Remember when, day after day, week after week, Karl Rove made Al Gore -- brilliant, far-sighted, truthtelling Al Gore -- into a liar and an exaggerator?
By the last weeks of the campaign of 2000, even though I knew it was all right-wing propaganda, I cringed every time I heard Gore say anything that could be misinterpreted as an exaggeration. I came to associate this longtime public servant, this complicated person, with the baseless attacks on him. They had just come so relentlessly, that the neural pathways in my brain locked me into a loop that I did not even believe.
Then came 2004. That time I was more savvy. I recognized it when it started. There was a week when every day the Bush campaign repeated the word "flip-flop." The substance of the issue shifted daily, even hourly, but the word always came with it. Every spokesperson, every press release, used it. And soon the media was discussing it, with creased brows. Trying to be fair-minded, challenging the assumptions, but discussing it, using the word. Within a month or so, about the time of the Democratic Convention, John Kerry, who had stayed resolute in his opposition to the Vietnam War, who had served in the Senate for so many years, who spoke commandingly and comprehensively in the debates on the issues facing this country, had been tagged: flip-flopper. I didn't buy it, but I heard my brain echo it every time I saw his face or heard his voice.
Now they have determined the characterization of Obama that (they think) will win the election for McCain. Rove has been brought back, and you can practically taste his icky presence on the back of your tongue (sorry for the image). It's in the air: the man with flesh-colored hair is back. What will he force us to associate with Obama, even though it has absolutely NO relation to any evidence?
This time watch for two words: presumptuous, arrogant. This, about a politician who has shown a rare ability to listen, to synthesize, to talk directly to people without condescending to them. Who has worked the gritty church basements of South Side Chicago, came from nowhere through the sheer strength of his mind and openness of his heart (read his books and tell me he is not forthcoming and open), a man who speaks often of the many people he admires, the writers he reads, the achievements of others.
It doesn't matter that the assertion is patently false: Rove, McCain, et al, have their theme. Their meme. And it will be repeated every day until November. Prepare yourself, it's going to be very, very irritating. I'm going to try not to let them into my head this time, not even as an echo. Maybe the third time's a charm? Can we beat this neurological assault?
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