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

6 Comments to “Debate Lesson: Be Careful How You Refer to Your Opponent”

  1. Avatarheather
    Posted: Oct 8th, 2008 at 3:55 pm
    1

    my grand­mother used to call us “You turkey!”. ahh… grandmothers! =)
  2. AvatarMatt
    Posted: Oct 8th, 2008 at 4:52 pm
    2

    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. AvatarWest End Bob
    Posted: Oct 8th, 2008 at 4:59 pm
    3

    I want one of those T-shirts.

    Very cool .…
  4. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Oct 8th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
    4
    Author Comment

    Yeah, I want one too. Isn’t it inter­est­ing how The T-Shirt = The Cam­paign But­ton? I won­der when that became a given.
  5. AvatarJan Karlsbjerg
    Posted: Oct 9th, 2008 at 1:05 pm
    5

    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. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Oct 9th, 2008 at 1:51 pm
    6
    Author Comment

    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.
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