Working Class Elitists
In the initial stages of the primary, we heard a lot about blacks versus women. This simpleton's analysis withered away when the media realized that the Democratic Party contains other groups too, like Hispanics and young people and seniors. So, in the media's unceasing desire to live in black and white, to create Apollonian-Dionysian dichotomies, to cut America up like the baby before King Solomon, a new Manichean understanding has now arisen: the people that vote for Obama and something called "the working class."
The former, well, that's pretty straight-forward: these are the Democrats, Independents, and cross-over Republicans who choose Obama in the primaries.
It is the second group, "the working class," that is of interest to me. It seems that in the United States, being working class is code for being ignorant.
Anytime the media wants to cast aspersions upon Obama, to diminish his chances to be elected, to give voice to smears against him, to suggest that he is a Muslim, or a black-nationalist, or a socialist, or a Eunuch, or some Chameleonesque mixture of all of those things, suddenly these concerns are put in the mouth of "the working class."
Take only the most recent example of this at the New York Daily News. According to the paper, the "ugly truth" as to why Hillary won't quit is because she has the difficult job of giving voice to the racists and the ignorant that slither around among "the working class." This tripe is not just limited to newspapers, though. When ABC was lambasted for conducting one of the worst debates in the history of American politics, its simple response was that those vacuous questions were the questions the "average" (read: working class) Americans wanted to hear. Yes, average people are vacuous and stupid, so we, being populist, must pander to them, in essence.
This group, the working class, according to the media, is white, rural, crass, uncouth, impressed by theatrics such as downing whiskey, or preferring coffee to OJ, cares about flag-pins, and judges the merits of its presidential candidates by their bowling scores, their attire, and metaphysical things such as "elitism."
I find this entire narrative particularly insulting because I am a low income Muslim. I am not rich. My parents aren't rich. Hell, my grandparents are low income, not in the US, but in the third world. All of my life, I have grown up hearing that all the evil Muslims, the ones that commit acts of terrorism, are poor, have poor parents, and have even poorer grandparents. For a majority of my life, the media and the pundits have sold me the story that of all the Muslims that go fanatical, I am among the most likely to end up going in that direction because of my background. Yet I hardly became a loon; neither did my brother; nor do hundreds of millions of poor Muslim kids all across the world. The reason that this smear against the Muslim working class exists, though, is because it is easy, and because people have been conditioned to turn "the workers" into the worst representation of them-selves.
Same thing today, in the US. Having grown up and gone to school with good, working class Americans in the South and Northwest and Philly -- many of whom are not white -- its pretty easy to see that bullshit sits just as badly with working class people as it does with Ivy leaguers. Yet, the media doesn't see it that way. It only sees an Enlightened America (read: wealthy) that knows why they are voting and for whom, and it sees Working Class America (read: poor) who are duped and idiotic. For whatever reason, the Versailles version of America has been given to Obama and Crappy America to Hillary.
Of course, Hillary is part of the problem, because she embraces this dichotomy and tries to use it to her advantage (taking photo-ops of herself doing shots in a bar, dissing economists, and so forth all while she withholds disclosing her 100 million dollar piggy bank). In her increasing desperation to remain in a race that she lost when it became apparent she didn't have a strategy beyond Super Tuesday I, she has fed the media this narrative. It has gotten so bad that Bill had the audacity to make the following remarks in Indiana:
"The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it's by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules."
This is the typical stereotype that media and politicians peddle to the actual working class. Living in an Ivory Tower world, such people are somehow convinced that the average man is more affected by show-offs, than discrimination or lack of work. In fact, when one of the candidates stops and recognizes how dependent the current American system has made working class people on their jobs - to the extent that work is connected to dignity - he is the one that is smeared.
Ladies and gentlemen: welcome to an America where not only is being working class a code word for being the lowliest kind of human, but if you resist this smear, then you are an elitist.
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When you look at the income spread in this country, the fact is that most families are barely making it if at all, and a very few have a ton of money. The top 5% is loaded, maybe the next 10-15% is doing okay as long as they keep their jobs, and everyone else is in trouble or more trouble.
When Clinton decided to change the Democratic party into the Republican Lite party, he abolished the term "working class" people, and decreed that all Democrats would thereafter only refer to the "middle class" people of this country. Democrats stand for the middle class, they will defend the rights of the middle class.
Overnight, Clinton took the white house and every minimum wage worker pushing a broom became part of the "middle class." But of course it's silly because most of us are working class meaning that we need to work in order to live, that if our work does not pay enough money we cannot support ourselves, and if we lose our jobs we will lose our homes, healthcare, shelter, food, and all the basic necessities of life.
