You Dirty, Dirty, Filthy, Rotten Piece of Politics!

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.

Biden My Time

Presidential candidate, Sen. Barack Obama, selected Sen. Joe Biden to be his running mate today, to which I say, "Meh!" What a lukewarm piece of slush of a choice.

Instead, he should have chosen Madeleine Albright as his VP, or another woman with foreign policy experience with the ability to be a graceful attack dog to his critics. He would have solidified his base with the disappointed Clinton voters and brought heft and credibility to his ticket for swing voters.

Now it is up to Sen. John McCain to do the obvious and select a woman VP for his ticket.

Obama's selection of Biden makes me question again if Obama has the political prowess to win this election.

UPDATED UPDATE: Now that John McCain picked Gov. Sarah Palin as his running-mate, I realize that I should have been more specific. By suggesting that it is the obvious choice to pick a woman, I mean someone along the lines of Olympia Snow or Kay Bailey Hutchinson. Had he picked either of them, this would be a horse race. Now it is just a sad, sad exercise to a foregone conclusion.

UPDATE: Biden accepted the nomination for VP tonight. I have to admit he has a compelling backstory. I still prefer Madeleine Albright.

Obama in North Carolina

Obama has been getting back to basics on his campaign. This is why we like him. He has great understanding and appreciation for both the lower and middle class and how important they are to the nation.



The final part of his speech is very stirring. It is almost as good as Kennedy's "Don't ask," speech.

"I would not be here were it not for the fact that somebody, somewhere stood up for me. Because one person stood up, a few more stood up. Then a thousand stood up, and then a million stood up.

"That's why Hillary Clinton can run for President. That's why I can run for President. Because somebody stood up. And the question now is: Will the Democratic Party stand up for the next generation?

"That's my Patriotism. That's what we're fighting for in this election. Those are my values. Those are your values."

He has even met with the local gay press in both North Carolina and Indiana (as did Clinton). It is the first time he has met with the local gay press in any of the states, where Clinton routinely has set down for interviews with the local gay press.

Perhaps the concerns of gay people and his lack of media exposure within the gay community finally had traction in his campaign.

I hope he is the real thing. I definitely like this Obama better than the one bogged down the last month or so in personal attacks from the Clinton and McCain campaigns.

Vested Interest

The Onion News Network reports that the Iraqi government has imposed a new 5-day waiting period for purchases of suicide vests.


In The Know: New Iraqi Law Requires Waiting Period For Suicide Vest Purchases

Do the Right Thing

The Advocate has an interesting article on San Francisco Mayor, Gavin Newsom, this month. It covers the reason he decided to allow gay marriages on February 12, 2004.

He had just returned from George Bush's inauguration in which Bush included in his speech his party's spew about the "sanctity of marriage" and protection of America from "activist" judges.

He told his staff to find a way to allow gays and lesbians to marry. They initially thought that they would marry a few couples. No one expected 4,000 couples to line up to be married in the one month that same-sex marriage was allowed in San Francisco.

The California Supreme Court is now deciding the fallout of the San Francisco marriages and whether the prohibition of marrage for same-sex couples is constitutional. The City of San Francisco is one of the parties in the combined litigation.

One of the arguments that the justices mentioned was whether the time is right to consider the question or whether gays and lesbians should be made to wait until the rest of the country catches up. Newsom's response is:

“When is the right time? There never is a right time. Mid-term congressional election? Not the right time -- we have a chance to take back the House. The next presidential election? Not the right time -- we have a chance to possibly win. It’s never the right time. We need to get over these stale arguments. If you believe in something, do it. And do it with conviction. And if you screw up, learn from it, admit your mistakes and failures, and move forward in a more thoughtful way.”

Newsom suffered political fall-out within his own party from his decision. Barack Obama asked him to throw fund raisers for him, but refused to be photographed with him in 2006 and again this election cycle. Other Democrats did much the same and worse following the 2004 marriages. Hillary Clinton is one of the few Democrats to have had pictures taken with Gavin Newsom.

It appears to gays and lesbians that Democrats think that they are fine for fund-raising, but they don't want to take any political risk where gay and lesbian issues are concerned. In demonstration of their lack of competence of gay and lesbian issues, they were shocked at the backlash from the LGBT community when the House passed a bill to extend the definition of hate crimes to include gays, lesbians and bisexuals, but not transgendered persons.

Barney Frank, the gay Congressman who sponsored the bill, felt that getting the vote through on 3 of the 4 groups was progress. It was politics over substance and the LGBT community knew it. There was no way the bill would get approved by the Senate nor signed by the President. It was a meaningless gesture and that was spoiled by Frank's and the Democratic majority's willingness to throw the transgender community to the wolves.

What the LGBT community understood was that it was another example of Democrats' political expediency by offering a meaningless bone to the community before a election fundraisers began. It would have been better to do nothing than to try to split the LGBT community's unity.

It is ironic that Republicans can stubbornly stand by their principles, at least on social issues, but Democrats continue to be moral cowards. Both Clinton and Obama do not support gay marriage equality for the LGBT community. They haven't the political cojones to deliver on what they profess to be one of the chief principles of their party: equality for minority groups.

Even as Obama talked about racial issues this past week, I couldn't overlook his moral cowardice on gay issues. It sounds hauntingly familiar to his fear of being photographed with Gavin Newsom.

Obama has never appeared at gay functions, so far as I can find. I can't think of a single photograph with him and any group of gay people. Instead, he sends his staff to talk to the gay community. He never addresses the community directly.

He claims to be supportive of gay rights. His campaign policies are perhaps a tad better than Clinton's. But is it just talk? With the Rev. Wright debate this past fortnight, gays and lesbians are reminded that most black churches have not been supportive of gays and lesbians, much less their rights.

In contrast, while Clinton doesn't support full gay marriage, she often appears with gay people and at gay functions. There isn't that nagging question of moral cowardice as with Obama, except on the gay marriage issue alone. She is politically expedient, but she has always been there to support gay rights in the Senate in every other respect. That is why gays and lesbians have continued to support Clinton over Obama even if we wished she had the cojones to support gay marriage.

All the more reason to enjoy the refreshing breeze from someone like Gavin Newsom who believes in doing the right thing because it is the right thing to do. How sad it is that it used to be the rule instead of the exception in the American polity.