April 23, 2012 10:18 PM UTC

Torturing Dogs vs. Eating Them, And Other False Equivalencies

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• by: Colorado Pols

CBS News:

New York Times columnist Gail Collins and groups like “Dogs Against Romney” have spotlighted the incident, arguing that it provides an unflattering insight into Romney’s character. To the frustration of the Romney campaign, it’s gotten enough traction that Romney and his wife Ann were asked about the story during an ABC News interview this week. Ann Romney said in the interview that Seamus “loved” the experience of being in the crate and that it was “a kinder thing” to bring the dog with the family than to leave him in a kennel.

Now Republicans have found a way to counter attacks over Seamus: An acknowledgement by President Obama that he ate dog as a child. As conservative website The Daily Caller reported Tuesday, Mr. Obama wrote in his memoir “Dreams of My Father” that he was “introduced to dog meat (tough), snake meat (tougher), and roasted grasshopper (crunchy)” while living in Indonesia between the ages of six and ten. Wrote the Daily Caller’s Jim Treacher: “Say what you want about Romney, but at least he only put a dog on the roof of his car, not the roof of his mouth.”

After taking a surprising amount of damage from the story of Mitt Romney strapping the pet dog to the roof of the car for 12 hours–which may or may not have led to said dog crapping itself in terror–Republicans have counterattacked with the years-old “revelation” from President Barack Obama in his own autobiography that he was “introduced to dog meat” while living in Indonesia as a child. Although the practice of eating dog meat in East Asian nations is substantially more common a practice than strapping one’s pet dog to the roof of a car is in our own culture, you can certainly understand why Romney’s friends would try to draw the parallel.

The thing is, though, that eating dog meat really is uncontroversial in Indonesia and many other countries. It would not be uncommon for an exchange student today to be confronted with this choice of cuisine in a sponsor’s home, and for a child living with family members there, it would be routine. While superficially a smart rejoinder for Romney, this is more like an appeal to xenophobia–a way to tell certain voters that Obama is “less than 100% American.”

Anyway, one hopes voters get that, and realize what Romney did is, you know, still worse.