One gets the sense, listening to the far-right lately, that they’re gearing up to attack Barack Obama with gusto, but they haven’t quite figured out what the message is. I don’t doubt they’ll settle on something ugly, but at this point, while the race on both sides is still in flux, we seem to have reached a trial-balloon stage — right-wing outlets come up with attacks, throw them against the wall, and see what sticks.
Yesterday, Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post, a conservative tabloid, rolled out one I hadn’t seen before:
[Obama] is like a woman: slim, good looking, with long elegant fingers, appealingly dressed — all terms more typically ascribed to female candidates.
Those shots of Barack and Michelle sitting with Oprah on stools had the feel of a smart, all-women talk panel: Obama fit right in for reasons beyond race. […]
Women are gravitating to Obama out of a different urge — the desire to invite him to our book club, join him for coffee or have him coach our child’s soccer team. He embodies many of the positive characteristics we tend to regard as feminine: sensitive and empathetic, seeking to find common ground and minimize conflict, not taking power for granted. We’ve yet to catch Obama beating up an opponent.
The New York Post piece apparently resisted the urge to use the Saturday Night Live colloquialism “girly man,” but it walked right up to the line. It concluded, “By the end of this year we might indeed have our first woman president — but not necessarily Hillary.”
Indeed, it was quite a slam-job on Dems in general. Considering the androgynous qualities of the other candidates, the Murdoch tabloid said the other men couldn’t cut it: “Mitt Romney is the CEO with movie-star looks, John McCain the war hero and straight shooter, Mike Huckabee the parochial religious orator and weight loser. Yes, Rudy Giuliani famously cross-dressed – but only for laughs at charity fund-raisers. And John Edwards’ appeal to female voters is more as a cute 8-year-old boy.”
That’s pretty bad.
Steve M. highlighted the political implications of tripe like this.
[T]he piece is highly useful to Murdoch. The Post wasn’t about to hold it until after New Hampshire because, I think, he’d still like Hillary to be the nominee (easier to beat, more conducive to selling newspapers and drawing right-wing eyeballs to his media properties). Also, right-wingers are desperate for lines of attack in the case of Obama — I think they sense they can’t attack him directly (at least in above-the-radar media outlets) as a black man.
Calling him a woman is perfect — it’s the exact opposite of the usual racist attack on black men’s sexuality, and yet it has perfect plug-and-play compatibility with the usual attack on Democrats. And the specific argument — that his charisma shows he’s weak and testosterone-deficient — is Rovian in the way it turns Obama’s greatest strength into a weakness.
Coming soon to a Fox News personality near you.
