What has become clear from the Republican National Convention is that John McCain used his surrogates to reignite the culture wars. Fred Thompson, Mitt Romney, Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin went on the attack and viciously tore into Senator Obama, throwing out the "red meat" for the party faithful in St. Paul to dig their fangs in. They were sarcastic and condescending. Mean.
Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin invoked the term "community organizing" with utter disdain--indeed, Giuliani laughed and repeated it to the crowd as if to say, "Yeah, can you believe it, community organizing." Do they care that the civil rights movement was the ultimate community organizing? Or the women's movement? Or women's suffrage? Or the American Red Cross? Or the United Way? And it takes RESPONSIBILITY? Oh yeah, it's not that they don't care, THEY JUST DON'T GET IT.
Mitt Romney went on stage and kept on drawing contrasts between LIBERAL values and CONSERVATIVE values and how we need to return to CONSERVATIVE values, and blah blah blah. Mitt, Mitt, Mitt. It is YOUR Conservative party and Conservative values that got us into this mess that we're in now by voting for Bush not ONCE but TWICE. TWICE! UNBELIEVABLE! They voted for someone with conservative values and who they were comfortable having a beer with--and he's now the butt of jokes and disrespected by international leaders. People are sick and tired of the right wing evangelicals hijacking and dividing this country by taking their extremist stands on social issues and forcing them on the rest of us. Not this time Mitt, not this time.
And Sarah Palin. The fact that she came out of nowhere, and after ONE speech, the Republicans say, "She is one of us!" Yet Barack Obama has been giving speeches for 20 months, gave probably one of the most historic speeches on race in the history of our country, and people are STILL saying, "We still don't know him." Yeah, right.
John Ridley wrote a great blog about the glaring double standards that exist in these campaigns that I have to share. You'll get a kick out of them:
The Guide to the Conservative Palinguage Vol. 2 - The People's Edition
John Ridley
This is the Vol. 2 of The Guide to the Conservative Palinguage. I'm calling this one the People's Edition because you, the people, have obviously been taking AP courses in talking Conservative. I've been slammed with responses. Enough that I can promise you there will be future volumes. Along with some of mine, I've mixed in a few of yours for everybody's linguistic pleasure.
Before we start, I'd like to note that I intimated in Vol. 1 that English is a Latin based language. Hondorf was among a few others who pointed out that English is "primarily German based, yes, but it is really a hybrid of Germanic and Romantic languages . . . by the way, I am a redneck."
Clearly, none of us should judge a neck by its color.
A reminder, we're collecting Palinisms here, and over at That Minority Thing.com. If you've got 'em, send 'em.
Ready? Let's begin!
If you get 18 million people to vote for you in a national presidential primary, you're a "phoney." Get 100,000+ people to vote you governor of the 47th most populous state in the Union, you're "well loved."
SoyAA says: If you are biracial and born in a state not connected to the lower 48, America needs darn near 2 years and 3 major speeches to "get to know you." If you're white and from a state not connected to the lower 48, America needs 36 minutes and 38 seconds worth of an acceptance speech to know you're "one of us."
If you give your wife a dap on stage, it's actually a "terrorist fist jab." If your daughter licks her palm so that she can slick down your youngest child's hair on national TV it's an "adorable moment." (Seriously, forget about abstinence only, teach these folks some grooming skills).
DTD SAYS: If your pastor rails against inequality in the United States of America, you're an "extremist." If your pastor welcomes a sermon by a member of Jews for Jesus who preaches that the killing of Jews by terrorists is a lesson to Jews that they must convert to Christianity, you're a "fundamentalist."
If you're a black man and you use a scholarship to get into college, then work your way up to being the president of the Harvard Law Review, you're "uppity." If you're a conservative and your parents pay your way to Hawaii Pacific University . . . you only have four more schools to attend over the next five years before you somehow manage to graduate (it might be five more schools over the next five years. No one has yet verified whether or not Palin was actually ever registered at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. But, you know how shady people are who ever attended any kind of school in Hawaii).
SeanOcali says: If you're 18, white, and get a 16 year old girl pregnant "life happens." If you're 18, black, and impregnate a 16 year old girl, you're a "registered sex offender."
If you spend 18 months building a campaign around the theme of "Change," it's just "empty rhetoric." If one week before your party's national convention you SUDDENLY make your candidacy about "Change," that's "red meat."
And your last lesson for the day:
If you are a Democrat, an Independent, or even a moderate Republican, if you're female, male, white, black, Asian, Hispanic, bi-racial, multi-ethnic, or GLBT, if you're a Jew, Gentile, Muslim, agnostic or atheist -- "Yes, we can!"
If you're a pitbull with lipstick from Alaska, "Yup, yup!"
