Why aren’t we similarly learning about the price of Barack Obama’s suits? Or what it cost to deck out Michelle and the kids in those colour-toned matching outfits at the nomination acceptance? I’d estimate $25,000 for the four of them on that night alone — minimum.
It is plainly absurd, but the stories of Palin’s clothing extravagances squeezed her and Cindy McCain back into jeans this week as a counter-blow while Obama spent millions of dollars on a single ad.
And just why has Palin become such juicy fodder for comedians when comment on Obama’s race and colour are completely off limits? Clearly it’s OK to pillory women but it’s not OK to pillory people of colour. Why? I’m not sure. America, after all, has a proud history of burning white women at the stake so it’s not as though discrimination and recrimination have been exclusive to colour.
It would just be uncool to make fun of black people, so let the woman take the hit. Clearly. I don’t like Palin and the thought of her in the White House terrifies me. But playing the woman — once again — as political sport is even less attractive to watch.

Seriously, Tracey, have you been asleep through this whole campaign?

What do you think the whole trope about Barack’s middle name – calling him “Barack ‘Hussein’”- is about? Portraying him in cartoons wearing a crudely drawn turban?

You think racists haven’t been circulating crap like this via email and the internet?

(H/T: Shakesville Obama Racim/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude watch. Which, at time of writing, was up to episode 103.)

The reason for the dearth of anti-Obama humour on your radar, Tracee, besides its extreme unfunniness, is that the Right are choosing smear tactics and sometimes murderous plots rather than raps with actors in moose costume as their MO of choice. So you’re offended because Obama’s off the hook for the price of his suits? Surely there’s a wealth of attempts to discredit him (the Ayers thing, the Acorn thing, the Hussein-Ayrab-Terrorist thing…) The only reason they haven’t gotten onto his clothing allowance is that they’re too busy digging for other non-existent, and racially motivated, dirt.

But by hiving off “abuse by comedians” from racist and sexist abuse in general, Hutchison makes it look as if Obama is Untouchable. Why? Because Obama’s opponents prefer death threats, hanging effigies, idiotic “Osama/obama” puns and unfunny bumper stickers about Obama being a terrorist?

Although there’s always the unintentional humour. (H/T: Belle.)

In an upstate New York county, hundreds of voters have been sent absentee ballots in which they could vote for “Barack Osama.”

This was reported in the AGE.

Where? On the front page.

Good. Because we need to report that kind of stuff so the whole world knows about how Obama is being dog-whistled by some people. (That post was Shakesville’s Obama Racism/Muslim/Unpatriotic/Scary Black Dude Watch part 92.)

Where on the front page?

The Odd Spot.

The ODD SPOT? (that tiny section for little info-bites on cute, weird, pratfalls and two-headed chickens?)

Oh.

Good one, Fairfax.

The Hungry Man ad reminded me of the Australian Four ‘n ‘Twenty pies “rabbit food” ad, where two overalled building blokes discard their healthy lunches in favour of hot greasy takeaway. Note they ask each other “what did you get”, so clearly someone else, we assume a wife or girlfriend, has packed these grown mens’ lunches for them.

The message is clear:

Real men eat lots of meat and fat and lard!
Things that pertain to women are inferior and bad! (See also: Girl Cooties).
Women in the twenty-first century still pack mens’ lunches.

The US ad, though, goes a step further and implies that eating food deemed to be girly, e.g. salads, yoghurt and things like that, will actually cause you to assume female secondary sexual characteristics or behaviour. (Speaking of US ads being clumsier, you have to love the tagline “it’s good to be full”. Buuuuurp!) That American tomay-to can not only give you salmonella, but make you all wimminised, too.

Now perceptive readers will be saying, “But what about the line we get from antifeminist polemicists that one of the major indicators that men are really the oppressed class is that they die earlier? Here we’re seeing blokes whose women partners are clearly trying to keep them alive longer, but they deliberately decide that eating food associated with the despised female class is just not on and they must eat red meat and fat and lard in order to preserve their very identity. Or rather, the mainstream food and advertising industries are trying to push this way of thinking, and last time I looked they weren’t exactly a hotbed of matriarchal conspirators. Isn’t there something of a contradiction there?”

Quite.

The quote about the “feminine sandwich” comes from this, which I discovered while googling to see whether there was any relationship between the ad companies running the “Hungry Man” campaigns in the different countries (it seems there isn’t). Stodge and manliness have had a long history together.