:: Venting Insanity ::

:: Thursday, August 19, 2004 ::

baby jokes are tiresome
Babies and Bath Water

While children have long been used in political ads to represent the future, many of the MoveOn entries use them to satirize the actual candidate. Several of the proposed anti-Bush commercials use kids to condemn the president for unsophisticated thinking, for an infantile worldview, for the fact that his daddy purchased his every big break and for the fact that he is desperately beholden to the wealthy and powerful grown-ups surrounding him. The clear message is that Bush is more a child than an adult.

What's wrong with continuing efforts to characterize Mr. Bush as a not-particularly-smart third grader? For one thing, it plays to every stereotype of liberals as snotty know-it-alls who think everyone in a red state is anti-intellectual or simple-minded. It answers name-calling from the right with name-calling from the left.

These assertions also insult anyone who voted for Mr. Bush in 2000. Rather than offering an argument for Mr. Kerry, they merely disparage swing voters, who may be tempted to defect to the Democrats over the war or the economy, by sneering that they voted for a kid - and a dumb kid at that.

One of the most enduring memories from the Bush-Gore debates in 2000 was Al Gore, all sighs and eye-rolls, trapped in what must have felt like the middle-school playground fight from hell instead of a presidential debate. Everything about Mr. Gore's demeanor signaled that he felt he was giving a punk kid a much-needed scolding. Which missed the point: a lot of very smart people voted for Mr. Bush in 2000 because to them, he represented a return to honesty and morality. Dismissing him as a stupid child, and these voters as stupid-children-by-association, is no way to win them back.

You think they would have figured that out by now... but I guess not.

snapple "real fact" #289
In 1908, the first lollipop-making machine started in New Haven, CT.

Again, I didn't pick this on purpose...