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Wednesday, September 03, 2008

Let's talk about sex.

The most unlikely power sent us all back -kicking and screaming- to our old schoolyard. Thanks to an impossible faux-pas by the McCain camp, we all now know that a certain 17 year-old is knocked up by a less-than-recommendable boyfriend. We were also informed that there will be a wedding. To make things worse, no date is set (yet).

Almost immediately, Obama came out saying that “family, and especially children are off-limits”. The idea was to show that Obama is a real gentleman, and a bundle of good manners. Or it could just be that Obama really, really does not want to talk about abortion, and avoiding taking a stand like the plague.

Now, as when I was 15, I still hate personal gossip. Back then, I could not care a less for who was sleeping with who, or even more intimate details. Somehow, I was always disgusted by unrequested information, so common at the schoolyard. Privacy is privacy is privacy.

However, this is not the moment to act as if we all are part of some Victorian drama.

Obama should –and he somehow must- address the fact that the other ticket CERTAINLY care way too much about other peoples lives. They do not accept abortion, something so easy as sex-ed, and not to mention, basic scientific facts in schools. This means that they put their ideology above the majority’s right to have access to a good education. Or worse, they care too much about mi vagina...

Obama lost the opportunity to lament, the awful way the leaders of the republican political party outed a young girl, making her (insert any virgin-sacrifice analogy here) the table-talk of the whole world. And no one somewhat rational can buy their claim that they did so because they were pressured by “rumours on the Internet”.

Of course, pointing fingers at real subject matters, and therefore putting himself as a person ready to defend the hard-won rights is not recommendable to win this election. But hey, when will it be?

2 comments:

That said, I don't think that Obama's got much to gain from this controversy. If his campaign used it to denounce the Republicans, it would completely backlash. After all, Palin was chosen not because of gynecological, but ideological (and telegenic) reasons. They're trying to make McCain palatable to a group of people that after 8 years of no real change feel completely disaffected from the Republicans : the mega-church going, mall-shopping, suburban evangelical Right, a -frankly- quite diverse crowd that would only come together to defend stuff like... kids getting married real young and having babies, which is something that is not at all uncommon in this country, and that is perpetually pathologized by the "enlightened" pill-taking liberals...Bon bref, Obama did the politically-savvy thing to do.

However, this country's stupid-ass "mainstream media" (read corporate mouthpieces) have totally played into the McCain strategy. All the coverage that has been given to Palin's daughter only reinforces his choice. You can see that in the change in tone over the past day.

All the while, there is no airtime for the real news: activists and other people getting harassed and brutally beaten up in St Paul, as well as the arrest of the few reporters that actually are doing their job and telling the world what is really happening in the RNC, and not simply relaying the messages that the GOP wants to disseminate.