I was pleased to see that McCain had developed his own clergy problem, wherein he first accepted, then guardedly accepted, and then rejected the support of that fundamentalist minister. Apparently, this guy, too, had some terribly rude statements in his past; unlike Obama's minister, he says that they were misconstrued, which I suppose is recognition that they were not a good thing to have said out loud. Or even at all.
But it got me to thinking again about the paradigm that we use, especially when on a witch hunt (if you're an investigative reporter, that means that you are simply waving the sword of Justice, aka digging for the truth) involving political figures. If someone says that they support the candidate, the press (at least) immediately imbues the candidate with any negative quality that the new supporter happens to have. This is not entirely a one way street; if the supporter has good qualities, that resounds to the credit of the candidate (look what good people support him); this is especially true if the supporter is an actor (Hot damn, Angelina Jolie thinks Obama is hot, I GOTTA vote for him). But it does tend to work more on the negative side; if the supporter has fifty-eight unpaid parking tickets, obviously the candidate is in favor of not paying parking tickets, and, by extension, probably molests children, too. Blind children. Blind crippled children.
(Of course, this is even better if it's the candidate himself (itself?) who did it. )
Put that way, its silly, but at what point should the attribution of qualities stop? Why should I think well of someone because someone that I think well of supports them? A little bleedover, sure. A wholesale usurpation of my own thoughts, I don't think so. I'll think for myself, thanks.
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