DISQUS

Bryan Woods · 1 year ago

Where do you think the line gets drawn, though? I saw on twitter that you called southern Kansas "very military." Certainly geography +does+ have something to do with resounding ideals. But obviously not everything. I'm wondering where you think the line is between safe generalizations and unjust stereotypes. I live in Brooklyn and a lot of my family lives in Indiana. To say that there is no difference between locations would be ludicrous, but for me to assume that they're rednecks would be as well...

dave · 1 year ago

I think this is the twit you're referring to.

http://twitter.com/davewiner/statuses/787479132

What I was thinking was that there are lots of military installations in the area. I think the line is pretty clear, if I had said the people there are militaristic and regimented, that would be over the line. What about the school teachers, librarians, the head of the local ACLU? For all I know some great jazz musician comes from western Kansas. I would have no way of knowing the quality of the people who live there. But it's easy to judge that there's miliary there. And even that is just an impression colored by my own experience.

William Meloney · 1 year ago

Just how many angels can dance on the head of your pin? From you of all people I expected a sense of intellectual fair play, not semantic jousting. You are little better than the power-elite that would derail an honest man and his efforts.

Have a 'nice' day.

dave · 1 year ago

I think he was wrong, and I think it matters a lot. As I said, that's how we lost the 2004 election, and if you want to lose, go for it. I don't. I want to win. You have a nice day too.

Graham Glass · 1 year ago

An update you might be interested in:

In an interview with the Winston-Salem Journal, Obama said, "If I worded things in a way that made people offended, I deeply regret that. "The underlying truth of what I said remains, which is simply that people who have seen their way of life upended because of economic distress are frustrated and rightfully so," he was quoted as saying.

http://www.reuters.com/article/topNews/idUSN111...

Cheers,
Graham

joypog · 1 year ago

I think the long election campaign and the super long dragged out process of being the frontrunner hounded on two fronts but without any outside support is really dragging Obama down. I think he's getting worn out from the constant pressure of not f'ing up, while Clinton and McCain have pleasure of being the insurgent campaign which I think they are both relishing a bit more.

Given that he is "inexperienced", I guess this is essentially the way that electorate is forcing him to "pay his dues". I don't understand the appeal of Clinton, but for some reason almost a half of the Democratic electorate like her a lot. For better or worse these primaries really are democracy in action (democracy is really messy and often ugly business). In the end I think Ms. Clinton will be either a hero for toughing up Barack on the way to the presidency or she will be Nader'08.

joypog · 1 year ago

wow just looked at the ad...maybe the general election will be more honorably fought than the primaries. At least between the main protagonists. I have no illusions about what's going to happen behind the scenes, I heard about Rev. Wright on Jan 4 after Iowa, I was tuning into conservative talk radio (AM over the air broadcast) to see what their response would be.

I'm a bit concerned about the whole public financing thing.... Obama needs to have a good explanation if he opts out.

Sean · 1 year ago

IMHO Obama is not comparing intelligence to geography. I get his point. I think it's a reverse-euphemism for saying those people are disenfranchised with government. However I don't think it's quite a stereotype to say that the prevailing politics in rural PA are what Obama says they are. Look around to see all the confederate flags there to get the gist of that. However, as I believe Lakoff would agree, the republican party has done an expert job of framing hot issues using surface framed based rhetoric which triggers some deeply held "strict father model" deep frames which are likely prevalent in rural America. Lakoff talks a lot about these constituents regularly vote against their economic and other self-interest as a result.

Pratik Patel · 1 year ago

If Obama can deal with this as honestly as he has been trying to do with other issues, then I think I'll even have more respect for him than I do now. After too many years of seeing politicians play games with the public's "general mood," my cinicism has reached to a point where I have a hard time convincing my instinct that Obama isn't trying to play the "appearance" game. The more I see him, the more my cincism disappears. Goofs like these don't necessarily help.

joypog · 1 year ago

Yes, the thing about Obama is that I used to be deeply cynical and I guess I've fallen head over heels for him. I don't want to be disappointed =). I guess the alternative is politics as usual - which as much as I dislike it, I must admit that I've been blessed and my personal life keeps going "as usual" I can't complain.

