I am so not impressed with this statement by madamflaunrleroy:

What are you implying here? That white children cannot look up to accomplished black people? What are you made of anyway AKASmith? Why don't you take of your hood and come out of the closet?

More of the lame trying to paint someone as a racist utter bullshit.

I was referring back to rufus's previous statement about role models. People generally refer to role models for their children who are like them. In other words, baseball heros who do steroids are poor role models for little leaguers. Models who are anorexics are poor role models for little girls who look up to them.

Little black girls need female black role models who they can admire, like Oprah.

Little would be comedians may admire Chris Rock -- because he is a very funny guy.

It is perfectly valid for women to say that they would like a first woman president as a role model for theire daughters.

It is perfectly valid for black people to say that they would like Obama as a role model for their children because he is black.

I was simply telling rufus that if he need white people as role models for his children, there are plenty of white people with power. Why do white boys need role models when there are white men represented in almost every conceivable category.

No, Obama is not a role model for white children in that respect. He is black. He says he is black. However, I think he would be a pretty great role model for biracial children.

A role model is merely a person who allows children who are like him to see that they can succeed.

Madam, you are a racist!

Can anyone tell me why the fuck it's an insult to like good wine and cheese?

I would encourage people on all sides of the fence to examine the quote in its original context because even a lot of defenders don't seem to get the full depth of betrayal on the part of the media establishment to spin this thing for eyeballs.

[Note: The original question was what challenges would be faced by the campaign in PA. The bolds are mine]

OBAMA: So, it depends on where you are, but I think it's fair to say that the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. The people are mis-appre...I think they're misunderstanding why the demographics in our, in this contest have broken out as they are. Because everybody just ascribes it to 'white working-class don't wanna work -- don't wanna vote for the black guy.' That's...there were intimations of that in an article in the Sunday New York Times today - kind of implies that it's sort of a race thing.

[Hmm... that's odd, coming from a guy who supposedly generalized this demographic as being fundamentally bigoted.]

Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

[But no! Now they are racist! Or is he just acknowledging that he doesn't exactly fit in naturally with the demographic he's talking about?]

But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of 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. So it's not surprising then that 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.

[I don't think I'm indulging in semantic arguments by noting the usage of the word "or" connecting all of these so-called elitist generalizations. Votes have been won against people's economic interests in these places.]

BUT THIS IS WHAT REALLY PISSES ME OFF:

Um, now these are in some communities, you know. I think what you'll find is, is that people of every background -- there are gonna be a mix of people, you can go in the toughest neighborhoods, you know working-class lunch-pail folks, you'll find Obama enthusiasts. And you can go into places where you think I'd be very strong and people will just be skeptical. The important thing is that you show up and you're doing what you're doing.

[The VERY NEXT paragraph shows us a man who wants to be careful about painting these demographics in overly broad strokes. Completely unnecessary if you had asked me before "bittergate" but I guess the media establishment has given him reason to be cautious.]

So you tell me Joan, how did you get "elitism" from this speech? is it that 99% of the op-ed and column writers on this topic are all hacks and couldn't be bothered to investigate by reading a few paragraphs for context? That seems unlikely. I'm not one for conspiracy theories and the idea that you're all playing a game with this issue for traffic seems unlikely too but I can't really think of any other explanation. Have you all forgotten how to do your jobs properly or did you just stop caring?