>With just seven days to go until the November mid-term elections, it’s politics as usual all over the United States.  In other words, passive aggressive behavior is running amuck this week.

Nowhere is passive aggressive behavior more prominent or virulent than in the so-called “civil” political arena where direct personal attacks (though becoming more common everyday) are still considered un-statesmanlike, but covert low-blows spread defamatory messages under the veneer of social appropriateness.

Case in point: the Oklahoma Governor’s race.  Have you heard the most recent uncivil discourse between the candidates?

In an interview with The Associated Press, Republican Representative Mary Fallin said that the two things that make her qualified to be her state’s next governor is that she is a wife and mother.  Her challenger, Lt. Governor Jari Askins, has never been married, and has no children.

On last night’s episode of The Joy Behar Show, political commentator Ron Reagan Jr. said that these comments by Fallin are a calculated part of her overall political strategy to paint her challenger as an “Other.”  Fallin’s touting of her own marital and motherhood status are a passive aggressive means of implying that her single, childless opponent must be different…defective…perhaps lesbian…all without ever actually saying any of these words.  Saying it without saying it is Fallin’s covertly hostile, purely passive aggressive way of casting doubts on her opponent’s personal worthiness in the minds of voters.

In a campaign that was already dirty, the Oklahoma Governor’s race just got fully mired in passive aggressive muck.

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