Essential Estrogen

We (your friendly EE bloggers) are a bit frightened of opening our monthly phone bills. Since last weekend, we've been discussing, at every possible length, words which came from Sen. Barack Obama's mouth during his last trip into Iowa. And, no, this has nothing to do with the Middle East.

While speaking in Clinton last weekend, Sen. Obama made an off-hand comment (or at least that's what Lyn thought it to be at the time) about Iowa people wanting to grill all the Presidential hopefuls before making up their minds. He went on to add that he knew we all wanted to hear what "good-looking" Sen. John Edwards had to say.

Lyn at event: WHAAAAAAA?!?!

A short time later, Lyn placed a (the first of many) call(s) to Paige and relayed the oddness of the comment. Paige arranged to be in attendance at the Senator's stop the next day in Burlington and there heard him use basically the same strange statements, but with a twist: This time Edwards was referred to as "cute."

Paige at event: EEEWWWWW!!!!

Paige then phoned Lyn back and the two entered a conference call with Dee. Knowing that campaigns have often used Iowa as a testing ground when it comes to new ideas and so-forth, it was unfortunate we'd run out of consecutive Obama events in Iowa. Who knows where the progression would have led next?!

Throughout the week, we've batted our feelings about the Obama utterances back and forth in one-on-one and conference phone calls. One thing is for sure, no matter how the phrases were intended, they came out wrong as evidenced by the change between the two campaign stops. What the EE bloggers disagreed on was the level and intent of wrongness.

Wednesday evening we came to the conclusion that since no others seemed upset or even talking about the statements, we would just let it slide... unless Obama used them again. (While it's not likely such large groups in Iowa would still be considered 'testing grounds' by the campaign, we were willing to give the benefit of the doubt.) Unfortunately for Obama, The Hill picked up on the references too. Their take seems to be Obama was taking a jab at Edwards. This, at first glance, was one of our observations as well, but we eventually ruled it out as illogical. In polls, Edwards trails both Obama and Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Knowing that, why would Obama want to purposefully draw attention (even negative attention) to a contender ranking behind him? After all, one needs to only consider how the Edwards team made lemonade out of lemons during the recent Coulter nastiness to see how resourceful his staffers can be.

Speaking of the recent Coulter incident, we stand by our previous post stating the problem had nothing to do with Edwards being accused of gayness. The problem was -- and is -- the use of a term which negatively describes a group of people in such a way as to make that term even worse by its association to something so ugly that no one would want to be referred to with it. In other words, the term "faggot," ugly enough all on its own, was placed in a sentence as if being a faggot was the worst thing a person could ever be. Because of the outcry against Coulter for her continued blatant disregard for anything civilized, we highly doubt Obama was trying to use 'good-looking' and 'cute' as double-edged swords.

The core, however, of what we find offensive in the comment is Obama seems to believe Iowans -- arguably the most politically attentive and issue-driven people on the planet -- are swayed by a person's physical appearance, good or bad.

While all three of us will be first in line to confess Edwards is easy on the eyes, it is also true only one of us caucused for him in 2004. Along those same lines, none of us find Obama physically offensive yet none of us have hopped on his 2008 bandwagon. So,if Obama is trying to infer Iowans aren't up to the task of looking past nice suits, young faces, sparkling eyes, rosy cheeks or washboard abs in order to ask tough questions or understand key issues, then we expect him from this point forward to only stand on stage, bat his lashes and wiggle his ass while campaigning in the Hawkeye State. After all, Senator, why are you even wasting your time talking policy to all of these shallow Iowans? Let's see how far your good-lookin' face will get you come caucus time.