatives have BECOME the hyper-P.C. crowd they once detested, in the name of protesting supposed MSM double standards.
So your opinion is that Republicans should just ignore it when Democrats do it, while allowing the MSM to play it up when Republicans do it?
Unilateral disarmament never works.
Where do you get “just ignore it,” gahrie? On the contrary, my opinion is that Republicans should forcefully and loudly protest when they are unfairly victimized by P.C. overzealousness — not imitate liberals by victimizing others unfairly! By adopting the tactics of the P.C. Left, the Right may win a few battles, but it loses the war: it completely legitimizes this totally illegitimate tactic, and guarantees that there is no longer a principled opposition to the P.C. Police.
My initial reaction was similar to Brendan’s — it’s obvious that while the Brown campaign thinks Whitman is morally casual, they weren’t literally calling her a whore. So scoring the hypocrisy point against the Right here is fine as far as it goes. The more I think about it, however, the more it seems that criticism doesn’t go very far. The notion that the Right is traditionally averse to playing the PC card has some superficial plausibility to it, and perhaps the Right isn’t quite as hardwired for such tactics (insofar as such tactics may have originated with the Left), but let’s be honest — playing victim in a campaign with faux outrage has been done by both sides for as long as political correctness has been around. Principles give way to political expediency almost every time, regardless of party. ‘Twas ever thus and ever thus shall be. To the extent the Right really no longer believes in a principle the Left never had, that just isn’t enough of a party discriminator in my mind. And it certainly wouldn’t trump the plain boorishness of the Brown campaign behind closed doors, which opponents are quite right to call attention to. If I were advising Whitman, I would cut a commercial that quoted that recording in full context (with subtitles) so voters could judge the Brown campaign for themselves by their own words. No need for any voiceover, false charges of sexism, etc. (but you know what, if some voters are put under that misapprehension from listening to that recording, cry me a river … that’s what happens when you’re cavalier with loaded words).
I also think the Right wouldn’t be so quick to imitate the Left here if there was more of a political price to be paid for PC overzealousness. IMO there isn’t, or at least it’s not steep enough.
What cockamamie. There is no political benefit to taking the quote-unquote high ground. The right can “stick to its principles” and “not play the victimization card” and score points from the likes of Brendan, who may then respect them more but will nevertheless turn around and vote for the Democrat anyway.
This is the same type of crybaby whining you hear about torture and Gitmo and whatnot — as if we were super nice to the bad guys, they’ll stop wanting to blow themselves up to kill us.
When it comes to campaigns, Joe Mama is right — this game has been played by both sides for as long as there have been elections. It’s the very nature of campaign politics to take the slightest hint of a misstep by your opponent and treat it like the most outrageous gaffe that has ever occurred. Welcome to politics, Brendan. Stop treating it like an Oxbridge debate society that operates on Miss Manners guidelines.
Exhibit A in the hypocritical moral grandstanding dept. This kind of faux outrage being proffered at the presidential level is far more heinous than Whitman bristling at the “whore” comment. But look where Brendan trains his guns.
AMLTrojan – I’m not sure which to which Oxbridge debates you refer, but the ones *I* know about very often spirited and contentious and heated … and, if an opponent offers an opening (or even a good (and even better if unintended) straight line, that line will often be taken to appropriate debating extremes …
With that said, you may know about some such societies in the US who go the Miss Manners route … I still say thatm the truly Parliamentary debates are usually much more entertaining and informative …
For the Joe Bidens amongst us, Chris Muir expresses it graphically and well …
Point taken, Alasdair, but what I think I was aiming for was that certain folks expect our politics to be Oxbridge in quality and entertainment but Miss Manners in temperance and tone.
http://www.commentarymagazine.com/viewarticle.cfm/press-man–the-paranoid-style-in-liberal-politics-15547
AMLTrojan 7 – sadly, US politics have become Oxbridge-of-the-past-4-decades or so – where “liberals” chase conservative speakers off the stage to prove that the *conservatives* are fascist …
(sigh)
gahrie #8 – it’s uncanny how well the article describes davidkian behaviour … good catch !