REPUBLICAN QUEER BAITING

From Hullabaloo courtesy of Eschaton:

Practically Lactating

I looks like they're going to go back to this well one more time:

"It was remarkable to see Barack Obama's hysterical diatribe in response to a speech in which his name wasn't even mentioned." McCain campaign

"If he is this prickly, he is way too much of a girly man to be president of the United States." Monica Crowley on the McLaughlin Report

And

Maureen Dowd has already blessed the meme with her oh-so-clever depictions of Senator Obama as an "anorexic starlet" and "desperate debutante."

I knew they would do it, but I didn't think they could get away with doing it so blatantly. Sometime back, I wrote:

I think that one of the reasons the conservatives are mostly hanging tough with Coulter is at least partially due to what she specifically said. She used the word "faggot" to describe a Democrat. This is the premise that forms the entire basis of the Republican claim to leadership and lies at the bottom of the media's continuing ridiculous assumption that the Republicans are more natural leaders than Democrats. For forty years the Republicans have been winning elections by calling liberals "faggots" (and "dykes") in one way or another. It's what they do. To look too closely at what she said is to allow light on their very successful reliance on gender stereotypes to get elected.

Click here for more.

Right. Well, of course the rhetorical dynamic about liberals and conservatives is much more complicated than this, but it hits on an essential truth: most Republican men side with the GOP because they're the real man's party--likewise, most GOP women affiliate with the Party because they want to side with real men. How many people do you know who voted for Bush in 2004 because they just didn't feel "safe" with a Democrat at the nation's helm? Same thing. Only the manly Republicans can keep us safe; the girly and gay Democrats couldn't limp-wrist their way through a fist fight if their lives depended on it.

Of course, that's crap, but it's a compelling "argument" in a culture such as ours with an extraordinarily high level of gender/sexual anxiety--see a couple of books I've recently read, Susan Faludi's Stiffed, and Marjorie Garber's Vice Versa, for more on this. I mean, think about it for a moment. Think about all the attacks on Obama's arugula and juxtapose them with news images of President Bush in a cowboy hat clearing brush at his "ranch" in Podunk, Texas. None of this shit has anything at all to do with how competent either individual might be as Chief Executive, but it does play into deeply held beliefs about how Americans ought to conform with gender norms, beliefs that might not even be consciously held. That's a really difficult "argument" to defeat, especially when Democrats rhetorically buy into the notion that men are men and women are women, allowing Republicans to define what's important for political leadership.

I have no idea how to beat this line of attack. It's unfair, yes. It's full of shit, yes. It's amazingly cynical, yes. But it is devastatingly effective within our gender-fucked-up society. Perhaps Obama's best approach is to track down all these pundits and politicians playing the queer card and mix it up with them, one by one:

What do you mean by "girly"? Are you saying that women are inferior to men? Why are you saying that? Do you really think Al Gore is gay? Gay like right-wing evangelist Ted Haggard? Gay like Florida GOP representative Mark Foley? Gay like GOP Senator Larry Craig? What's wrong with being gay? You know, the Spartan warriors, the guys in 300, were all gay. Every single one of them. Are you telling me it's impossible to be a badass if you suck dick? And what's your deal that you have to be going on about who you think is gay and who's not? Are you gay? I think you are. Faggot. Why not? Ann Coulter said it; why can't I? Okay, then just shut the fuck up, bunch of queer baiting assholes. Let's talk issues.

Of course, Obama doesn't really tend to mix it up, and is rarely willing to talk issues. Ah, well. I guess he's on his own.

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