The New Republic has a great editorial this week picking up on the increasing ubiquity of the "anger smear":
For many years, Republicans scored political points by merely describing their opponents as liberals. But, apparently, the old epithet has lost some of its shock value, and the new term of abuse is "angry." Call it the Howard Beale smear. Last month, Republican National Committee Chairman Ken Mehlman exclaimed, "Hillary Clinton seems to have a lot of anger. ... When you think of the level of anger, I'm not sure it's what Americans want." While Mehlman may have concocted this strategy for tarring Clinton, he was merely repeating a GOP trope. During the 2000 primary campaign, the Bushies whispered loudly about John McCain's rage. In the last election cycle, Republican propagandists slapped the same tag on nearly every one of their opponents--from Nancy Pelosi to the demure South Dakota Senator Tim Johnson. They cut an ad against Howard Dean titled "When Angry Democrats Attack." [...]
That's the true damage extracted by this Republican attack. They have defined anger down. A good, honest emotion has been trashed in pursuit of cheap political points. But what is so awful about anger? There are times, after all, when certain policies--some of them implemented by this president--demand precisely an irate response. Any other reaction might suggest a cognitive mistake, as if you do not understand what is taking place.
As the editors note, it's a bit of an odd charge coming from a party that relies on media demagogues to broadcast the sonic shockwaves of rage that keep the conservative base scared, pissed, and in high dudgeon.
And what is a dudgeon, anyway?
But charges of anger have always struck me as sounding particularly tinny. Which is why Democrats should see the insult for what it is: an assertion of insanity. When they say Dean is angry, they don't mean that his resting heart rate has achieved significant elevation, an arm cuff would reveal temporary hypertension, and various neurotransmitters have been dumped into his system and will soon compel the psycho-physiological state we associate with irritation. They mean he's unbalanced. When they say the same about Gore, there's a reason they couple it with pictures of him red-faced and gesticulating. The message is simple: Democrats can't be trusted. They're emotionally unstable. They're emotional, which is to say feminine. And you don't want them in charge of our national security. The anger charge is an excuse for the visual aids, a way to hint at their second-level meaning. It is, in the end, all part of the same appeal. Democrats are not tough enough, calm enough, masculine enough, or collected enough to effectively respond to crises, and in this dangerous period, you don't want to risk throwing in with the party that's coo-coo for CoCo Puffs.
