In my frustration that we were event talking about birth control at all, I missed how completely sure those mythical “some Democrats” and “even the liberal media’s” Howard Kurtz thought for sureObama should capitulate to the bishops in order to secure the votes of … stuff:
Last week, even Democrats were nervous the White House was screwing the decision up. “Why aren’t we messaging this better?,” Sen. Barbara Mikulski demanded of President Obama’s campaign manager, Politico reported. Republican National Committee spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski sounded triumphant February 9, tellingABC News, “The reality is Democrats are starting to break from the president because he overstepped on a fundamental right we all believe in whether we are women, men, Republican or Democrat.” The Daily Beast’sHoward Kurtz declared his own colleague Andrew Sullivan “wrong” for arguing that the contraception debate would help President Obama in the longterm. “The White House gotkilled on this issue last week,” Kurtz said emphatically February 13. It was “a losing issue.”
If Kurtz meant “losing” the sense that“Republicans have become a national joke” and“Darryl Issa being a fuckstick is now an actual meme” and “seriously, you guys, the aspirin joke even my grandmother thought was oldsauce,” then yes, Democrats were losing horribly.
I know there’s no amount of being wrong about politics that can get you fired from being a political commentator so long as you continue to slap your byline on the table, but can we at least get together on the idea that one should understand what politics IS and that sometimes it involves standing back and letting your opponents fall dick-first into the bees’ nest?
Kurtz went on to say Obama was “losing the culture wars” and I have to say, I can’t fucking WAIT for everybody who was old enough to get media boners over Bill Clinton’s sex life to fucking retire already, because if there’s one surefire way for Obama to lose the culture wars, it’s to fucking HAVE the culture wars at all. We are sick of the culture wars, out here. We are done. We don’t have time to worry about other people’s abortions. We do not give a shit who you love. We cannot fathom why we have to keep talking about how the pill is a thing, like we’re our mothers and have to attach maxi pads to fucking belts.
I’m not saying Obama should do nothing, any more than I agree with Kurtz that he should wade into this fight and find a way to surrender. It’s not having “the culture wars” to promote and defend common-sense healthcare for women. It’s not having “the culture wars” to sign legislation saying if you want to die for your country we really don’t care who you fuck. It’s not having “the culture wars” to not lose one’s damn mind every time a girl wears a low-cut top on TV and it’s not having “the culture wars” to refrain from using every moment at the presidential podium doing anything BUT denouncing hip-hop lyrics and talking about how ladies these days are such sluts.
The best way to win the culture wars is to just do the stuff that makes sense, and let others scream “culture war” and “God, guns and gays” and let accomodationist morons like Kurtz blither all over TV that Obama is sure to lose the presidential election in 1988. Out here in 2012, we’ll be getting back to work.
A.