Bare Bone Politics, Without Meat

The media gave the actor Robert De Niro a good thrashing after he suggested that the United States is not ready for a white First Lady. He was making a joke to illustrate his evident support for Obama’s reelection. Nevertheless, the North American extreme right immediately called him an inverted racist and a misogynist. The Republican candidate Newt Gingrich said he greatly respected De Niro’s artistic career, but his political judgments were moreover condemnable. In the end, the most liberal media united to reclaim what we might denote as “the human right to a sense of humor.”

Essentially, it was North Americans who established the practice of “political correctness.” Black people are now called African Americans, although many come from the Caribbean, for example; the elderly are called seniors, denying them the right to reach a “fourth stage” in life. They continue to refer to gays as gay because that is what gay people prefer and they started calling disabled people persons with different capacities, as if this would hide the reality that a paralytic or blind person has to fight twice or four times as hard to compete equally with those who have all of their physical faculties. They call American Indians Native Americans, and Latin Americans, who were freed after the battles of independence against the Spanish, are called Hispanics.

Often one is surprised to find that black people refer to themselves as blacks, without practicing an exercise of self-denigration. They know very well that the pejorative term is the n-word. This term is in fact loaded with disdain with reminiscences of the slavery era and the practices of the Ku Klux Klan. In just a few years we have moved passed the most offensive and demeaning epithets to a collection of labels so benevolent in their intentions that they distort the essence of the people to whom they are directed.

The De Niro affair is significant because it imposes an additional inhibition in the freedom of public figures to express themselves at their own risk. Republicans did not like that this famous actor openly declared his support for Obama because of the votes that this Hollywood luminary could attract. Since it is not possible to openly state this, they instead refer to him as racist. But perhaps he said it for neither reason; maybe De Niro just wanted to make a joke. No one can deny that politics are serious, but they are not a funeral that people attend during each electoral period.

In fact, without a little humor, the negative campaigns can become a nightmare for the voters. Mexico is a case worthy of analysis, since such negative campaigning is generally prohibited there. The result is that the hits must always be underhanded and hidden; after all is said and done it is much dirtier than if candidates were to openly expose the weaknesses of their rivals.

The candidates have the dual responsibility of revealing their strengths, but also of pointing out the weaknesses of their adversaries. This is the globally accepted way of winning elections and presenting promises of policy changes to the voters. However, for being one of the countries with the most acidic and sharp senses of humor, it appears as if Mexican candidates are from another planet. Even more foreign are those that analyze their expressions in the “commentacracy.” While the country makes jokes constantly, the candidates in every moment and every place have to present themselves as bronze figures, unscathed and even severe. For a festive and sarcastic nation, Mexico has politics that resemble a German physics professor. Given that any attempt by the candidates to be witty, original or openly sympathetic could be cause for criticism or disqualification, they choose to remain on safe territory, often verging on boring and not connecting emotionally with the voters.

Of course that does not mean that the candidates should choose the other extreme of being comedic characters. It simply means that they should present themselves to the electorate as the people of flesh and bone that they are, with greater ease and less choreography. Ultimately, the campaigns do not serve any other purpose aside from getting to know the candidates better, know them as they really are, know how they think and permit to us elect a candidate with more knowledge of the basic facts.