Learning to tiptoe

Taking each one of these situations separately and either in or out of context, two things immediately come to mind. First, each of the comments promotes a wince and a strong knowledge that it wouldn't be well-accepted. Second, each comment might have had an element of truth, but any attempt at making a point was totally lost in the relative strength or lack of tact in the words. Pundits on the left and right consistently get away with such comments. Politicians running for or trying to keep their public offices don't survive and neither do their respective staffers, their relatives, acquaintances or friends. For a society that says it values truth, honesty, and straight-forwardness, it really doesn't. Not all comments made in anger or in passion are true, of course, but sometimes they represent an element of truth or a version of it for the persons who spoke them and probably for the rest of us.

Barack's advisor's tagging of Hillary as a monster is certainly extreme and maybe inaccurate but Hillary has been lampooned and even championed on SNL as a "bitch" no less. And while she may be neither a monster nor a bitch, no reasonable person would ever call her a "cream puff". Besides, who wants a cream puff as president anyway?

Geraldine beat up on herself first in her comments about Hillary and Barack. No matter. Her comments stating that sex and race have anything remotely to do with candidacy are immediately considered racist and sexist. Interestingly, stating the obvious fact that only white protestant men would have been slated by a major party, let alone elected, even fifty years ago is beside the point.

Trent Lott's comments came at a gathering for someone whose policies and ideas should have died out and lost favor long ago. Even Strom would have acknowledged that his past thinking was wrong. But apparently not even the good deeds of people considered to be bad can be lauded. Saying nice things about an old segregationist at his birthday party is and was political suicide.

Rev. Wright compared American policies and actions of the past, Hiroshima, and the present, Palestine, to those of the jihadist tactics of al-Qaida. Using that comparison today is every bit as incendiary as comparing the United States to Nazi Germany. However, those comments, as historically inaccurate as they may be, do tend to remind us that the US has not always acted with brotherly understanding and Christian kindness. Even forgetting recent policies, one doesn't have to travel very far back in time to find chapters involving officially sanctioned mistreatment of African as well as Native Americans. In addition, for a particularly enlightening look at official land-grabbing racism, check out the history of our 50th State. But regardless of the fact that this theme was taken only by Barack's old minister, the Senator is still doing a lot of damage control.

Therefore, faced with the alternatives of being fired, losing an election, or social banishment, the hypocrisy will continue. Last week, John McCain actually shook George Bush's hand. Sugar-coating, tiptoeing around the truth, brown-nosing, and manure spreading outside the confines of agriculture will continue to be popular pastimes for the successful and upwardly mobile in all arenas, especially politics, while the truth will certainly continue to set the truthful free...and adrift.