Clinton - Obama as Fairy Tale

So in my desperate attempts to find something refreshing and new to talk about fairy tales with, I simply googled fairy tales. One of the first articles to come up was from 2008, in which Bill Clinton came under heavy fire for referring to Obama's stance on the Iraq War as a fairy tale. When Clinton clarified the issue, he made sure to point out that he wasn't referring to Obama's campaign as a whole, but rather just his claims to have been against the Iraq War from the start. According to Clinton, Obama had never been asked to respond to his own remarks in 2004, in which he allegedly said he did not know how he would have voted. To Clinton, this means that Obama's claim to have always been against the War was false, and thus a fairy tale.

I found it interesting how, yet again, the term "fairy tale," just like many stereotypically "fairy tale" terms, is thrown around loosely in popular culture, often times with connotations not at all representative of their original meanings. In this case, Clinton clearly thought of "fairy tale" as indicating "false" or a "lie". Most of us in the class would by now agree that the vast majority of the tales we have read are indeed fiction and thus not "true", and also that "magic" is usually a required element of the tale. Yet, as was recently shown with the True Story of Hansel and Gretel, for example, the term fairy tale is somewhat fluid. Some people in the class were at least open to considering this story a "fairy tale", and yet nothing within it, while sometimes improbable, was completely beyond the realm of reality. If this is conceded, then a fairy tale, without any supernatural, magical occurrences, can occur in real life. Thus, a fairy tale from this point of view would not be inherently "false" or a "lie".

Before this class, I probably would have had no objection to using "fairy tale" in a similar manner to how Clinton used it. However, particularly in light of the last couple of weeks, I'm not so sure if fairy tale can automatically be used to indicate something that is a lie or false. As the discussion about the True Story of Hansel and Gretel showed, it is at least arguable that fairy tales can occur in reality without any supernatural occurrences. If this is true, then Clinton's utilized a poor choice of words.