Dawn · 1 year ago

Obama is disappointing me in many ways. He talks a good game, for sure, but the more we get to know him, the more I get concerned about what he really believes and what he would actually do and not do as President. He does seem elitist, as well as a bit spineless.

B Anderson · 1 year ago

He sure makes a lot of "mistakes"! Treat him like an intelligent, accountable man, not a model of something you hold dear.

rahul · 1 year ago

I thought the remark was reasonable. Pundits tend to react as if there has no been a period of prolonged adversity in their life.

Its true of people in the midwest, its true in India, its true everywhere. When the chips are down, you ARE lashing at someone to blame. It could be the imperialistic and hedonistic west in the middle east; those immigrants taking over 'our' jobs over here.

We all compartmentalize and feel he need to feel superior to others. Its human nature. Lets be honest about acknowledging it. When things are bad we seek people and races to blame; and cling to whats known to us; to whats worked for us, and make decisions reactively, defensively. Its then easy to become a one issue voter on some edge case about faith, or homosexuality, or guns.

Where Obama is wrong is that its not just in rural America, this mostly human reaction to adversity is everywhere, in Boston, Bombay, and Biloxi. Does affluence and education help in providing a platform to have an inner conversation to objectively react to ones own latent biases and compartmentalizations? Maybe...

wag · 1 year ago

In politics a gaffe is telling the truth. I challenge anyone to go to rural america, spend some time talking to people, listen to AM talk radio, read the local newspaper, etc., and honestly say Obama's statement wasn't true to some degree.

fdsa · 1 year ago

The issue isn't whether or not his statement was true - though stereotyping any "group" (as if a rural middle-American town were A group) is a bad idea. The issue is stating or categorizing that in a way as if it is wrong.

That is the elitist complaint. That somehow the choices, lifestyles, and thoughts of these people are wrong.

They're not wrong. There's nothing wrong with people in central Pennsylvania opposing federal and statewide firearms legislation. If the city of Philadelphia has a gun problem (and there is a problem, but it is a socio-economic problem that seems to lead to the abuse of guns), then why should rural Pennsylvanians be penalized to solve it. There's nothing wrong with people be annoyed by the lack of activity on illegal immigration - it is not ignorant to want to see action rather than the passive acceptance of this. There's definitely nothing wrong with embracing religion.

By stating things as he did, he's telling these voters that he does not represent them.

lemon obrien · 1 year ago

i think obama may have lost the election. if he was talking about poor blacks in da ghetto, he'd be called racist; well, if he was white, but an asshole just the same.

i liked obama, i may vote for mccain. i'm independent; and i really do't like the democrats for tax/hand-out reasons. band i don't like republicans for religious bs social retarded reasons. i don't want socialism, a bigger government, and more taxes; we want less government and more opportunity. we don't want to live in fear any more, we're sick of the bs games of fear-mongering, race baiting, etc. i think mainly, we're sick of our politians stabbing us in the back. we're not bitter, we're disappointed.

Michael Markman (Mickeleh) · 1 year ago

I don't agree that Obama equated "geography with intellect." In his speech last Sunday, Immediately after the bombshell sentence, he made it clear that "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." (transcript on Mark Halperin's blog)
Here's what Obama said last Sunday before the sentence that kicked off the ruckus:

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. They feel so betrayed by government that 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, then that adds another layer of skepticism.... 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.... 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.

And then this:

And it’s not surprising then 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 think there are two pairs of poisonous words: bitter/cling and guns/religion. Characterizing people as bitter and clinging is not going to win their votes. Suggesting that Americans love us our guns and religion as refuges from limited economic opportunity puts you on the wrong side of some very devoted hunters and worshippers.

Obama knows this sentence was deadly. On Friday, he repeated his is overall thesis without the offending cup of bitters. (video here). I'm sorry that he hasn't gone further than an old-style politican's standard "<a href="http://www.journalnow.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=WSJ/MGArticle/WSJ_BasicArticle

dave · 1 year ago

What if he started talking about Jews? And explaining why we're so bitter about our lot in life? What if you started talking about blacks or women and said the same things he was saying about people who live in rural communities? There are *good* reasons we don't go there, because it's dehumanizing to put people in a class and then start saying limiting things about them. How about women and their place? Try saying that in a social gathering in Marin and see how far you get.

