Gov. Swiftboat should apologize

The Sun, the Rupert Murdoch-owned tabloid, was sued in the early 1990s by one of Britain's most durable actors for daring to suggest that he was dull.

The article quoted someone saying that William Roache was as boring in real life as Ken Barlow, the mild-mannered character he'd been playing for decades, and still plays, on the TV soap “Coronation Street.” It seems ludicrous, but he won his libel case and was awarded £50,000 in damages. (But because Roache had turned down that same amount in a proposed out-of-court settlement, he had to pay costs. He later declared bankruptcy.)

People in this country have a lot more leeway about what they can and cannot say about a public figure and that’s often held up as an example of America’s freedom. Come election time, though, the use of character assassination is habitual and often quite shocking.

And if it seems to be getting worse, that’s because it is. The Orwellian endeavors of Swift Boat Veterans for Truth, for example, could not have had the same impact in a less technologically sophisticated age.

See what happened during last week’s “lipstick” flap. Former acting Massachusetts Gov. Jane Swift condemned the Democratic candidate’s “disgraceful comments comparing our vice-presidential nominee, Governor Palin, to a pig.”

She demanded that Barack Obama apologize to Sarah Palin. Actually, given that her ridiculous comments were heard in newscasts on scores of TV stations and reprinted in hundreds of newspapers nationwide, it’s the former acting governor who should apologize to the Illinois senator and his family.

Obama has been surrounded by strong women throughout his life and is married to a confident and accomplished woman with whom he is raising two daughters. He has acted with decorum and grace throughout a long grueling campaign. So to baldly state that he would refer to a woman, or indeed anybody, as a pig is nothing short of character assassination.

Come to think of it, why would one jump to that conclusion about any politician without first investigating the circumstances? Nobody criticized John McCain when he used the same phrase about Hillary Clinton’s health-care policy; nor did anyone bat an eyelid when some of Hillary’s own supporters chanted it after party bosses hammered out a compromise on the placing of Michigan and Florida convention delegates.

Swift began to backtrack the following day – something that, unsurprisingly, was not widely reported. "I can't know if it was aimed at Governor Palin," she said on MSNBC on day 2 of the controversy, but continued to assert that Obama was responsible for words that might be misconstrued. (Obama, who is preoccupied with other things, might have seen Palin’s RNC speech once, but Republicans seem to think that her zingers were roiling around in his head like a tune he couldn’t get rid of. So when he said “lipstick,” well…it was too much of coincidence, wasn’t it? At the weekend, Dr. Karl Rove, that well-known Freudian psychologist, said it was “unconscious.”)

Swift, a member of the McCain’s “Palin Truth Squad,” said in that MSNBC interview that she “used to be” in politics. At least when she was in electoral politics, she was accountable to the voters. During her short reign in Massachusetts (2001-2003) her approval ratings sank below 10 percent at one stage, making her the most unpopular person ever to hold the office.

In Swift’s new role in the Republican propaganda machine, there are no negative consequences for her personally nor is there any real accountability. As long as she’s helping to deflect people from the actual issues, then she’s doing a fine job.