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• Tuesday, April 15, 2008 08:33 PM

  Thank You, Mike Madden!

  Thank you for enlarging upon the point I was trying to make in a recent letter in another thread (the one following Michael Lind's pedantic-yet-mincing, monkey-with-a-parasol attempt to explain to us what the expendable are feeling). My son lives in rural Pennsylvania. A rock musician who's been a legend in the DC area for 20 years, he's kept his blue-collar day job and, like many of his neighbors, he feels extremely cynical about his choices and about politics in general, which has been reflected in his doom metal musical works. It required a huge effort on the part of his younger sister and me to persuade him it was worth the trouble to just go out and vote this time because it could actually make a difference. The area is just that way and has been for years. Madden has provided a valuable view into the true heart of a region which has largely given up. Getting them to just get up and vote will be the real problem, so there is a huge sector up for grabs, and Obama has, with his recent "gaffe", actually connected with a number of them, as personified in Madden's interviewee Shawn Erfman. And Erfman's right, of course, and highly quotable, because "it" is "fucking true." It could have been my son talking.

  Meanwhile Ms. Clinton debases and truly condescends to these same people by pretending to have something -- anything -- in common with them. Good luck with that.

  How did this article get past the Salon editorial assasssin's bureau? Well done, Mister Mike! You nailed this one to a post!

  —AJCalhoun Read AJCalhoun's other letters
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