It's not polite to make personal remarks

In today's political commentary, we come to the subject of rude and irrelevant remarks about candidates. My upbringing has always caused me to assume that it's Republicans who do more of this - Democrats are supposed to be less racist, less sexist, more sensitive, more generally accepting of differences among people. So with all of that, it seems like they'd be less likely to make offensive slurs against the opposition candidate than Republicans are, right?

Well. This post is brought on by a facebook friend of mine, who in a casual anti-McCain post twice referred to McCain as "Pus-cheeks". What's worse, the post was ostensibly complaining about petty, irrelevant attacks on Obama at a time when people should be focusing on the economy and the war and those sorts of truly important things. So, um... at what level does making fun of McCain's cancer interface with which candidate is better to lead us out of a financial crisis and a military quagmire? Right.

Now, whenever I say anything about anything inappropriate that a democrat is saying about a republican, I seem to get this "well, they did it first! God." response. I appreciate that dumb redneck republicans are saying all sorts of astoundingly stupid things about Obama, and that that's wrong. But unless we're still in kindergarden, or unless you actually don't think these negative slurs are wrong, then that's no excuse for the other side to do it as well. I'm sorry. Good try though.

Anyway, I've noticed a disturbing trend in this election for Obama supporters to make fun of McCain's weird face - a result of an invasive operation to cure his melanoma, or his awkward arm movements and lurching walk - both lasting damage from war and torture wounds that weren't properly treated for the more than five years he was a prisoner of war. I am totally, completely creeped out by this, and I find it horrifying to hear people I think of as both kind and politically correct make casual comments about these things. Regardless of what you think of McCain as a person and a politician, remarks like these should never be made. It's *cancer*, and *torture*, people. What would you say if a Republican mocked somebody for one of those things?

It's kind of funny also that a lot of the Canadians who say things like this are supporters of the Liberal party of Canada, who raised such a huge stink when the Progressive Conservatives ran that ad making fun of Chretien's facial paralysis.

Now, I don't support McCain for president (or more accurately, I REALLY don't support Palin for president), but just because I don't want somebody to be president doesn't mean I have no standards for how they should be treated. Even if they wouldn't do the same for me. Because I love analogies, here's an analogy: Say you're in the SPCA looking for a dog, and you find a really great dog. But there's another dog there trying to get adopted, but it's kind of mean and traumatized and it snaps at you. And then somebody else in there starts teasing the mean dog and kicking at it. That person is bad enough, but what good are you if you don't say anything?

In conclusion, you're a pathetic and hypocritical sort of liberal/activist/whatever if you make hurtful personal remarks. Even if it's about the bad guys.