It's The Conspiracy, Stupid...

You know, I thought we'd seen the nadir of the Democratic Party when America knocked on the door of Al Gore's soul last May and found no one home.

But the slow descent into madness continues. It seems to be taking the form of a wallowing in paranoid conspiracy theories, mostly centered around their worries about whether their candidate measures up in the ...err...'manliness' department.

To be honest, I don't think this is a question that even occurred to most conservatives.

First there was Frank Rich's bizarre hissy fit in the Arts section of the Times; remarkable more for what it revealed about the inner workings of Mr. Rich's mind than anything else. As a study in Freudian projection, it was quite remarkable.

Now, even the women are getting into the act. Naomi Wolf offers a new -- and unintentionally hilarious -- conspiracy theory for our amusement. The erosion of the gender gap is all part of a sinister plot on the part of the Bush administration. And (you didn't think they were going to leave this out, did you?) they're making Kerry look like a girlie-man:

It begins with the obligatory backhanded swipe at Laura Bush. She's such an easy target: nice, inoffensive, and best of all, virtually guaranteed not to hit back -- the perfect victim for a drive-by snark attack. Not content with the hackneyed image of Mrs. Bush as Stepford Wife, Ms. Wolf portrays her as a Stepford Wife with a secret transmitter attachment that sends subliminal messages programmed by...oh, but that would be giving it away:

Is it trivial to weigh Laura Bush’s gentle, Xanax-like demeanor, her faultless librarian’s poise and sincerity, against the imperious sexuality of Teresa Heinz Kerry?...the iconography that candidates’ wives create is important and a serious medium through which a modern candidate can send out his message. Heartbreakingly for Democrats, this is a lesson that the Republicans have learned to their vast advantage. By manipulating the images of the women around George W. Bush, including Laura herself, the Bush team has brilliantly eroded the traditional Democratic advantage among women.

But on to our Conspiracy Theory. [Drum roll....]:

Karl Rove is not the Anti-Christ. Satan, Ms. Wolf is convinced, wears sensible shoes and drives a minivan.

The true genius behind the Bush success is not Karl Rove; she’s a suburban working mom in sensible shoes. It was clear from the start that Team Bush realized that the old, white, male face of the Republican Party was a recipe for losing those crucial suburban women in the swing states who are socially progressive and fiscally conservative. As long as the face of Republicanism was that of Newt Gingrich, ready to talk about women soldiers getting gynecological infections in foxholes, the GOP would face a Democratic hegemony, to paraphrase Rove, for the next twenty years.

So they devised a deliberate strategy that went unnoticed by Democratic strategists, most of whom are white guys over 50: to showcase a moderate, mainstream feminist makeover for the Bush brand. Everyone fell for it, including the press. Bush’s speeches are routinely cast before the eye, I am convinced, of Karen Hughes, who spins tax cuts as a boon to women entrepreneurs, like the one Laura Bush mentioned in her convention speech (Carmella Chaifos, “the only woman to own a tow-truck company in all of Iowa”). The fallen heroes of Iraq are “moms and dads.” Afghanistan was the first time U.S. troops were deployed for a feminist goal, “so Afghan girls could go to school.”

Ms. Wolf puts her expensive Harvard education to use deconstructing the GOP Metamessage. She even inserts a little subliminal metalanguage of her own. Apparently she must have been paying attention in class (when she wasn't being traumatized by Harold Bloom):

Look at the language. Starting in 2000, every Republican-male dinosaur on TV began to sound like Oprah. Suddenly they all used the words—sensitive, comfort (or comfortable), and appreciate. George Bush is “comfortable in his skin.” Laura Bush and her husband want to “comfort” the bereaved families of dead soldiers. Republicans would speak of Bush as “sensitive” to the complexity of issues and as being someone “appreciative” of working moms. It worked frighteningly well: The words “changed the tone” of Washington Republicans from that of the losing old boys’ club of 1992 and 1996.

The juiciest parts of Ms. Wolf's analysis are her departures into Color Analysis (she dishes on the Dems for "sending out their candidate and his wife in neutrals" -- how outre!):

While Bush Inc. understands the power of the vivid visual image—dressing the entire GOP convention, for instance, in matching tangerine and turquoise, color-coordinating the Cheney grandchildren to give a visual sense of order and unity— the Democrats keep being bumped to the inside pages because they send out their candidate and his wife in neutrals. I am convinced that Michael Deaver is the invisible hand behind the calculated visuals of the Bush campaign—the signature use of deep, majestic backdrops behind the candidate, the use of jewel tones on Laura Bush and other women associated with the administration, the trick of forcing photographers to sit close to the stage so that they must shoot sharply upward, showing the candidate from a heroic angle.

I struggled to decypher the metamessage behind this perplexing passage (women are so stupid we vote based on color schemes??? Those boring neutrals are so 5 minutes ago... for God's sake give us tangerine and turquoise...) This is a feminist speaking, for Pete's sake. Scary.

And inevitably, we get to sex and adequacy: this seems to be a recurring theme this election season:

...presidents are archetypes of male potency....And spouses play a massive role in enhancing or undermining the potency of a male candidate. So Laura Bush, in speaking warmly of her mate’s “wrestling” with issues of war and peace, enhances his potency. This does not contradict my earlier point about appealing to swing voters; it has been well established that modern women maddeningly long for men who are tender in private but authoritative in public. Unfortunately, Teresa Heinz Kerry’s speech, which all but ignored her husband, did more to emasculate him than the opposition ever could. By publicly shining the light on herself rather than her husband, she opened a symbolic breach in Kerry’s archetypal armor. Listen to what the Republicans are hitting Kerry with: Indecisive. Effete. French. They are all but calling this tall, accomplished war hero gay.

OK, make up your mind Naomi: who is turning Mr. Kerry into a girlie man: Teresa, or the GOP? Obligingly, Ms. Wolf complies, with what has to be my favorite line in the whole ridiculous, tortured article:

The charges are sticking because of Teresa Heinz Kerry. Let’s start with “Heinz.” By retaining her dead husband’s name—there is no genteel way to put this—she is publicly, subliminally cuckolding Kerry with the power of another man—a dead Republican man, at that.

Well there you have it. It's all Tuh-ray-zuh's fault. And I thought Frank Rich had issues.

Next conspiracy theory: it's all our fault that Dan Rather didn't vet his sources:

When the Internet opened the door to scores of "journalists" who had no allegiance at all to the skeptical and self-disciplined ethic of professional news gathering, the bars were already down in many old-line media organizations. That is how it happened that old pros such as Dan Rather and former New York Times editor Howell Raines got caught up in this fevered atmosphere and let their standards slip.

Via Right Wing News

- Cassandra