Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics by Glenn Greenwald Read Free Book Online Page A

and Ward Cleaver—a tough, swaggering warrior by day, a wholesome family man by night.
    The flip side of this equation is an equally indispensable weapon in the GOP arsenal: Democratic and liberal males are demonized as effeminate, effete elitists, and liberal women as emasculating dykes. Every national Democratic male leader over the past two decades—and especially those who have fought in combat and who remained married to their first wives—has been ridiculed as a weak and effeminate, gender-confused freak.
    These manipulative personality-based tactics do not merely obscure real debate over issues and degrade our political discourse. Far worse, these GOP marketing packages are complete fabrications. They bear no relationship to reality.
    This rank mythmaking and exploitation of cultural, gender, and psychological themes had its roots in the transformation of actor Ronald Reagan into a John Wayne–archetype cowboy who alone had the courage to stand tall against the Soviet Empire. Combat-avoiding George W. Bush—who spent much of his adult life wallowing in privileged, sheltered hedonism—became the swaggering, brush-clearing, fighter-pilot warrior whose courage and masculine toughness were needed to protect us from the Terrorists.
    Both of Bush’s opponents in the past two presidential elections—Al Gore and John Kerry—volunteered to go to Vietnam; yet they lost those elections because they were portrayed as effeminate, soft, elitist cowards. In 2000, it was repeatedly suggested that Gore was controlled by the emasculating feminist Naomi Wolf and, in Maureen Dowd’s formulation, he was “practically lactating.” In 2004, Kerry was dominated by his rich foreign wife and was an effete, windsurfing French pansy.
    That Bush’s and Cheney’s lives were completely devoid of any acts of authentic courage or toughness or the traditional masculine and moral virtues mattered not at all. The Republicans’ manipulative psychological and cultural slime machine rolled over reality and infected the entire media narrative, as it has for years. Millions of Americans who oppose the defining Republican beliefs nonetheless voted for Reagan and Bush 41 and Bush 43 and admired Dick Cheney because the contrived character mythology of the Upstanding Tough Guy versus the Sniveling Loser—drawn directly from Hollywood and Madison Avenue marketing methods—simply overwhelmed issues of substance.
    The GOP—aided by a vapid, easily manipulated, and often sympathetic media—has reverted to this manipulative playbook over and over, for decades now. As psychology professor Stephen J. Ducat documented in his superb book The Wimp Factor: Gender Gaps, Holy Wars, and the Politics of Anxious Masculinity,
     
Since the U.S. national elections of 1980, right-wing political propagandists have relentlessly, and with great success, linked liberalism to weakness, dependency and helplessness—qualities seen by most male-dominated societies as feminine.
     
    Perhaps the most vivid early example of this tactic—the election where it really began to take root—was the total humiliation of Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis by the burgeoning right-wing noise machine built by Lee Atwater and Roger Ailes during the 1988 presidential election campaign. Ask most Americans today about Dukakis and few would likely be able to recall anything specific about the policies he advocated. Instead, numerous GOP attacks shaped Americans’ perception of Dukakis, and these endure today—endless ridicule over his awkward attempt to wear an ill-fitting combat helmet while riding in a tank; his insufficiently impassioned response to CNN’s Bernard Shaw about whether he would favor the death penalty for someone who raped and killed his wife; his “card-carrying” membership in the ACLU; and the weekend furlough granted to Willie Horton, the menacing-looking African American murderer who raped and killed helpless white victims during his state-sanctioned time