Desperate Republicans (And Fox News) Give Shameless A Whole New Meaning

We already know that John McCain and the Republicans can't win elections on the issues, at least not honestly. In order to win they have to scare people into voting for them, or they have to construct wedge issues like abortion and gay marriage to play on people's prejudices so they forget about the issues, or they resort to character assassination, swiftboating and smears. As I noted yesterday, Robert Borosage, like many, sees this as inevitable give the Republicans' untenable position on the issues:

In this exchange [the economy], McCain is in trouble. Here, as on Iraq, he is arguing for carrying the Bush agenda forward, while three-quarters of Americans think we're on the wrong course. As Obama puts it, "We have tried it their way for eight long years and it has failed. It is time to try something new. It is time for a change."

We haven't witnessed this clear an ideological division since the 1964 Johnson-Goldwater faceoff. For those who feared Obama couldn't throw a punch, he showed both a good jab and a decent left hook in pounding McCain on the economy. That's why the Republican posse is likely to scorn sparring about policy and turn this election into an alley fight, taking out the knives around patriotism, pastors and race.

There is, in fact, nothing more predictable and despicable than Republicans trying to win elections. Every election year we see the same formula, and this election is no different; if anything it is super-charged. We saw the Obama-is-a-secret-radical-Muslim-cleric-terrorist-islamofascist-Iraqi-Saddam-9/11-9/11-9/11! emails first, full of their ridiculous lies, yet forwarded to nearly every email address in the country, and people are dumb enough to believe that crap. The emails couldn't get any more asinine unless they ended with "Forward this to at least 20 friends in the next 5 minutes or you will suffer 14 years of bad luck and your genitalia will turn black and fall off!" And even then, these same idiots would probably believe it and forward it along, fearing for their genitalia, or perhaps just the prospect of part of them turning negro. Variations of the Obama-is-Muslim or Obama-isn't-American smears, both transparent code for Obama-is-a-nigger-but-that-isn't-okay-to-say-anymore, have flourished on the internet and on fake news channels like Fox, even though the vast majority of Americans know it is nothing but bigoted right-wing smears.

And yet Obama has overcome a year and a half of these smears and innuendo, and won the Democratic primary. But now it is on to the general, and the general population, especially on the conservative side, is much more susceptible to being played for fools than most Democrats, and the stakes are higher than ever. Yet having not been able to find any dirt on Obama, or successfully smear him in any meaningful way, despite a concerted effort by the MSM (orchestrated by Fox News) to conflate Obama with the words of his former pastor for a full two months, even though those comments had absolutely nothing to do with him, the Republicans are going to have to try out new angles.

And so yesterday the LA Times and Maureen Dowd warned of the GOP's next cynical target: Michelle Obama. And as Dowd points out, the smear machine is already pumping:

Now Republicans can turn their full attention to demonizing Michelle Obama. Mrs. Obama is the new, unwilling contestant in Round Two of the sulfurous national game of "Kill the witch."

There are some who think it will be harder for America to accept a black first lady — the national hostess who serenely presides over the White House Christmas festivities and the Easter egg roll — than a black president.

There are creepy Web sites, like TheObamaFile.com, dedicated to painting Michelle as a female version of Jeremiah Wright, an angry black woman, the disgruntled, lecturing "Mrs. Grievance" depicted on the cover of National Review.

On that site and others around the Internet, the seamy rumors still slither that there’s a tape of Michelle denouncing "whitey," a rumor that Barack Obama disdained last week as "scurrilous."

E.D. Hill, the Fox anchor who said that the celebrated fist pump between Michelle and her husband the night he snagged the nomination could be called a "terrorist fist jab," apologized Tuesday.

Back in May the GOP (yes, the official Republican Party) was trying to smear Michelle, and Obama wasn't having any of it:



And I have to agree, attacking Obama's family is definitely not something that will help the GOP, it will undoubtedly backfire completely.

In response to these continuing attacks against Michelle, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin had this to say about people who try to smear and demonize Michelle to score cheap political points on Obama:

Well, I know Michelle. She has been my friend and a friend of my wife for many, many years. She can take it. She can handle herself. She is a very accomplished person. But I will tell you this: the hottest ring in Hell is reserved for those in politics who attack their opponents' families. And if there are some Republican strategists that think that's the way to win the election, I think they are wrong.

I couldn't agree more. But, of course, that hot hot ring of hell is already pretty well stocked with Fox News reporters, as we saw the very same day:




Yeah, that's right, throughout the day they referred to Michelle Obama, the wife of a US Senator, and likely future first lady as Obama's "baby mama". Now, for a little slang lesson from Urban Dictionary (courtesy of Stroszek):

"the mother of a man's child when the parents are not married"

"The mother of one's child. The connotation is that mother and father do not and never did have any relationship beyond being sex partners. Contrast: ex-wife, ex-girlfriend."

"The mother of your child(ren), whom you did not marry and with whom you are not currently involved."

"A term used to define an unmarried young woman (but can be a woman of any age) who has had a child. As mentioned before in another definition, most of the time it is used for when it was simply a sexual relationship, compared to ex-wife or girlfriend. Usually this has a negative connotation, a lot of baby mamas are seen as desperate, gold digging, emotionally starved, shady women who had a baby out of spite or to keep a man. Sometimes they may act like this because of missed child support payments, unfulfilled promises by the father, or convenient sex by the father."

Alright, so Fox News thought it was appropriate to essentially call Michelle Obama (and Barack Obama) a whore. Apparently the people at Fox think Michelle is nothing but the woman Obama accidentally knocked up before moving on. Not only is that horribly sexist (I'd say a hell of a lot more sexist, disrespectful and offensive than anything the media threw at Hillary), but it is racist as hell. Fox News was willfully playing into racial stereotypes of promiscuous African American men and single mothers by disparaging the kind, hard working, good mother and wife of a respectable Senator down to nothing more than some knocked up tramp. Funny that Hillary Clinton was never Bill's "baby mama", or Cindy McCain was never John McCain's "baby mama", or ANY OTHER WIFE COUPLE WITH CHILDREN, yet we have the couple that will most likely be the first black president and first black first lady, and all the sudden she is Obama's baby mama. It is outrageous, shameful, despicable, completely fucked up, for lack of a more appropriate term.

But that's Fox News for you, nothing but sexist, bigoted pieces of shit (so glad Hillary's "feminist" supporters hail Fox News as the best network on TV).

So, in response to all of these smears, Obama's campaign has launched a new website, FightTheSmears.com, which will debunk all of the various smears out there attacking Obama, Michelle, and hell, probably eventually their two daughters, Malia and Sasha.



[And to be clear, as I think we always should be, there is nothing wrong with being Muslim. For better or worse, being a Muslim is no better or worse than being a Christian. You can bitch about them for not believing scientifically proven facts about evolution and the creation of the planet, or about any other attribute shared by all religions, but they shouldn't be demonized or discriminated against just because there are a few radicals out there, because I'm sure Christians or any other group wouldn't want to have to answer for every action taken by fanatics in their faiths. So no, Obama isn't a Muslim, never was, but that isn't to say that being Muslim ought to be seen as an insult.]