Come on, Democrats. Let's cut it out with the self-righteous political correctness, please. I'm tired of reading about every little slip-up or awkward phraseology by anyone on the other side being blown out of proportion and having to hear Keith Olbermann hector us as if he were our era's Edward R. Murrow. I'm speaking of course about Hillary Clinton's RFK comments and Liz Trotta's off-color joke about Obama on FOX News. Both comments were insanely dumb and apologies were issued. Let's leave it at that (I realize it was a slow news weekend).
I would prefer to live in an America where not everyone is so damn straight-jacketed and afraid to say anything off-the-cuff that all we get are canned, predictable, meaningless and devoid-of-content statements, like the crap that the Bush administration has served up for the past seven years. To wit: Washington has a way of purging those who speak their mind (see O'Neill, Paul). That cuts both ways. When Democrats express shock over an impromptu joke made by Mike Huckabee at an NRA convention, it means Huckabee has to put up that mental filter that will expunge all future traces of spontaneity and honesty. Same goes for Geraldine Ferraro. Are we better off for that?
This is not an endorsement of the jokes or comments made by these people. But I'm not going to storm the barricades over them. Nor do I think Ferraro is a racist or Huckabee is pro-assassination or that McCain wants to keep U.S. troops in Iraq for 100 years. I think their statements were blown out of proportion. Plus, this kind of shock and awe from the media only dumbs down the political debate (if that is possible at this point in the campaign) when there are so many more pressing issues. What angers me, as a white male in his 30s living in New York City in 2008, is that fact I have no health insurance; that I live in a country whose public transportation system is a joke; that oil execs, all of them white males, made record profits last year; that our department of Homeland Security actually thinks Iraqi-style IED explosives may wrack the streets of Boston (!!) -- the list goes on.
I don't care about the trivialities of whose pastor said what or what FOX pundit said what -- in the larger scheme of things, this kind of stuff doesn't mean squat. Plus, we don't need to distort the opposition or take umbrage at their every comment to win this election. If we just debate them upright on the issues, we will win. Let's not allow the political debate be hijacked by the politically correct wing of the Democratic Party.