The bored and restless Punditrocracy, maintaining their staunch avoidance of relevance or importance, furiously lit like garbage scow flies upon Barack Obama’s alleged ‘elitism’ for pointing out that people in small towns are bitter and angry at being ignored by politicians once they’ve been elected. He added, if one bothered to listen to more than the out-of-context soundbite of his San Francisco comments, that they tend to vote for things such as guns and God and against immigrants because these are issues which the GOP has carefully constructed as distracting vents for their boiling frustrations. Contrary to the Pundicrats gasping shock at such a blunder as telling the truth – they hate that – Obama didn’t seem to rile voters much with his ‘bitter’ talk – many even agreed wholeheartedly.
Of course the Hill People, sensing the nearness of electoral oblivion, had to get what political mileage they could out of Obama’s ‘gaffe,’ but Hillary herself might have left out the prosaic and artificial-sounding anecdote of her father taking her out as a small child and teaching her how to shoot a firearm. Growing up in the same ’50′s America as Hillary, it just doesn’t seem credible to me that Dad Rodham would have grabbed his young daughter and stuck a 30-06 rifle in her tiny hands – more likely he would have told her to go join Mom in the kitchen for pointers on creating the perfect Kraft cheese casserole while he took his sons out hunting. Ah, well, truth is the first casualty of war and political campaigns.
But the stern media consternation over Obama’s remarks, and their desperate flailing in trying to dub him as another hapless, out-of-touch Kerry ‘elitist,’ reached a pinnacle of absurd hilarity yesterday on MSNBC when Norah O’Donnell, as attractive as she is vapid, chuckled and smirked over Obama referring to the high price of arugula when he was campaigning in Iowa earlier this year. “Why,” hooted O’Donnell, “they don’t even have arugula there!” Although she and her pundit guests didn’t catch it, Norah was displaying her own aloof elitism, as if it were a scarlet ‘E’ emblazoned on her forehead. Our six-and-seven figure Nationally Televised Media don’t get out much among the rabble; if they did, they’d realize the rubes in Iowa, as Media Matters has noted, not only know what arugula is, but grow it and eat it, and even occasionally wash it down with cappuccinos and lattes. (Yes, they actually have Starbucks and other gourmet coffee outlets out in the Hawkeye State, as well as many other parts of Fly-Over Country.) Why, even my local little coffee shop, which used to feature only one humble grind poured by a pleasant middle-aged waitress from a glass Cory carafe, now has some foreign-sounding caffeinated drinks on the menu.
Times have changed all over the land, but to the over-compensated and insulated royalty of the Punditrocracy we are still stuck in the ’50s, with their condescending babble of lunch-pail workers (who carries a lunch pail to work anymore?), and ‘Reagan Democrats’ (there aren’t any these days), and anxiousness to tap into the heartfelt concerns of small-town folk they would grandly ignore on the street, unless they happened to be cracking contemptuous ‘in crowd’ jokes at their expense. Like the politicians Obama was talking about, the Big Media quickly forgets the cares of Wal-Mart America once the voting is over.
It’s a given that all three of the presidency-pursuers left standing are among the elite in education and wealth – poor relations with community college educations aren’t allowed to run for president these days – but the spectacle of the Media Upper-Crust taking umbrage on behalf of the Little People, after burying them in years of Washington effluvia and Wall Street bunkum, is enough to inspire an Elvis moment with the .45 drawing a bead on the TV screen.
A shame most of us are too broke these days in Bush’s New World Order Economy to afford replacing the damn thing.
This Day in Hell
April 15, 1913 – Wealthy drownees of the White Star Line’s ‘Titanic’ celebrate their first year in Hell with a gala reenactment of the unsinkable ship’s sinking. Events include Eat Your Fortune in Dollar Bills and Go Chase the Penny, Fool. Finishing off the festivities, the swells are forced to pay Satan 99 percent of their total worth in income taxes. Since they just dined on their money — good luck, guys!
Bad,Obama,Bad!
Dont say shit like that during the election,especially when so much is up for grabs.
The time to say things like this is during the second term,like right before You start to do something about these issues.
I’d like to see the faith based iniative repealed and the sale of assault rifles banned
for starters,hows that?
Comment by Rainlander — April 15, 2008 @ 12:34 pm
Words matter, especially when speeches are your greatest strength. He was talking about MY grandparents this time.
I’ve listened to it. He answered a question about why some rural Democrats aren’t voting for him. He told his audience what they wanted to hear and they had a good laugh about it. Obama didn’t know he was being recorded and the story was leaked by one of his own supporters on Huffington Post.
It was a simplistic generalization of millions of complex voters that will hurt the Democratic party in the GE. It doesn’t matter which elite media gasbag relays the message. Also, calling HRC a liar by reading her father’s mind is a bit of a stretch.
Comment by Danger Bear — April 15, 2008 @ 1:29 pm
Danger Bear, I wasn’t exactly calling her a liar, or reading her father’s mind — I was simply pointing out that, having grown up in the Midwest around the same time as Hillary, and knowing something about the suburb she’s from, Park Ridge, IL, this is not the kind of thing father’s did with their daughters at that time.
However, I think one of Hillary’s problems recently has been her proclivity for ‘sweetening the pot’ — it’s fine for her to say she’d be a better C-in-C than Obama, but to follow it up with a false story of being under fire from snipers just ruined her credibility.
Saying she’s more ‘in touch’ with the working class is fine, but following it up with the shot-and-a-beer photo op just made her look pandering and insincere to blue-collar voters. Nobody believes she drinks like that in private, so why bother with the phony photo-op?
In the same vein, I had some doubts about the credibility of her tale of being taught to shoot as a little girl, and she dodged the question when she was asked recently the last time she went hunting.
These are all things Hillary is doing to herself and she should stop it — they’re not working.
At least she cut down on Mark Penn’s influence (or so we’ve been told) — he was destroying her.
Comment by RS Janes — April 15, 2008 @ 6:08 pm
I don’t mean to be accusatory. I just think peoples parents should be off limits. I read this morning that some slimy Repubs were using a college paper from Obama’s dad to attack his character and it makes me angry. We should leave the parents out of it unless either 1. they used to be president or 2. they were ever busted for working with Nazis.
I’m a blue-collar voter and I thought the beer and shot was hilarious. The bartender insisted and it would have been rude to decline. Which candidate in history has refused to “sweeten the pot” in regards to their public image?
Comment by Danger Bear — April 15, 2008 @ 8:30 pm
This is how the media wins the elections for the candidate with the biggest tax cuts.
Obama made a silly remark and it has been paraded around the MSM in order to frame him.
It worked against Dukkakis and Mondale and Gore and Kerry and now its being resurected for the current frontrunner.
I’ve said this before,O-man and Hillary have got to team up or we are all screwed, individually they can not overcome all the free
negative campaign ads the MSM have to offer 24/7.
Comment by Rainlander — April 16, 2008 @ 12:54 am
Danger Bear, I agree that the parents should be off limits, except Hillary brought her father into it, making it — and I hate to use these words — ‘fair game.’
I thought the shot-and-beer deal was hilarious, too, but maybe not in the same way as you.
Rainlander, stranger things have happened, but I don’t think it’s in the cards for Obama and Hillary to share the ticket.
Comment by RS Janes — April 16, 2008 @ 6:47 pm