The High Road
Mar 17th, 2008 at 11:15 am by Susie
..Let me be absolutely clear where I stand on all of this. There is no room for sexism in a modern political campaign. There is no room for racism either. There is no room for remarks that could reasonably be interpreted as sexist or racist. In fact, given the history of sexism and racism in this country, there is no room for remarks that could even be willfully misinterpreted as sexist or racist. There is no room for rudeness, or for the appearance of rudeness. There is no room for comments of any sort by anybody a candidate might have met under any circumstances in the course of his or her life, unless they have been vetted for sexism, racism, rudeness, or the appearance of these qualities by the campaign’s senior staff. There is no room for unfair accusations that the opposition candidate has engaged in sexist, racist or rude remarks, or that anyone he or she has ever met has engaged in such remarks. And of course there is also no room for perfectly fair accusations of this sort, which can be misinterpreted, and usually are.
Basically, in the modern political campaign, there is no room for remarks of any sort on any subject which could be interpreted as giving offense to anyone, and that covers just about every subject there is. Therefore, my campaign will enter a cone of silence from now until I am sworn in as president next January. And I call upon my distinguished opponent and her campaign to do the same. The stakes in this election are much too high for anyone to say anything.
Your Aunt Mildred figured this out years ago: grownups are not rude. Rude is not an acceptable adult behavior. What we are seeing, and what is being encouraged by the Beltway press, is the politics of the playground, since that is what they know how to do. We’ve been paying the poo throwers to mediate our public discourse. No wonder it stinks.
The peasants with pitchforks need to fire the press. Once we do that, the politics will work itself out.
Too simplistic and doesn’t relate to the history here. Publishers, as is WalMart, are in a race to the bottom. The more childish and immature the reporters, journalists, photogs and producers are that get fired the more greatly that characteristic is sought and re-enforced in subsequent employees. Our catechism of enterprise is get the next one for less, make the next one do more.
Replies and verbal exchanges are encouraged.
Can we still talk about the weather?