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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
..wrote a good letter. To relate to small-town America is not hard, but you have to talk to them, not at them. You can't get lost in the trees and miss the forest which is what Obama is in danger of doing. You can't engage in a shouting match with McCain. Call a spade a spade. Call a lie a lie and move on. Don't wax eloquent cause eloquent while important is not as important as the truth. JFK and Roosevelt were patrician and rich, but they communicated by being themselves and had an innate ability to understand people not so rich or patrician. The best advice Obama has gotten so far is from Bill Clinton. And yes, it was a big mistake not putting Hillary on the ticket. I think he has yet to joust with humilite, but he at least is suiting up.
You have to relate to rural people with empathy. I don't think he has loads of it because he is from a different place, Hawaii and Chicago, and the latter was either Ivy League in Hyde Park or in other black areas early on. So he has no compass to tell him what and how rural small-town, mostly white, people think. They are no different than the rest of America. You could argue they are quintessentially America. They get cable. They get big city newspapers. But Obama's biggest problem is himself. He underestimated the need for Hillary, and he underestimate McCain believing that this was automatically a Dem year. It may be, but the Presidency is different. He thus has to overcome himself to reach them at the basic level. This is not donning a hunting outfit ala Kerry, or a stupid helmet in a tank like Dukakis. In fact he can not act differently. He is what he is, so don't try to change, as McCain is. Just change the rhetoric, get off the big stage, and get down in the dirt. Quit using legalese and gobbledygook and polispeak. Don't talk over their heads about some esoteric policy. KISS, keep is simple stupid, cause in reality it is.
If you tell them the truth, if you tell them why Bush-McCain policies are not only no good for American or the world, but no good for them, if you go to them and meet them and make them feel you understand them, then you can get their support. If you bat away McCain lies and slurs and take your eye off the ball, you will strike out.
Small-town America has always been more Republican than Democrat-oriented but to say in 2008 that someone is NOT is favor of "blacks" shows the hypocrisy and racism still existing in the United States. So you trust yet another war-monger and a "moos/wolf-hunting strumpet" (who takes care of her children by the way?) because of your prejudices? Mind you this is coming from a white woman, first generation immigrant to the USA and who came there in the first place to no longer encounter the unjust stigma of being part of the post-Nazi German generation. (which by the way never happened, I was insulted most often over my 38 years as an American tax-paying citizen by American Jews who never suffered ANY loss or hardship at all while I did.)
Can rural America distinguish between hard-working black families with good values and the gang-oriented, drug-plagued inner-city folks?
And guess who brought the drugs into Harlem etc. in the first place and who were the slum-lords/store-owners in those impoverished areas? I well remember the Bronx in the 1970s and 1980s looking like a war-zone, worse than some of war-zones of today. Who profited from their misery and who passed the laws that the black families could no longer receive financial aid if there was a man in the house, eventually leading to the "projects" of un-wed mothers with children, fatherless homes and the disintegration of the black family which prior to that had been very strong?
Small-town thinking is not always marked by ignorance but in this case I would venture to remind all of America that the country is a MELTING POT, color, race, religion or sexual preference ought to stay OUT of politics. Take your extremist born-again Christian values to church where they belong and THINK who REALLY RUNS AMERICA in the 21st CENTURY - a large conglomerate of the super-wealthy, multinational CORPORATIONS and their lobbies. If you do not understand that, you are fooling yourselves and how!
Small-town America has always been more Republican than Democrat-oriented but to say in 2008 that someone is NOT is favor of "blacks" shows the hypocrisy and racism still existing in the United States. So you trust yet another war-monger and a "moose/wolf-hunting strumpet" (Who takes care of her children by the way?) because of your prejudices? Mind you this is coming from a white woman, first generation immigrant to the USA and who came there in the first place to no longer encounter the unjust stigma of being part of the post-Nazi German generation. (which by the way never happened, I was insulted most often over my 38 years as an American tax-paying citizen by American Jews who never suffered ANY loss or hardship at all while I did.)
Can rural America distinguish between hard-working black families with good values and the gang-oriented, drug-plagued inner-city folks?
And guess who brought the drugs into Harlem etc. in the first place and who were the slum-lords/store-owners in those impoverished areas? I well remember the Bronx in the 1970s and 1980s looking like a war-zone, worse than some of war-zones of today. Who profited from their misery and who passed the laws that the black families could no longer receive financial aid if there was a man in the house, eventually leading to the "projects" of un-wed mothers with children, fatherless homes and the disintegration of the black family which prior to that had been very strong?
Small-town thinking is not always marked by ignorance but in this case I would venture to remind all of America that the country is a MELTING POT, color, race, religion or sexual preference ought to stay OUT of politics. Take your extremist born-again Christian values to church where they belong and THINK who REALLY RUNS AMERICA in the 21st CENTURY - a large conglomerate of the super-wealthy, multinational CORPORATIONS and their lobbies. If you do not understand that, you are fooling yourselves and how!
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
219 Democrats and one Republican join in favor of the legislation, which passed by a narrow margin
Salon headlines in your mailbox
