Feminization

It's started already: the attempted feminization of Barack Obama.  The GOP smear machine and its fellow travelers in the mainstream media are already spreading the meme that Obama is a girly man. An insufficiently masculine (and therefore insufficiently American) male.  An effete, effeminate pretty boy who isn't tough enough to cope with America's adversaries.  A genderless alien.

Exhibit 1: Huckabee jokes about how  scared Obama would be if someone pointed a gun his way.  See, he's a nervous nellie, a wimp.  And of course sometimes a gun barrel is just a gun barrel, but the sexual connotations  of Obama diving for the floor, ass up, when confronted with a phallic weapon (presumably wielded by a Real American Man) are undeniably there.

Exhibit 2: Obama gives a speech criticizing McCain's foreign policy; McCain fires back, labeling it an "hysterical diatribe."  The female-specific roots of the word "hysterical" are obvious.

Exhibit 3: An truly repellent editorial today in the Washington Post by the white supremicist Kathleen Parker all but accuses Obama of being a cross-dressing faggot:

Well, at least they didn't kiss.

I was bracing myself for the lip lock Wednesday when John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama.

*  *  *

. . . the two men exchanged a manly air-hug to commemorate the moment . . .

*  *  *

Obama and Edwards make an attractive picture -- Ultra Brite cover boys of youth and glamour united against old men (and women) who worship the status quo. Obama -- the man who makes Chris Matthews feel a thrill up his leg -- wants to "do the Lord's work," lately pictured in front of a cross illuminated with vanity lights on a flier aimed at Kentucky voters, while Edwards wants to roll out the catapults and nuke the Coliseum.

*  *  *

Obama and Edwards look and talk pretty, but Clinton, unflinching and steely, exudes pure brawn. When the time comes to sit across from the likes of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a chill in the heart may beat a thrill up the leg.

There will be many more examples, I have no doubt--this is just what came down in the last 24 hours.  I doubt that's a coincidence; the GOP frat-boy attack network is disciplined and on-message.  I wrote about this almost a year ago, and it's still going on:

As documented in Stephen Ducat's book The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity, the GOP has molded itself as the Party of Men.   The Party of Men fears and loathes the feminine. The worst insults it can come up with when describing the Democrats generally are coded representations of femininity--think of the right's obsession with John Edwards' hair and sexuality, little Mike Dukakis riding in that tank, John Kerry looking French, and Bill Clinton's pre-Monica caricature as a pussy-whipped girly-man.   As Greenwald might say, this mindset is similar to that of the Cool Kids in high school, casually and cruelly labeling the guys who aren't in their little group as fags.

When you can't win on issues, judgment or character, try testosterone.  This is part of what Obama calls the politics of distraction, but it's actually far more subtle and difficult to deflect than chatter about flag pins and sweetie comments.  I hope Obama is smart enough to figure out how to prevent his own wussification.