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• Monday, May 19, 2008 10:46 PM

  wow

  What a spectacularly unilluminating piece.

  What's the point, here, exactly?

  That the fancy-pants elitists ought to stop making fun of hillbillies if they expect to get their votes?

  Is that the point?

  Hardly a revelation.

  A particularly dubious passage reads: "In 2004, Kerry lost the rural battleground by about 20 percent and with it a close election. The rural vote was particularly telling in the pivotal state of Ohio, where a massive Democratic get-out-the-vote effort in cities and suburbs was more than offset by increased Republican success with rural voters. Many of those rural voters were Appalachian and blue collar, people who back before the name-calling were reliable Democrats. They gave Bush a second term."

  This is quite a hefty claim and may be accurate, but how about some substantiation?

  We're to understand that "rural voters" turned away from the Democratic party due to "name-calling?"

  Which name-calling, exactly?

  Because they found The Beverly HIllbillies offensive? Because of jokes about toothlessness and cousin-marrying that circulate in the vulgar joke circuit?

  If the crux of this essay is that these voters have had their feelings hurt (and that's the closest to a crux I can find), and specifically by the Democratic party, then why not write about that?

  I'd be interested to see a serious examination of this dynamic.

  As is, it rests on no authority but the author's and seems to rely on some kind of "conventional wisdom" rather than evidence.

  And what of the explanation that the reason these voters don't go for Obama is primarily or at least largely racism?

  Why is the author so cavalier in rejecting this explanation?

  It's an important subject, so why just laugh it off?

  However shrill or offensive you may find the voices who articulate this position, that doesn't mean it's without merit.

  This essay really does nothing but to stir the pot, and amounts basically to a glorified, "Nyah, nyah!"

  Mission accomplished.

  —weeping for brunnhilde Read weeping for brunnhilde's other letters
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