We who live in urban areas have a blind spot. We can't see how offensive our thinking is to other Americans who are different from us. These are powerful people who for the last four years have run the show. And you can't fight prejudice and practice it yourself. Sorry, I think he was wrong.

Michael Markman (Mickeleh) · 1 year ago

I'm not defending the sentence that talked bitterness, guns and religion. That was a bad formulation. If Obama's goal is to get more working-class votes, that's not a good tactic. And if it's a true window into Obama's mindset, then he's in terrible trouble. I think we're in agreement about that sentence. I'm disappointed that Obama's own rejection of that line is the political conditional: if you were offended, I'm sorry.

But just as it's important to see the most egregious lines of Rev. Wright in context, we should also look at Obama's context.

He started by saying, "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 are most cynical about government." He specifically rejected the notion that "white working-class... don't wanna vote for the black guy."

His thesis was rooted in economic circumstance. Right or wrong, that's not an expression of prejudice.

Is it prejudiced to ask why Jews (74%), African Americans (88%) voted for Kerry? Why cities broke for Kerry (54-45) and rural areas for Bush (57%-42%)? Why gun owners (63%) broke for Bush? source: National Exit Poll

justcorbly · 1 year ago

I grew up, and left, the Midwestern kind of town Obama referenced. His comments do not describe everyone who lives there, but they certainly describe a lot of people I see and speak with when I go back for visits. They've seen their jobs and their pensions disappear, they've seen their public schools laid waste, and they''ve seen their children leave. They've been lied to and cheated. Of course, they're bitter and anger.

But, too many of them are routing their anger toward the wrong people. I have relatives who blame it all on "the blacks" or "the Mexicans". I also have relatives who know exactly who to blame for being laid off or for the fact that dad's pension went poof when his factory went under.

What Obama said is less interesting than the reaction to it. It's dismaying that the remarks are being castigated as elitist. While his brush was perhaps a bit too broad, what he said does, in fact, ring truein my experience. The nation can't get on with solving its problems if we are afraid to speak honestly about them. Second, to the extent that Obama is correct, attacks on him as an elitist serve to buttress the misdirected anger he was discussing. We do not need presidential candidates telling people that it's OK to blame scapegoats. Third, this is an opportunity for those who disagree with Obama to present their side of the story, rather than simply channel karl Rove.

brklynsurfer · 1 year ago

I don't think Obama was making a generalization about small town Americans. I think his statement is directed at the people who have felt disenfranchised ( i.e. bitter) from politics.
Obama is different and this statement shows the difference between Obama's politics and the other two candidates. While Clinton and McCain spin this into sound bites, Obama is being honest about the realities in rural and small town America, that Carl Rove politics has disassociated their economic interest from their political interest.

ka9dgx · 1 year ago

People do cling to things that offer them comfort, hope or escape. Clinton and McCain are both using the same old political trick of accusing their opponents of their own worst behaviors to try to immunize themselves from criticism. I don't see why anyone actually buys this crap about Obama being elitist, especially when it's pro-offered by a pair of long time Washington Insiders.

I oppose the McCain-Clinton ticket of 2008, and I hope you will continue to do so as well.

BTW: I still find value in the podcast you did with Lakeoff. I'll keep watching the antics of the Republic... party, and worry about how the troop spurt worked.

johmn · 1 year ago

I've just got to ask: why do you care? I've seen your passionate pro-Obama twit's... but come on, do you know this guy? Do you actually know him? How the heck do you know what he thinking? I support none of these candidates and won't decide until Nov 6. But why do some go head-in supporting a candidate? I just can't understand it. I certainly don't get the Obama thing at all... he is unknown and untested... I get the feeling you'd do more research on a digital camera than on your presidential candidate. Partisan people are not thinkers, period.

Matthew · 1 year ago

He has said the exact same sort of thing about the people who he helped on the south side of chicago. It may have been something about why black-latino relations are not very good. In a sense, this is the basis of his whole campaign: people are bitter and have pulled into their shells due to the current state of government. Depending on their background and community, they pull into different shells.

This is just another example of him saying things which are true but not necessarily what people want to hear--I wish he did this more often, not less.

