The appropriate use of "faggot"

From the "he didn't just put it that way, did he?" department we have Matt Stoller (MyDD :: Direct Democracy for People-Powered Politics) outraged by Coulter referring to Edwards as a "faggot". The thing that seems to bother Stoller is that Coulter called Edwards a "faggot":

Anyway, one thing to keep in mind, aside from the conservative uncoolness, is that she called a major Democratic candidate a faggot. Ok, she's an entertainer, so whatever. But keep in mind that prior to her appearance, most major Republican Presidential candidates appeared on the stage to make appeals to the audience. I wonder if they support Coulter's statement. Do they think it's appropriate to call John Edwards a faggot?

Well, this raises the question of whether Stoller thinks it is appropriate to call anyone (including a gay person) a faggot? Whether the person is a major Democratic candidate is irrelevant. The issue here is not what Edwards was called, but that someone used the term "faggot". Surely Stoller can see that?

The irresponsibility of people

As he unleashed dictatorial terror in Chile, Kissinger remarked that he didn't see why "we should have to stand by and let a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people". Kissinger was no liberal, but it is not difficult to find eager proponents among liberals of the idea of limiting the options available to the people, as evidenced by the character assassination of Dennis Kucinich by elements of the "netroots" (see entries in this blog for examples). Speaking about a Marine pilot who wrote with perverse glee at the killing of civilians in Iraq, Matt Taibbi (AlterNet: Why Can't We Talk about Peace in Public?) writes:

I believe that Marine pilot is driven by the same forces that render the presidential candidacy of someone like Dennis Kucinich impossible in America. A country that feeds itself through the manufacture of war technology is bound to view peace, nonviolence and mercy as seditious concepts. It will create policies first and then people to fit its machines, finding wars to fight and creating killers to fight them. If that's true of us, and I think it is, our troubles won't be over even if someone brings the Iraq war to an end. We'll be treating the symptom and not the disease. And the reason our elections are a sham is that the disease is never on the table. Excepting the occasional Kucinich, no one in either party is interested in trying to change who we are, no matter how sick we become.

The "new progressives" may not find Kucinich's ideas of peace seditious, but they are on record with the more amusing claim that these ideas are "New Age pap". The Iraq war and winning elections, and setting the right "frame" in pursuit of these goals, are the limits of this new pragmatism, and what is good for the goose should suffice for the people.

An embarassment of cliches

As is the case with teenagers of all ages, a MissLaura (Daily Kos: The Two Faces of Dennis Kucinich) is embarrassed by the expressions of adults. The particular bit from Kucinich that turns her pink with shame:

"Fear," he said, causes us to be "disconnected from our ability to make peace with our brothers and sisters" and stunts our spiritual, emotional, and social growth.

If this is fodder for embarrassment, one fears the worst if and when MissLaura encounters orators such as Gandhi or Martin Luther King! For a generation of online activists that came of age during (and as part of) the Dean debacle, this is rather surprising sensitivity! Or is such sensitivity the result of the scream that displaced Munch's creation in popularity?

And if Kucinich's sort of clear communication is "New Age pap" the opposite of that must be high erudition and we are offered some examples:

He was effective at answering right-wing frames, as when asked about the financial burdens of social programs.

Frames, in case you are not yet in receipt of your Journal of Bad Pomo, 2006 edition, is the new buzz word, the new "paradigm". As Georges Seurat might have said, it's all about the frames and you put the monkeys in the right frame and they ring the right bell, or rather pull the right lever. The opposite of New Age indeed.

Here is another one:

There is a significant role for such issue-oriented candidates and campaigns.

Alas this reassuring promise, that such old fashioned ideas as "issues" still have a significant role, is a fleeting one. The question arises immediately:

With long-shot candidates, though, the fundamental question is what role they fill in the race as a whole.

Every line provides further relief from New Age pap. The above for instance educates us that the fundamental question with regard to candidates is what role they play in a race. This perhaps will be taught to future generations as the "Democracy as a Race" Frame. And when poor old Kucinich is evaluated using this hard-nosed criteria, he is found much wanting, due to the alleged conviction he holds that "he can win". This makes Kucinich a "candidate-centered" ... candidate? Just like the others we suppose, who are less susceptible to such criticism, for they spout less New Age pap (and more "my God is an awesome God" analysis), and enjoy lesser disadvantages:

That being the case, the effectiveness of his individual advocacy, the New Agey stuff, his height, all become relevant - because he's made it about him.

So, let us follow this logic to its natural end. Hillary Clinton is clearly out too, for she is a "candidate-centered" candidate who has made it about herself, and her gender becomes relevant. Obama? Candidate centered. Out: because his half-blackness becomes relevant. And so on.

(There is, one might as well add, no evidence provided to sustain the claim that Kucinich has "made it about him[self]").

When Nader ran for President, among the various complaints against him was that he could have done it within the process. Participated in the Democratic primaries. The hollowness of such pleas is made obvious by the treatment of Kucinich, exemplified by the above.