Honestly, the McCain campaign has become a kind of pathetic caricature of all of the worst elements of Rovian politics. This is their response to Obama's response to their childish "celeb ad". (I won't dignify it with a link here):

This is a typically superfluous response from Barack Obama. Like most celebrities, he reacts to fair criticism with a mix of fussiness and hysteria," says McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds, before trying to link the attack back to offshore drilling."

"Fussiness and hysteria." Roll that one around on your tongue.

These people are not good people.

Comments (5)

1. C'mon. Don't you think that's a bit of a stretch? Not that there's anything wrong with that...

   Posted by davidmorton at 07/31/2008 @ 1:18pm

2. I don't think it's a stretch at all. "Hysteria" was coined based on the word for "womb" (think: hysterectomy) for the purpose of Freudian theories of women's supposed psychopathology.

   Posted by jdkrheum at 07/31/2008 @ 2:28pm

3. It's certainly no accident that those two particular people were chosen. There is a widely held belief that Britney Spears' and Paris Hilton's pictures appear in the dictionary next to "vapid," and linking Senator Obama to them attempts to taint him with the same label.

   It also carries an ugly connotation of self-aggrandizement. The implication is that Obama is running for the presidency to increase his "star power," where McCain (by contrast) is running out of a sense of duty. It's an insidious attack on the very foundation of Obama's campaign, without coming right out and saying "Barack just wants the glory and the fame." The people who crafted that ad are smart and devious, and I suspect we'll be seeing many more ads of this ilk before November rolls around.

   Posted by Andrew_Hackard at 07/31/2008 @ 6:05pm

4. jdkrheum, I could see it if they used the word, "sensitive"...maybe. "Fussiness and hysteria" seem like a way to portray Obama as a whiner more than anything else.

   Posted by davidmorton at 08/01/2008 @ 12:57am

5. What's with the headline? Where did they call him gay? Is the author suggesting that homosexuals, and only homosexuals, are fussy and hysterical, like it's an identifying trait of their sexuality? Or was this headline just supposed to be on another story. Let's hope it's the latter. Support like this diminishes the candidate's credibility by proxy.

   Posted by frijolitofarm at 08/02/2008 @ 12:03am