This election season promises to be the most interesting and loony in our history. Yesterday the bottom dropped out of the stock market, and more bad economic news will follow. We are in the midst of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression. The central issue for the candidates should be the economy.
But it isn’t, thanks to the Republicans, who want to concentrate on The Lipstick Wars. The Democrats aren’t helping the electorate very much either because they’re not insisting–not yet, anyway–that “It’s the economy, stupid!”
As soon as Sarah Palin was selected as John McCain’s running mate, the Republicans declared that the “elitist media” could not question her about family matters and would have to pay her more “respect and deference” before she could be interviewed. I detect a bit of sexism here, not to mention hypocrisy. Do you think that the Republicans would have been so delicate with Hillary Clinton? Don’t you recall just a tiny bit of brutish misogyny aimed at Hillary from the conservatives when she was battling against Obama for the nomination? And did the “elitist media” fear to report everything they could about her? Maureen Dowd, of The New York Times, made a career of bashing Hillary.
But now, we can’t have our girl Sarah attacked by the mad dogs of the press (even though, God knows, she’d probably shoot them all down, draw and quarter them, and bury their carcasses in the Rose Garden if she could because she’s not running for office to gain “the good opinion” of the media. There!)
So interviewing a political candidate who happens to be a young, good-looking, inexperienced woman is off-limits to our free press. Isn’t that a tacit admission of (a) the candidate’s lack of experience and an ability to field the questions sensibly and (b) the campaign managers’ playing the sex card?
It’s something else too: by vilifying the media once again, the Republicans, who are so very good at manipulating the media, are stirring up hatred and resentment against what they like to call the Establishment (the “liberal media,” Eastern snobbery, Washington insiders, university professors). In other words, the McCain is doing what Reagan/Bush/Bush used to do: inciting class hatred, invoking an Us-Against-Them mentality, and banking on the popularity of American anti-intellectualism.
But let’s get back to the main theme here. Let’s talk about lipstick! The McCainites accused Obama of insulting–insulting, do you hear?–Sarah Palin (who, remember, is off-limits because she’s a woman, not to mention a hockey mom, and not forgetting that she has foreign-policy experience because she can see Russia from Alaska on a clear day, and that’s another topic that we should all shut the hell up about) when he said that you could put lipstick on a pig–referring to the Republican health-care proposal, I think–but that it still remained a pig.
The Republicans had themselves already used this clever barnyard metaphor to describe a Democratic proposal (was it something that Hillary said?). But now it was clearly vile and thoughtless and alarming but also sexist–i.e, it was aimed at poor Sarah, who should not be quizzed or interviewed or looked at askance, you’ll recall, no matter that she’s running for the Vice Presidency and has a shooting chance–oops, sorry–to become President.
Well, the Republicans kinda backed off that charge (sorta) after the Democrats cried foul.
But here’s what happened in the meantime:
l. The economy imploded.
2. Joblessness continued to soar.
3. Inflation outpaced the buying power of wages.
4. The national debt pushed beyond 9 1/2 trillion dollars.
Barack Obama is doing his best to discuss important issues like the economy, the Iraq war, alternative energy, tax-relief for average-income earners, restoring American prestige with other nations, and rebuilding our infrastructure. But ever since Sarah Palin came on the national scene and became the Youthful Republican Woman Rock Star, most of the Republican effort has turned to the tried and tested culture wars (religion, abortion, class resentments) and away from substantive issues.
Yesterday both Obama and McCain addressed the question of the free-falling stock market. But how many Americans know what they had to say? The real issues are buried under the really interesting stuff like lipstick.
Has anybody, by the way, come out for the pigs? How do you think they feel?
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