Pony: Watch Your Words Mr. Candidate
10.21.2008

I am so bad at using this space to write anything more important than potty tales and baby yarns.

By the time I sit down to transcribe my thoughts, most media outlets/blogs have beaten me to the punch. I just want to hit on a couple of heinous uses of language in the US presidential race.

I watched the final debate on CNN if only for that wacky so-called-undecided reaction dial at the bottom of the screen - seriously, folks, do you think they are undecided or just rejects from an Amazing Race casting call? But I digress. 

At the end of the debate, CNN has these tables set up, and one of them is the partisan table. One of the republicans from that table defended McCain's attacks against Obama (which call him a supporter of terrorists), arguing that the old man had actually defended Obama.  

He described a rally where a woman had said "I don't trust Obama. I think he is an Arab".

McCain stood shaking his head as she spoke, then quickly took the microphone from her.
"No, ma'am," he said. "He's a decent, family man, a citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with." 

To sum this up: A McCain supporter has lumped the words Arab and Muslim and terrorist together into one super word for which any one can be substituted and it will mean "enemy".

And McCain's answer was to imply that the opposite of Arab was "decent family man". This was held up as an example of McCain's benevolence?

Um, hello??? Did no one think to flag this?

Colin Powell launched into this kind of ugliness in his announcement of his Obama endorsement . He sums it up pretty well.

He might joke about not having Obama's silver tongue, but I have to say that moments like that make me really appreciate thoughtful eloquence.

Finally, as much as I think that Obama did not need to go on so long in speaking about abortion during the debate (since the question was not directly about Roe V. Wade), I was glad to hear him call out McCain on the loathsome term "pro-abortion".   

I would like to know (and I am not being snide or sarcastic here): Do the anti-choice groups actually think that people are "pro-abortion" and set out in their lives hoping to have one some day? 

The worst part was the way McCain did that sneering bit about late-term abortions due to a mother's health. The way he put quotations around health....It was awful. Dooce posted a couple of good links about women who have had to terminate late term . The stories shared are intensely private and I am grateful that they have decided to share them with the wide world (crazy commenters be damned).  

 

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