Joshua_Whalen · 1 year ago

I'm planning to write something long and meaningful (I hope) about this
some time in the next few days. I'm tied up in the middle of a project
right now, and I don't want to take a big break just yet, but the short
version is something I can knock out here on my lunch break (yes, I know
it's Sunday. <sarcasm>This is America, right? So, who needs a day
off?</sarcasm>)

I lived in Plainfield, Vermont for a while.
After a decade in film, web, and video, I needed a break. 9/11 lost me
my house, so I figured I'd evac, and go live someplace beautiful and
peaceful for a while. Here's a couple of pictures, so you get the idea
of the place: <a
href="http://www.panix.com/~joshua/vermont/index.html">Plainfield,
Vermont

Lovely, yes? The upper picture is the view out the
door of the house I lived in when I first got there, the other one is
the view looking up from the banks of the Winooski River, over the old
dam, at the center of town.

As you can see in the first
picture, Dan doesn't have a lot of neighbors. The town is about 5 miles
down a mountain. The town of Plainfield doesn't have a police
department, but contracts with the county sherif to handle emergency
calls, and do occasional patrols (once a day, during the week, and about
11 pm on the weekends.). The Sherif's office is in Montpelier, 18 miles
away. If Dan calls 9/11, the cops arrive anywhere from 45 minutes (the
soonest possible) to 2.5 hours (or more if they're busy).

There
are Bears in the forest, and Lynx, and Moose, and a diabolical (they eat
your pets) animal called a Fisher Cat, kind of a small wolverine, not to
mention feral dogs, and the occasional crazy human (speed and oxycontin
are two major drug problems in the region) that may cause all number of
problems.

Every person I know in Vermont either has a gun or a
crossbow or something that can kill a person or a rabid animal from a
distance. A couple of my buddies up there, who raise livestock, walk
around town with pistols on their hips, and occasionally shoot a
neighbors dog for harassing their animals. Dan has had a few
five-on-ones with packs of feral dogs, and there was a moose competing
over his territory for a while, as well as a family of squirrels who
were eating his insulation (it gets down to -30 in the winter for months
at a time, so insulation matters), and while only one of these (the
squirrels) required the use of a gun to resolve, if you don't have one,
you are a potential meal for anyone who does. Yes, I said meal. People
get crazy in january up in the north country, and hungry. Of course,
there's enough deer, rabbits, and wild turkey to feed an army up in
the hills, the turkey are so plentiful I had to watch out for them
when I rode my bike. 18 pounds of lean, white meat, picking through
your trash on a cold january morning, but no gun no turkey.


My dad was very into hunting when he was a kid, and held the national
NRA precision shooting title 3 years running, so I've heard quite a bit
about this stuff. I don't hunt because I don't eat animals, but I do fish.
The male bonding thing is there, but it's not the point, it's the fringe
benefit. The point is food. Up where I lived in Vermont, about a third
of the population gets it's primary protein from hunting. the rules allow
2 deer per hunter, so if you have 3 kids, and a wife, and you take 'em
along, that's ten deer. Rabbit you can hunt year round, and I don't recall
the rules for turkey, and for the brave and hearty, there's ice fishing.
Hunting isn't a sport for these folks. You can trade a dressed deer for quite
a few neccesary items with neighbors who aren't good shots, and then
there's the hide, as well.


Us New Yorkers often forget that food doesn't come from a factory.
Someone has to raise it, grow it, or hunt it.



To a lot of my neighbors, our priorities in the big city seem crazy. Why would
we want to live where we have to pay money for everything? Why would we give up
the simple joys of laying in a field or roasting a turkey we caught with our own
hands for polluted air, shoe-box apartments, and crowded subways or freeways?
Most of all, by what hubris do we dare to come to their place, cut down the forest,
build suburbs, pour septic tank runnof into the water so you can't eat the fish,
and declare ourselves superior? Yes we make more money, because we need more money,
to hire people to do for us what they can do for themselves. Plainfield has an
actual Blacksmith! Not a tourist attraction, a neccesity, for the farmers,
housebuilders, and whatever else that need custom parts, steel tools repaired, etc...



