This weekend, tragedy struck in Wisconsin as a stupid, hateful gunman targeted a Sikh temple just before Sunday services, killing half a dozen people before being shot himself. And in response, Mitt Romney, Presidential candidate, possible future leader of the entire free world, extended his heartfelt condolences to those poor “sheikhs.” Jesus Lawrence of Arabia Christ.
I was in Chicago earlier today. We had a moment of silence in honor of the people who lost their lives at that sheikh temple. I noted that it was a tragedy for many, many reasons. Among them are the fact that people, the sheikh people are among the most peaceable and loving individuals you can imagine, as is their faith.
Mitt Romney is not a stupid man. He went to Harvard, he was a very successful businessman, he championed the idea of the individual mandate in Massachusetts’ version of the Affordable Care Act when he was the governor. His campaign spokesman defended the incredibly unfortunate slip of the tongue by claiming that it had been a long day, and Mitt Romney was tired. But maybe Romney’s seeming lack of knowledge about which group of brown people suffered recent tragedy was another calculated move to showcase his manliness.
Romney’s lousy with women. And I don’t mean “lousy with” like, “he has many wives.” I mean “lousy” as in “terrible” as in “Florida, Pennsylvania, and Ohio ladies prefer Barack Obama over Mitt Romney by a double digit margin.” So it stands to reason that Romney’s best strategy at this point would be to come right out and appeal to only manly, manly men. Manly men who don’t need feminine accurate pronunciations; men who can just stand behind podiums and make sounds and expect that their manly, manly audience will know to trust their gut that Romney knows best.
The sardonic “maybe he’s just being manly?” theory isn’t entirely baseless; the candidate’s top strategist Stuart Stevens was recently profiled The Atlantic Wire as one of the most testosterone-soaked scowling Man Men of politics. But he’s not a “man” like the sort of guy who knows how to build things and fix things; the kind of Man who is basically a rich guy who pays to go on adventures. The kind of man who “climbs Mt. Everest” because he is one of the few people who can “afford to fly to Nepal” and “hire a sherpa.” Stevens once was nearly killed while trying to drive a Land Rover from the Central African Republic to France because he wouldn’t offer a border guard a tape recorder as a bribe. That kind of “man.”
So let’s not interpret the hands-over-eyes-in-horror faux pas of the “sheikh/sikh” gaffe. Rather, consider it a sneak peek into the future Amercia of a Romney presidency. Facts are for pussies.
[New Statesman]
