Faux Outrage: A Brief Observation

crossposted from MY LEFT WING

I’ll be brief:

Here’s another thing that drives me up the wall:

When one side rears its ugly head and demands that the other side, for instance, “DENOUNCE that supporter of yours!”

Politically, it’s just about as disingenuous as we can get, whoever does it. Because let’s face it: we get a helluva lot more political mileage out of someone NOT denouncing his outrageous supporter (say, McCain and Hagee/Parsley?) than out of his capitulation to the “pressure.”

The “faux” line is crossed when we demand the denunciation; if we were being truly honest we’d admit (at the very least among ourselves) that we’d be a lot happier, and the better it is for us — politically — the longer someone like McCain refuses to acknowledge the big fat oozing pustule of scandalous embarrassment.

That’s faux outrage — the crossing of the line between saying, “Hey, look at this guy’s crazy supporters, can you believe the kind of people he WANTS in his camp?” and vociferously denouncing him for his lack of denunciation. Hell, the air goes out of the balloon if he denounces — we WANT him to stick by his racist, sexist, homophobic, batshit crazy team. And anyone who says differently is kidding herself or lying.