War by other means

I'd like to suggest that an armistice is in order on the "War On. . . ." memes, from both sides.

I have a Twitter account but I don't use it as much as I could, but it appears that I missed some fun yesterday. Apparently someone named Hilary Rosen, who is a Democratic operative of some sort, decided that it would be a good idea to slam Ann Romney, wife of Mitt, by saying that Ann Romney "has never worked a day in her life."

That got a good ol' fashioned flame war going on the Twitter and, from what I can tell, it hasn't been going well for Rosen. There is a new Twitter hashtag called WarOnMoms and it's a pretty active deal and at current glance I'd say the results are about 80/20 against Rosen's apparent worldview.

The problem this poses for Democrats is simple: they have their own "War on Women" meme going, which may or may not be working, depending on which polling data you prefer. This preferred narrative concerns last month's flavor, Sandra Fluke, who you might remember as the aggrieved Georgetown law student who was seemingly unaware of low-cost, free market contraception options, which apparently is the fault of someone, likely either Mitt Romney, George W. Bush or Emmanuel Goldstein. One can never be sure with such things.

The game here is simple -- there are a lot of partisans who want the upcoming election to be about social and emotional issues, rather than about economics. This isn't particularly surprising, since the economic situation hasn't been very good for a long time now.

Still, this "War on" thing is dumb, no matter who is supposedly the target. We've seen enough real war in recent years to know the difference, so the occasional discomforts that we see hyped are nothing compared to the real thing.

I'm confident that, eventually, this election cycle will turn on the pocketbook issues, as these things generally do. But for now, apparently we have to endure the silly season. I guess it's a War on Common Sense.