By Julia Keller
It used to be the exclusive tool of fed-up assistant principals, ticked-off piano teachers and stressed-out parents dealing with a naughty toddler.
Yet shame — that delicate lace doily of a word, that antiquarian insult — has been showing up in the Democratic presidential primary campaign.
Both candidates have readily employed the rhetorical formulation of "shaming" her or his opponent during public addresses. And while shame is a venerable concept in child-rearing manuals and literary criticism, somehow it sounds different when declaimed from a stage before multitudes. It sounds rather prim and fussy and effete. It sounds almost Victorian.
Earlier this week, Sen. Barack Obama, irritated at Sen. Hillary Clinton's continued references to his alleged elitism, declared, "Shame on her. Shame on her. She knows better," at a rally in Pennsylvania. He was not the first, however, to play the shame card. In February, Clinton's anger at Obama's depiction of her health-care plan in mailings to Ohio voters culminated in this: "Shame on you, Barack Obama."
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Comments
I don't know if I am getting a political column here or a polemical column. If it is a political column, it sure is a pointless column. It is a better polemic, though some what irrelevant. It is another harmlessly disguised attack on one candidate or the other, with no constructive comments, what so ever. Where are the issues to be debated that affect our every day life? Health insurance, the Occupation of Iraq, the national debt, the national disgrace in our White House, these are what should be covering your blog for readers' comments!!! One can only hope!!1
SUPPORT OUR TROOPS, BRING THEM HOME, ALIVE. NOW.
Posted by: Don Fitzgerald, Chicago | April 17, 2008 1:55 PM
Don't worry about Don, Julia--he's in the bag against HIlary regardless if it means voting Indy to let McCain win.
My favorite piece of yours EVER was about Dennis Rodman being an alpha wolf inviting us to play?
Anyway.
Hilary was right to 'shame' Barack for reviving a play right outta the Republican's playbook last time we tried reforming health care delivery.
(And Barack says INSURANCE but Hilary says CARE--like John Edwards)
But Barack was trying to take a woman down a notch for being outside of her 'proper feminine role' ala in Muslim cultures like the one he experiened in his former years, ala the post world war 2 generation (grandma worked but it seems a little like Phyllis Schafly--kinda llike Michelle calling out women to 'tend their homes' while she's out working and getting day care, etc.).
But today he went beyond 'shaming' and engaged in a hardly victorian childish display in which he fingered HIlary Clinton--he mentioned her name, paused, and rubbed his face with his middle finger.
Then he flipped 'her' or things that helped 'her' off his shoulder, and got imaginary dog poop off his show--equating her with poop.
Wow. All in one 'speech'--not really what you'd call statesmanlike--I'm looking for the right words to describe it.
Posted by: sexist and piggy too | April 17, 2008 11:06 PM