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The Atlantic - "'Harvard' Is Now Code for 'Effeminate' - GOP Suggests Obama Is Girlie

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TomCADem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-30-11 11:14 PM
Original message
The Atlantic - "'Harvard' Is Now Code for 'Effeminate' - GOP Suggests Obama Is Girlie
Here are the Republicans trying to out-macho each other by bragging about how they would not withdrawl from Afganistan against their General's advice. Still, notwithstanding the fact that most Americans are leary about staying in Afganistan, people tend to blame Democrats and Give Republicans a free pass, thus Republicans can brag about how they would start a war in Iran and remain in Afganistan indefinitely because it sounds so darn macho that you just have to vote for them or at least not vote for President Obama.

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/2011/08/harvard-now-code-effeminate/41901/


Harvard grad Mitt Romney took a shot at President Obama's foreign policy for being too ideologically compatible with "that Harvard faculty lounge." Romney must not have hated the faculty too much -- he graduated cum laude from Harvard Law School and in the top five percent of his class from Harvard Business School. It's tricky running a campaign knocking your opponent for being a well-educated rich person when you are also a well-educated rich person. So what can Romney do? Call Obama effeminate.

Speaking before the Veterans of Foreign Wars' national conference Tuesday, Romney accused Obama of basing his military strategy on the ideas of professors instead of generals. Despite seeming a bit isolationist in a primary debate earlier this summer -- "Our troops shouldn't go off and try and fight a war of independence for another nation. Only the Afghanis can win Afghanistan's independence from the Taliban" -- Romney attacked Obama's withdrawal plan, saying, "the President has chosen to disregard the counsel of the generals on the ground. I don't know of a single military advisor to President Obama who recommended the withdrawal plan the President chose..." And he condemned proposed cuts to the Pentagon budget as based on the idea that "America should become a lesser power." Romney continues:

It flows from the conviction that if we are weak, tyrants will choose to be weak as well; that if we could just talk more, engage more, pass more U.N. resolutions, that peace will break out. That may be what they think in that Harvard faculty lounge, but it’s not what they know on the battlefield!

It's not that Obama went to Harvard -- it's that he would trust sissy professors over kickass Army warriors. Romney mocked Obama for vacationing on Martha's Vineyard, even though Romney himself was holding a fundraiser there. He's attacked Democrats for advocating "class warfare like some members of the administration want to do." So again, it's not about the money. It's about being a weak girly man. Remember how Sarah Palin's condemnation of "elites" often had a weird sexual undertone--"impotent, limp and gutless reporters"? In this class tension adapted for the campaign trail, there's a slight but discernible undercurrent of very heteronormative schoolyard jeering.

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TwilightGardener Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-30-11 11:21 PM
Response to Original message
1. This is ineffective. For a charge to stick, there has to be at least a little truth to it--
Edited on Tue Aug-30-11 11:22 PM by TwilightGardener
nothing about Obama's foreign policy or conduct of war suggests "Harvard faculty lounge" or anything effeminate. It sounds like they're using the same BS they used against him in 2008, as if he hadn't been President the last two/three years.
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bluestateguy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-30-11 11:22 PM
Response to Original message
2. I guess Teddy Roosevelt (Harvard 1880) was effeminate too
And Obama got Osama.

Mitt Romney's foreign policy experience is confined to being the mop-up man for the corruption riddled Olympics in Utah.
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no_hypocrisy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-31-11 06:57 AM
Response to Reply #2
13. And the Federalists' hero, John Adams, had a scholarship to Harvard.
Edited on Wed Aug-31-11 06:58 AM by no_hypocrisy
Even * did his MBA there.
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drakonyx Donating Member (191 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-30-11 11:23 PM
Response to Original message
3. Shades of the Governator?
Didn't Arnold Schwarzenegger try the "girlie men" tactic a few years back?
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TomCADem Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-30-11 11:32 PM
Response to Reply #3
4. Yup, and pretty effectively against Gov. Gray Davis.
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drm604 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-30-11 11:43 PM
Response to Original message
5. So that's now the test for good policy?
Why hold elections? Let's just quiz the faculty at Harvard and do the opposite of what they suggest.

I have a better suggestion. Let's judge a policy on it's merits regardless of what they think of it in the Harvard faculty lounge.
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dkf Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Tue Aug-30-11 11:49 PM
Response to Original message
6. Lol well arent we calling Romney "weird"?
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divine_truine Donating Member (149 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-31-11 12:12 AM
Response to Reply #6
7. he is weird! i can't stand looking at him or hearing his whiney fake platitudes!
The repuke teabagger party, flat earth, anti-everything, apostolic dominionists a$$hole$, know not the difference between reality & fantasy. Vote Progressive Democrat all the way in 2012!

You are a serious dumbfuck if you vote for some POS republican who promises seniors/ ss recipients they will.dismantle social security & medicare (& turn it into a 'voucher' system? Are seniors really buying this phony fiscal conservative bullcrap? For their sake I hope they are not!)

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Kalidurga Donating Member (627 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-31-11 12:57 AM
Response to Reply #7
8. let me get this straight
Mitt (the hair) Romney is calling another man girlie? He is calling Obama out for attending Harvard??? Yeah Romney is weird..
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saras Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-31-11 01:17 AM
Response to Original message
9. The entire idea that "effeminate = inferior" is epic fail on the lines of "flat earth"
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
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Safetykitten Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-31-11 01:19 AM
Response to Original message
10. If Harvard is "girlie", what is Dartmouth? Just wondering.
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provis99 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-31-11 01:49 AM
Response to Original message
11. but Yale, where Dim Son went, is a land of machomen?
and I see Romney is indulging in a hell of a lot of projectionism...
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MadHound Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-31-11 06:16 AM
Response to Original message
12. No, Harvard is code for "intellectual"
And intelligence, intellectuals have been demonized in this country for at least a century, to some extent or another. Intelligence, education used to be respected, but over the past six decades it has also become synonymous with weak, effeminate, out of touch, not practical, etc. etc.

This country no longer values intelligence. That is why "Harvard" is an insult in many peoples' eyes.
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deutsey Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-31-11 07:44 AM
Response to Reply #12
15. Bingo
You hit the nail right on the head.

Around 2005 or so I remember hearing a kid who was probably in middle school proudly tell his friend that he didn't read because reading was gay. Nice to see those family values being passed on to a new generation. :evilfrown:
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JoePhilly Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Wed Aug-31-11 07:11 AM
Response to Original message
14. Hey Romney ... let's ask Osama Bin Laden ... opps, we can't ... he's DEAD!!
Game over.
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