A generation ago, we still had some of that expertise in NYC. I have the mixed
blessing of beingthe last member of my family who knows any of the leathcraft
business (my dad's trade) and sadly, you just can't make a decent living with it
anymore. Nearly everyone who does it has some other source of income. I feel some
bitterness at it's loss. Mind you, I'm a rather talented geek and media creature,
so I'm hardly starving, but there is nothing like the meditative satisfaction in
my work that I have experienced stitching an old butterfly chair cover that my dad
made before i was born from steer hide that can't be gotten at any price in this
day and age back together, one hand sewn loop at a time, an hour an evening for
months, or of the luxury of having low enough rent, and high enough pay
proportional to my rent, to allow me to spend an hour a night making things and
repairing them. I buy fancy or cheesy junk for much more than it's worse because
I just don't have the time to do otherwise.


I definitely experienced some sourness in Vermont when I would buy a manufactured
thing and explain that i just didn't have time to buy a hand made one that would
take weeks or months to make for me. Form they're point of view, I was screwing the
local economy by doing business with the enemy, the cheap factory labor that
destroyed the immense stone cutting industry (second largest in the world) that once
drove the local economy, with union jobs and 40 hours weeks and 2 months vacation
each year. That left time for the kids, and the wife, and the deer, instead of the
forced over time of Walmart, that steals their time, their life, their health, and
their treasures: the skills passed on for generations, in stone cutting, metal
working, hunting, fishing, and so on. I am rather angry with Barak, child of Hawaii,
for his rather contemptible remarks. No offense, but drop me and him in the northern
boreal forest in april and pick us up a year later. I will have gained weight,
he'll probably be dead. I envy him his law degree, and his remarkable gifts for
communication. So why does a privileged person like him show such contempt for
the treasures of rural people, who put the food onhis table, and who's parents
made the fancy antiques such privileged people assign such value to?



Lastly, a couple of links:
Native Leather, NYC The guy she mentionsas cranky is my dad. We don't talk much
lately, but he is a character.


second:my old house and evirons in NYC,. pre-9/11


I'll have a more coherent essay about this all soon on my blog. Sorry to go on so long.
I'm still not sure what I was trying to say.

Russell Gum · 1 year ago

Check out http://robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/04/obama-b...

Robert Reich is right on again.

Paul R · 1 year ago

Just this past week, the international elite quite openly demonstrated the complete absolute unreality of the global financial system, did away with all pretense at any sort of accountability or transparency; and have ala Patriot Act a ready-made series of "regulations" and "oversight" roles to be handed to (hold the drum roll please) to the very speculators that apparently own the economic system in the West.

What would be a 'change" and what one would expect from a blog issued from "Berkeley" is an intelligent appraisal of how, precisely, are we ("the people") to extricate our nation from these blood suckers. The corruption and unreality of this system is no longer even remotely open to question; in fact the elite are quite happy of late to rub people's face in this fact.

Hate to break this news to you, but there is a Vente de la Louisiane en reverse currently in motion and it will cover coast to coast, bitter and unbitter, chattering, or twittering ...

News · 1 year ago

He spoke inartfully and I don't think he meant that people turn to guns and religion to compensate for economic frustrations. I think he meant they vote on those things and not the economic issues. They wrote a whole book on this phenomena. "What's Wrong with Kansas?"

thought this might interest you on a lazy Sunday afternoon. Bill Clinton said pretty much the same thing (more than once) Obama was so inarticulately was trying to get at.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/13/bill-c...

m · 1 year ago

wow, this couldn't be a more profound misreading of what happened -- the question, the answer and the context.

it was, as others have said, inartfully put. but the point is spot-on as pretty much every man-on-the-street interview has proven.

besides, he said the exact same thing on charlie rose ... in 2004. and the sage kentuckian couldn't have agreed more.

Jonas · 1 year ago

Thanks for a great blog! Always appreciated and happy blogger appreciation day.

homo superior · 1 year ago

I think the last few days since Obama's comments have proved you mostly wrong. The only people perceiving an insult are the elites. Working class folks, except for the drones gathered up for HRC's commercial, seem to mostly agree with Obama. We _are_ angry and bitter, many have said, and seem bewildered at the hay made over single words like "bitter" and "clinging." (That last word would be a familiar one for anyone who's attended a fundamentalist church, for example, like me, and most of those folks would not interpret it as pejorative.) Finally, taking offense at someone else's behest is essentially condescending, and the over-reactions from the pundit class and the political class bears that assessment out.