John McCain Scores a Critical Hit

How could I not blog about this?

Late Monday, John McCain aide Michael Goldfarb blogs negatively about Obama supporters, saying "[i]t may be typical of the pro-Obama Dungeons & Dragons crowd to disparage a fellow countryman's memory of war from the comfort of mom's basement." Cue nerd rage as the (fairly liberal) D&D community screams 'no we're not! This is the same bullshit we've dealt with since high school when the Young Republicans made fun of us there!' (Full disclosure: many of my D&D playing friends in high school were, in fact, Republicans.) Much moaning, wailing and gnashing of teeth as real issues were ignored and one aide's flippant and Rove-esque logical fallacy takes center stage in the blogosphere.

Goldfarb later apologies (albeit on a third-party site.) He says:

If my comments caused any harm or hurt to the hard working Americans who play Dungeons & Dragons, I apologize. This campaign is committed to increasing the strength, constitution, dexterity, intelligence, wisdom, and charisma scores of every American.

And in so doing, rolled a natural 20 for John McCain among the D&D crowd.

My mind was made up long ago, and nothing sort of Obama crawling out of his skin and claiming to be the Prince of Darkness himself would make me consider voting for a Republican. And as Seth slyly pointed out in his Google Reader notes: this is so irrelevant to actual issues facing Americans that it's almost a joke that it became a concern in the first place.

That being said, it's a hell of a case of knowing your audience and apologizing to them in their own language, and putting a human face on something that people tend to dehumanize. So credit where credit is due.

Note: never thought I'd use the 'Dungeons and Dragons' and '2008 Election' tags for the same post...