The Nappy Cat Chronicles

Election '08: What Obama Said

You go into 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.

And it’s not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Quick quiz: Is this man “clinging to” his religion or is he expressing his faith? Is he exhibiting “antipathy toward” those who aren’t like himself or is he simply indicating his unhappiness with how other people conduct their business?

I see a man who is clinging to his religion and expressing antipathy toward everyone and everything not like himself. This is the type of individual about which Obama was referring. This type of individual may make public declarations of hate. Usually though, this type of individual hates privately. He hates liberals and clings to a gun collection to stick it to the Democrats. He hates Mexicanos and clings to his belief that they are bringing down the White middle class. He hates everyone not like himself and clings to a religion to justify his hate.

Unfortunately, the media’s unquestioning coverage of this sort of thing should make a sane politico want to punch himself in the face rather than point this out. Anyone with an ax to grind will jump on this and claim that the quote was made in reference to each and every one of their small-town constituents. Already, Hillary has stated that rural folk are the greatest folk on the planet. The McCain campaign has referred to it as breathtaking “elitism and condescension.”

Since the only way to turn the quote against Obama is to claim that he was referring to all small-town blue-collar White Americans, there is a tacit admission that fundamentalists and wacko gun-hoarders are viewed as representative of the larger social orders of Christians and Second Amendment enthusiasts. Though I do find this sort of admission hilarious, I wish Republicans and opportunistic Democrats would refrain from clouding the issue with buzzwords like “elitism” when the discussion isn’t framed in a way that kisses the collective asses of their constituents.