{"id":4756,"date":"2008-09-02T10:24:11","date_gmt":"2008-09-02T17:43:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.amptoons.com\/blog\/archives\/2008\/09\/02\/so-patriotic-he-can-do-unpatriotic-things\/"},"modified":"2008-09-02T10:24:11","modified_gmt":"2008-09-02T17:43:59","slug":"so-patriotic-he-can-do-unpatriotic-things","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=4756","title":{"rendered":"So patriotic he can do unpatriotic things!"},"content":{"rendered":"

So … there’s been a lot<\/a> of<\/a> discussion<\/a> lately<\/a> of what the likely press\/blogosphere\/echo-chamber response would have been if the Obamas had a daughter who was in the same situation as Bristol Palin. Of course it would be a gigantic disaster, of course it would be deeply racist, and of course there would be legions of talking heads solemnly explaining why attacking a teenage girl personally is totally<\/em> relevant see it goes to judgment and leadership and … and … and …<\/p>\n

Anyway. I’m in agreement with virtually everyone on the left that this is bullshit and that Bristol needs to be left alone, but I actually wanted to play the same kind of thought experiment on a slightly different topic:<\/p>\n

Can anyone imagine what the response would be if Barack Obama nominated a Vice President who’d belonged to a radical secessionist party?<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I mean, John McCain has been playing cutesy games impugning Obama’s patriotism (based on fuck-all<\/em>) anyhow … what if there had been an actual reason? Can anyone imagine that it would mean anything except the end of the Obama candidacy?<\/p>\n

But somehow, when John Mccain does it, it’s okay. The usual commenters on the right who would be declaring anone else a worthless no-good un-American un-patriotic traitor are silent. Is this an ‘only Nixon can go to China’ kind of thing? Is McCain’s patriotism so assumed<\/em> that it won’t be questioned even when he does something that is actually and literally un-American?<\/p>\n

The thing to keep in mind about the phrase ‘only Nixon can go to China’ is why<\/em>. Only Nixon could engage China diplomatically because if anyone to his left had done it, he would have seen to it that that person was smeared as a soft-on-communism appeaser, if not a closet communist himself. And Nixon could rest assured that the national press would have aided and abetted this characteriation of his enemies. The same thing is true here.<\/p>\n

John McCain has no problem nominating a radical extremist with ties to secessionist groups, because he knows that he’s the only one who could get away with it. Once again, it’s okay if you’re a Republican.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So … there’s been a lot of discussion lately of what the likely press\/blogosphere\/echo-chamber response would have been if the Obamas had a daughter who was in the same situation as Bristol Palin. Of course it would be a gigantic … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[92],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-whatever"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4756\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}