I guess I’m a snob and elitist myself. Because I find myself agreeing with Obama about Pennsylvanians-or the people living here in shopping mall USA. Then again I take the time to read and understand things in context. So if that makes you anti-small town America-guilty as charged.
Sometimes, whenever I come back here-I truly believe the country has gone mad. Besides the fact that more than a few people here who are incredibly fat, I’ve been in more than a few doors here that say knives or weapons of a certain length cannot come inside. Guess it makes sense-but being a guy who believes that NO weapons or knives should be crossing the entry threshold-this is a statement that borders on sheer lunacy. Sorry all you budding NRA members-there is no God given right to have a handgun. (I like others will be watching the Supreme Court case with interest-except I will be rooting for the DC law to be upheld).
So it was with great interest that I watched Obama and the reaction his statement has generated from morons people on both the right and the left. He’s learned one of the cardinal rules of American politics. Don’t tell the voters how stupid they really are. Or how in the past 20 years they have allowed themselves to be manipulated like sheep.
Even though its true. On both sides of the aisle.
I grew up in Western PA. Truth be told there were more than a few people I encountered along the way that met this description:
You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing’s replaced them…And they fell through the Clinton Administration, and the Bush Administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Now the key part of Obama’s statement is not the second paragraph-it is the first one. The Town Hall Harlot and the rest have of course used this to show yet again how Obama has abandoned the supposedly erudite masses that listen to Rush Limbaugh, Dennis Praeger; read MM and the other loons, and or watch the Fox Noise network.
Now probably Obama would have been best off stopping at the end of the first paragraph. However in a poorly constructed way-he actually did a good thing. He highlighted the really useless things that enter into the landscape of Presidential politics. Especially when it comes to a religious litmus test that so many people in the states seem to love.
Its a gaffe now though and it is going to come back to haunt him in the campaign.
But just because it is a gaffe does not mean its not truth.
Which he points out well in his speech in Indiana:
Besides if you want to meet a real elitst-why not talk to the man who used to own a pro baseball team? And has not lived paycheck to paycheck in his life?
Oh I forgot, we are all supposed to think he is a regular guy.
I never liked NASCAR anyway.