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Junkie
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Nasty Campaign Already? or...Looking French is now a bad thing?
Name calling and negativiy beginning more than a year before the general election? This article appeared on Spinsanity's website.
Article can be found here http://spinsanity.com
Quote:
Name-calling in the Democratic presidential race (8/8)
By Brendan Nyhan
While the candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have generally eschewed direct personal insults so far, the same can't be said for their political opponents. Senator John Kerry, D-Mass., former Vermont governor Howard Dean and Senator John Edwards, D-NC, have all been tagged with derisive nicknames and labels, ones that in Kerry's case are being repeated over and over.
On April 22, an anoymous Bush adviser told the New York Times that Kerry "looks French,” a silly insult designed to capitalize on anti-French sentiment in the wake of the Iraq war. Since then, three right-wing pundits have repeated it frequently, calling Kerry "French-looking" in nonsensical terms. Kerry's wife, Teresa Heinz, lashed back in the press, prompting James Taranto, the author of the Best of the Web Today column on Opinion Journal, the website of the Wall Street Journal editorial page, to first pick up on the phrase. In his April 24 column, he first discusses the controversy, then further down calls Kerry "French-looking," beginning a spree of 22 uses of the term that culminated in a Wall Street Journal op-ed yesterday in which he repeated it.
Radio host Rush Limbaugh has used the term multiple times as well (see commentaries from June 9, July 16, July 22 and August 5, among others). He has also introduced other variants, calling Kerry "John French", Jean Cheri and "Jean F. Cheri".
Washington Times editor Wes Pruden is the other major figure using the term. He wrote on June 20 that "You have to feel a spot of sympathy for someone who looks as French as John Kerry. But he's sometimes got a mouth like Jacques Chirac, and he leaves a lurid paper trail." In a subtle touch, Pruden then called him "The French-looking senator" in his next sentence. On July 25, he called Kerry "the French-looking pursuer of Howard Dean."
Dean has also become a target of Limbaugh, who has begun referring to him as "Nikita Dean" in a reference to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. Reacting to a Washington Post story that portrayed Dean as a fiscal conservative, Limbaugh said:
The Democrats always try to tell us that the Soviets, "well, they're just misunderstood people. I mean, they're really not our enemies, they're just afraid of us because of our nuclear arsenal." I've got a new name for Howard Dean. I'm going to call him "Nikita Dean." With the way the press is trying to position this guy, they're not going to get away with it. "Nikita Dean" from now on.
Later in the show, Limbaugh added:
He's [Dean] positioned himself so far out on the left that Vladimir Putin, the Russian president, is to the right of him. Hence the name "Nikita Dean." I mean I'll bet most of you never thought you'd see the day when the head of Russia was more supportive of capitalism, individual liberty and American foreign policy than the leading Democratic presidential candidate is, but it's the truth.
Finally, a Bush advisor labelled Edwards as the "Breck girl of politics" in the same April New York Times article where Kerry was labelled as looking French, which the Times described as "a reference to the shiny-hair model for a popular shampoo in the 1960's." The label has not been repeated very much in the political press (although Limbaugh has used it), in part due to Edwards' low standing in the polls, but is poised to come into wider use if his candidacy takes off.
Given that we're months away from the primaries and over a year from the general election, the repetitive use of nasty nicknames could indicate that the presidential campaign is going to be heavy on cheap invective.
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Huh? Instead of focusing on issues and actual dialogue, we have Bush's advisors and radio talking heads resorting to calling Democratic candidates names? What is this, a 3rd grade popularity contest to the Republicans?
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"I can normally tell how intelligent a man is by how stupid he thinks I am" - Cormac McCarthy, All The Pretty Horses
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