Debate Lesson: Be Careful How You Refer to Your Opponent

It was inevitable that someone would take this moment in the last night’s Presidential debate, when John McCain sounded like my grandmother used to sound as he berated Barack Obama*:

and do what people often do with an epithet these days, which is to wear it as a badge of honour:

Which led to the inevitable T-Shirt:

Amazing how the Internets let you respond that fast. Kind of changes the rules, doesn’t it?

*She also liked to scold my father and the rest of us by saying: “You monkey!” when we did something she didn’t like, like arriving 15 minutes later than she thought we should from a car trip from Baltimore to Philadelphia.
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By David Drucker | Filed in Humour, Politics, US | October 8, 2008 3:21 pm

  1. heather — October 8, 2008 @ 3:55 pm

    my grandmother used to call us “You turkey!”. ahh… grandmothers! =)

  2. Matt — October 8, 2008 @ 4:52 pm

    I think we were always “you little devils,” or later, just “you devils.”

    By the way, Sarah Palin told me Obama hangs out with terrorists and stuff. Is that, like, [gasp] true?!? ;-)

  3. West End Bob — October 8, 2008 @ 4:59 pm

    I want one of those T-shirts.

    Very cool . . . .

  4. David Drucker — October 8, 2008 @ 5:16 pm

    Yeah, I want one too. Isn’t it interesting how The T-Shirt = The Campaign Button? I wonder when that became a given.

  5. Jan Karlsbjerg — October 9, 2008 @ 1:05 pm

    There was the “My fellow prisoners” about either Americans in general or his republican colleagues, and then this one. Both times, when I first heard that he’d made a gaffe, I was hoping he’d said “President Obama”. :-)

  6. David Drucker — October 9, 2008 @ 1:51 pm

    Ah, you mean this one:

    I was thinking of doing a separate entry on this, but it’s been covered pretty well already by the Blogosphere.

    Still it does reminds me sooo much of an old Jewish joke about a Bar Mitzvah boy: The kid reading from the Torah finishes, and instead of saying the proper cliché that he’s supposed to parrot: “Today I am a Man”, instead, he’s thinking of all the gifts he’s going to get at the party afterwards, including a really nice writing instrument – the traditional gift (this is obviously a really old joke), so the kid says “Today I am a Fountain Pen”.

    With trying to remember and use his POW experiences so close to the top of his mind, this was John McCain’s ‘Today I am a Fountain Pen’ gaffe. I don’t think it was senility; (Remember, that joke is about a 13-year old!) It was about John McCain wanting to get his prisoner experiences so vivid and powerful for his audience. And it really is a classic case of a Freudian Slip.