When I first saw Joni Ernst’s ad about her growing up castrating hogs on an Iowa farm, I simply saw it as a clever way to make a point about fighting pork in Washington. It certainly proved to be successful in gaining her the nomination. But now that I have had time to think about it, I have begun to see that the idea of castrating hogs sends out signals going beyond that of reducing wasteful spending, connecting with various other conservative themes as well.
First of all, there is the obvious reference to being raised on a farm. The associations between rural and conservative versus urban and liberal are still strong in the minds of the voters. And farm life just seems to be so healthy and wholesome, as opposed to the corruption and decadence of the big city. These associations help establish her conservative bona fides.
Second, being a woman, Joni Ernst already has some immunity to the charge that there is a Republican war on women. But as some of the strongest opponents of feminism are themselves women, her sex by itself is not terribly reassuring. By associating herself with castration, she may appeal to an unconscious or maybe just unvoiced animus a lot of women have toward men. Many of us men will never forget all the female high-fiving that went on when Lorena Bobbitt was acquitted for slicing off the penis of her husband. No wonder some men say you should never go to bed angry. Now, don’t get me wrong. Most women love us men, and they would never really want to harm us in this way. But by bragging about how she castrated males of a different species, Joni Ernst allows women a harmless displacement for any hostility they may be harboring for the opposite sex, which may be safely discharged at the ballot box.
Third, mistreating animals is manly, which we associate with being tough, an important character trait in politics. Sometimes the best way to improve your chances of winning an election is to go out and kill something. After all, if a politician is comfortable killing animals, he is less likely to be squeamish about going to war. How much Sarah Palin’s moose hunting contributed to her popularity is hard to say, but she was correct in thinking that it would help her with her conservative base. And John Kerry figured he might get some extra votes if he blasted a few ducks out of the sky. Of course, there are a lot of voters who love animals, and are turned off by the idea of killing them for sport, which is what both Palin and Kerry were doing. And so a politician has to be careful. He needs to mistreat animals just enough to win over some conservative voters without alienating too many liberals. And it is axiomatic that the animal one mistreats should never be one that can be construed as a pet. Mitt Romney’s mistreatment of his dog Seamus, making him ride on top of a car for twelve hours, was a big mistake, and his indifference to Ann’s horse Rafalca made him seem cold and uncaring. Although some people do have pigs as pets, not enough do for that to be a problem for Joni Ernst. Her background of castrating them was probably just the right amount of animal cruelty needed for her to win the Republican primary. Of course, as a pistol-packing lieutenant colonel, Joni Ernst was in no real danger of being thought of as too feminine for the job of senator, but every little bit helps.
Fourth, there is a religious element to mistreating animals. Many Christians love animals, and they see no problem in extending the idea of brotherly love to include animals as well. But that is something that springs more from the heart than from scripture. For the most part, the Bible tells us that animals exist to be used by humans, for labor, food, or sacrifice. As a result, a lot of Christian fundamentalists think all this concern for animal welfare is just so much secular humanism. By castrating hogs, Joni Ernst proves that her heart is in the right place, with man, and not with animals. Animals have to be castrated to make their meat tender, so that man’s pleasures of the palate may be enhanced. Like the young boys who were castrated so that their singing would combine the high notes of the soprano with the power of a man’s lungs, thereby enhancing the pleasure of the listening audience, so too must animals suffer so that we may savor their flesh with gustatory delight.
A friend of mine had an uncle who owned a ranch. On a visit to that ranch, he happened to be there while the calves were being castrated. As the calves were screaming horribly, he asked with alarm, “Doesn’t that hurt?” To this one of the cowhands replied, “It’s their own damn fault for being cows.” I guess I don’t have to tell you who was the liberal and who was the conservative. Notice, by the way, the implicit appeal to free will in the cowhand’s justification of all the pain he was causing, which is reminiscent of the Christian’s appeal to free will to justify God’s mistreatment of mankind. In any event, by showing the right amount of indifference to animal suffering, Joni Ernst aligns herself with Christian fundamentalism.
Finally, there is the underlying homophobic message in her ad. By promising to “make ’em squeal,” she brings to mind the movie Deliverance, in which a city slicker is sodomized by a hillbilly, who is dirty and nasty. During the rape scene, the hillbilly makes the city slicker squeal like a pig. This is an especially ugly depiction of homosexuality, which fits right in with conservative opposition to gay rights. It is easy to see, however, that only a woman could have made the remark about making them squeal. Had a male politician said something like that in the context of talking about pigs, there would have been a tendency to identify the politician with the hillbilly. But since Joni Ernst is a woman, the identification is blocked, while the unpleasant associations of homosexuals, dirty hillbillies, and pigs remain.
Given all that is implicit in a castrated hog, we can see why Joni Ernst’s ad proved so popular with conservative voters during the primary, and may even win her the general election.