Oh, Politics. What is it about you that attracts mudslinging? Do you think it flatters your dirty, rotten slut of a face? Or does the mud appeal to your hermaphroditic character? Two bits and you're anyone's, really.
Lest we think that dirty politics, replete with racism, misogyny and homophobia, originated with our political generation, it turns out that the art of Rovian political slurs has been around as long as the republic.
CNN has this
piece on the dirty campaign between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson in 1800 and the even more vitriolic campaign of 1828 between John Quincy Adams and Andrew Jackson .
Racial slurs were used against Jefferson, about whom, it was suggested, had both American Indian and African American heritage. In fact, they used the "S" word to describe his "half-breed" mother.
In turn, Jefferson said that Adams had a hermaphroditic personality and, worse yet, that he lacked the better qualities of either gender, despite his sexually ambiguous character. That just got things rolling with both sides casting aspersions on the other.
Even Martha Washington climbed into the mud-wrestling pit, stating that Jefferson was, really, just the
worst type of person. Clearly, she did not have a firm handle on the art of the slur.
By 1828, things were no better. Mud was slung with vitriol in this presidential race. John Quincy Adams, President Adams son, was called a pimp. He, in turn, called Andrew Jackson's wife a slut.
To be fair, that probably wasn't entirely mud. In fact, Jackson should have known better than play the sexual morality card.
For the time, Rachel Jackson was a big ol'
tart. She left or was thrown out by her first husband in 1788 and moved in with relatives. She eventually moved in with Jackson around 1790. The couple claimed that they were married in 1791 although no record of it exists.
Her first husband filed for a divorce in 1792 on the grounds of desertion, which was granted in 1793. Andrew and Rachel then married "again" in 1794. That means that the two most likely "lived in sin" for four years, or were bigamists for three.
Mudslinging or not, Q wasn't above using it to his political advantage in the hotly contested race. "Ought a convicted adulteress and her paramour husband to be placed in the highest offices of this free and Christian land?" It's mud that would bring a tear to Karl Rove's eye.
John Quincy Adam's campaign went further stating that Jackson's mother was a prostitute brought to America by the British military to service the enlisted men.
Oh, snap, bitch! Apparently, she wasn't good enough for the British officers.
Who knew that illegal immigration was an issue back then? Q's campaign also intimated that Jackson's racial heritage was less than "pure" on his father's side.
In the end, the voters could connect to Jackson, while they felt that Adams was elitist, what with his fancy education and trip around Europe, none of which Jackson enjoyed.
Plus, the voters felt cheated in the previous election when Jackson won the popular vote, but lost the electoral college vote. Jackson won the 1828 election.
Scoring
Points to the elitist Jefferson for using wit with his mud-slinging, even if the bulk of the largely illiterate voters had no idea what a hermaphrodite was. Only he could have come up with the idea that Adams had a "hideous hermaphroditical character, which has neither the force and firmness of a man, nor the gentleness and sensibility of a woman."
Oscar Wilde couldn't have done better. He implies that Adams is homosexual without actually saying so. To further solidify his claim to dirty politics king, he managed to use a misogynistic stereotype that withstood the test of time.
John Quincy Adams also deserves a shout out. His prissy, bitchy slur about Jackson's mother is pure poetry made of mud. It wasn't enough that she was a sex worker, no, she was a
common sex worker, throwing social class about in a theretofore-presumed classless society.
It brings a tear to one's eye to see what a "Christian nation" can do when it puts its mind to it. Misogyny, racism and homophobia have been slung about since the beginning. We've come so far only to find ourselves back where we began.
Although I've been "Auf'd" from San Francisco's city limits, I still love the city. Today I finally found my favorite story that describes San Francisco's uniqueness.
