If used selectively, stereotypes can be a powerful political tool. The entire Republican "war on women" is the result of taking the actions of a few, and applying them to many. Used in reverse stereotypes have created the myth that "All Democrats are socialists". These are happy fictions that lead to breathless columns from a group of unthinking political columnists happy to base their career output on what is force-fed to them by political operatives.
Conveniently, this brings us to the subject of today's post. Peggy Fikac's political column stereotyping Republicans based on the idiotic actions of a staffer for political consultant Allen Blakemore.
It cannot be argued that the act of creating a PAC with the name "Boats n' Hoes" is stupid on a monumental level. We're talking about a 400 year old US Constitution level of idiocy. Even more stupid is using the actions of this one person to imply (directly) that all Republicans are "tone-deaf" when it comes to women's issues.
Clearly the Greg Abbott campaign is not tone-deaf. Despite Fikac suggesting that they are, their proactive call to ChronBlog secretarial journalist Kolten Parker denouncing the action reveals that they're very in tune to the happy mythology she is trying to weave. Were Abbott and Co. truly tone deaf, they'd take a passive stance and let the Davis campaign take the lead.
The rest of the Fikac column is nothing more than a protracted apology for Davis poor performance in recent polls. Again, she's allowing the use of stereotypes by lumping in all minority and young voters into the category of "no home phones".
Political columns such as these do the public a disservice. This is something I've said before and I'll continue to say it as long as it's true. Yes, there are Republicans out there who have a women's issue problem, minority issues problems and economic issues problems. That doesn't mean that all Republicans have the same traits. And it certainly doesn't mean that the Abbott campaign should be defined by State Senator Dan Patrick's consulting firm.
Selective use of stereotypes can run both ways. Back when the Super Bowl was in Houston Peggy Fikac's employer ran breathless coverage of "Pimp n' Ho" balls suggesting that, using the same logic, Ms. Fikac herself might potentially be tone deaf when it comes to issues relating to women and human trafficking.
Taking a broader look, one could use Ms. Fikac's column to assume that all members of the Texas Lock Step Political Media are unquestioning cyphers whose only focus is to regurgitate information disseminated to them by more-intelligent political operatives.
Either that, or we could forgo this entire silly exercise and start looking at each campaign on it's merits. It involves a significantly larger amount of research and time, but it would certainly be the best way to serve the Texas voting public.
