Letters to the Editor
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shawnie boy pull out his piece
no one on these boards shows less of the peace of God than shawnie boy the pawn, with the possible exception of dumbasstexassgurl. what galls these morons is the fact that Obama told the truth, that people whose lives are threatened, whose way of life is on a cliff edge, do cleave more tightly to things they trust- a gun, a God, a drool covered keyboard in shawnie's case- because they cannot trust their government any more. THAT IS THE POINT. He is spot on, deadly accurate, and not in the least elitist. It's something Huey Long might have said, to a different crowd in a different time using different language- but the message is the same basic truth: when citizens are alienated, they circle what wagons they have. shawnie lobotomy doesn't get, and never will. He's the same kind of krischun that Bush is: all surface, no depth, no contemplative impulse, just contempt for things beyond his ken. and his barbie.
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@ Aka
What's the difference between bitter and disaffected?
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@ aka
Sorry, I see you discuss it...
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smith plays (semantics) with himself
Kintoonians love to parse. see bill parse. see billary lie. see them misdirect, the oldest huckster's trick in the book. bitter? Hell yeah. PIss off.
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Oh what a bore...
AKA's dissertation on the stoney "facts" of class war.
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Here come the Judge
..and here come the fudge!
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Don't Generalize, Obama
Even as an Obama supporter there is some reason to believe he instinctively lumps all whites together or at least all whites but the most affluent and educated. There are tremendous differences among white people, to say the least. I grew up in the 60's and 70's in a growing suburb of Chicago that had only recently been a small rural town with feed stores where chicks and ducklings were for sale. On my few blocks that made up my world as a child there was my own basically secular and lapsed Catholic family from the University of Chicago, there was the semi-rural Protestant family who still hunted and had hundreds of animal heads in their basemement to show for it. There was the stiff Lawrence Welk family who worked for AT&T and were determined that all their children would be geniuses. There was the resentful family of Yugoslav decent whose father repaired cars who felt everyone but them was getting a break. Then there was the old Midwestern Catholic family with eight children still so connected to their rural relatives that they still plucked their own chickens in their kitchen. Quite a stew it was. America is complex and it's very foolish to generalise before an audience of donors in San Francisco. Especially when San Francisco has become Republican code for Gay. I know. I'm gay.
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Antipathy
thy name is Hillary.
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Thank you for pointing that out blueflash
Obama's biggest mistake with that speech was his generalizing. Many people lumped in his category are going to say: "Hey, wait just a minute there ..."
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just folks
I have read (but not heard or seen) Clinton's response to Obama's remark, and on the printed page, it looks deranged. I'm a poor person myself & I live in a smallish town in Florida, but I sure didn't see any elitism in Obama's remarks -- I thought he got us. I think he was trying to explain poor people to rich people, just the way he tried to explain black people to white people & vice versa. He has the facility to do that because he actually knows (rather than 'uses') all kinds of people. I think the person who will be most hurt by remarks on this subject is Sen. Clinton because she seems (or pretends) to have no idea about the pain her brand of insider political deal-making has caused us average Americans.
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to all of those who keep going on about Obama speaking truth
You are only understanding one side of his "truth," the side that you agree with. His "truth" marginalized the life experiences and beliefs of a large swatch of people--people he needs on his side to be able to win the election. Seems like an "ism" of sorts to me; and yes, sorry, given the crowd he was speaking to (comfortable with) it does play as elitist.
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manos99 and tom paine
I wish you could see that AKA and Joan Walsh are both Obama supporters. You don't need to worry about either of them on voting day, regardless of the discussions here, or, how much they are criticized for criticizing Obama. But if you read the message of their texts they are asking tough questions because this election, like every other, will involve challenges to overcome. Tough questions shouldn't invite scorn because they are asked.
My boyfriend is Irish, working class Catholic background and doesn't really like Obama. I don't quite understand it.
This doesn't need to be about blame, but I wish that people could look at the issues and try to see--is this going to be a problem? Or is it just about the fact that he is relatively "new" and for those who do have bread and butter issues they want someone more "proven"?
Yet I also have my complaints. I don't have an elite background; my parents are educated working class Republicans. (Talk about voting against your economic interests...but they are very married to their family values issues...which ironically I suppose that McCain will now represent for them?) I'm educated but not by any elite school. But I also don't fully appreciate: why would people view McCain, who is married to a wealthy heiress as somehow less elite than Obama, a scholarship student to Harvard raised by a single mother?
Is it his language, and they way he talks? Even in this statement, I'm not sure I fully see the problem. Is it because he sounds professorly or overly confident? Is it because of the way he looks...skinny and camera ready? I don't fully understand if it is something that Obama can change... or is it a deeper problem in this country with schisms of classes, where Democrats traditionally know how to appeal to the masses (often, as in the case of Welfare Reform in the nineties) all the while selling them out....
Is it just that working class people, as Obama implies, have been sold out one too many times to "trust" a "change agent"? To people barely holding on "change" probably implies the loss of something...instead of a gain.
I have never really understand the appeal that Republicans have to the working class either...even though I have read documentation that poor people vote their economic interest more frequently than they (we) are given credit for as income level by income level, the poorest were the most likely to vote for John Kerry, and the richest were most likely to vote for Bush. I don't think the danger is that poor people of large numbers will vote against the Democratic Party (although some will) but that they will stay home. That is the danger, and what is at stake...