So Hillary has proclaimed that we now have a working class in this country again. Unfortunately, according to her, they all drink shots with chasers, wear white sheets and go to cross-burnings on the week-ends. But at least we exist again, for awhile.
Does it feel good to write a posting with no useful content? A posting with no honesty? A posting with nothing of any value?
Apparently you're best suited to answer that.
Good for you, its about time someone called this crap - CRAP!! I grew up working class, my parents were the fairest, most honest people you could find. They never dumped on anyone, they worked hard, worried about their kids and helped others if they needed help.
It was a small town community.
Somehow in this insidious spin by both Clinton and the media all 'working class' got identified as 'white'!
No people of color were included and I think that is insulting.
But forgive me my indulgence here, but as a 'white' from a working class family it is just as insulting to many wonderful people out there, who are nothing like the 'working class' being described who happen to be white.
The other thing people forget is that the majority of the 'working class' is in fact the middle class of America.
I hold the media to blame for this and am amazed more people did not lash out at the unfairness to all people of all races in this ugly divisive generality employed by so many in the media.
Nah man that was Newt Gingrich that classifed all working people as white. Rmemeber his rant about the black welfare moms.
Newt was driving a wedge between the races setting up the Bush Conservative win of 2000. Newt was part of the chior who was showing off G.W. Bush back in 1990 like a PRIZE HEIFER all over the USA.
I think it's totally meaningless to apply "working class" today to having to work, because in the vast majority of US households, one or both adults needs to work. My person definitions would go something like this. Rich means neither parent has to work, or at least not very much because they have money to life off. Upper class means you work, but at a high income level that gives you access to certain luxuries and/or stay-at-home options. Middle class means that as long as you keep your job you can do OK on one income, or aspire to more on two incomes. "Lower" class means you are very economically vulnerable. I think working class though, became a euphemism for lower class. And now, as Ali points out, in the current election cycle it means "average people" -- a group either to be patronized with flattery about for their "authenticity" or to be denigrated for the role SOME of them play in harming our country by voting irresponsibly. Depending on whether or not you think you can get their vote. The fact that some of these folks keep voting against their economic self-interest leads writers like Thomas Frank to look into the Republicans' use of culture-war wedge issues to seduce them over to their side. "Get them upset about Britney Spears, blame the liberals, and send them off to the polls to vote for guys who'll turn around lower Britney's taxes."
This all goes back to the "Red Scare" of the 1950's when the word's "Union" and "Working Class" became synonymous with "Communist". You know, the same time that "In God we trust" was added to our money (interesting since "money" is now our God) and our pledge of allegiance. (1954)
The wealthy went from being "the problem" as they were in the 1930's to being the "defenders of Democracy". Anyone who tried to improve the lot of the poor and working classes was suspect and treated as a "traitor" to Democracy and the "struggle" between capitalism and communism (which never existed anyway as it was a struggle between a totalitarian dictatorship and a segregationist representative republic. Neither Democracy nor Communism was involved, they were just convenient labels.)
America now looks more like it did in the 1880's and back then the upper classes jailed "Elitists", SHOT union organizers. and exploited child labor. (They do the same things now, they just do it in the third world, out of sight and out of mind.) "Elitist" is the new code-word for "Commie".
Dear Mr. Eteraz, you are at a historic moment: the expression "working class" has been resurrected from the dustbin of history. It was dumped there sometime around the 1960's, when all public attention, from newscasts to sitcoms, became focused exclusively on people who lived in "nice" single family houses in "nice" suburbs from which they commuted to their "nice" jobs, yadda yadda yadda.
It's been at least fifty years since any of the Talking Head class - or the entertainm
For fifty years, the Talking Heads were able to pretend that these people didn't exist. Now they have to admit that they do - and they don't like it. Tough noogies on them, I say.
Working class refers to the class of people who are one check from the street.
Some are living a higher standard of living, yet are still just one check away from the street.
Not only do they slur by income anyone who supports Obama, but they also claim that HORRORS! he might be a MUSLIM! A Muslim!! Like we are all supposed to know how awful that would be...it must make you feel doubly insulted. Why don't people understand that there are crazy Christians and crazy Muslims? People of faith try to live so that their behavior conforms to their religious principles. Muslims and Christians even have many of the same people involved, only splitting as to who was considered the ONE.
I hate the labels and I am sorry you get defined by them too. I am sure there are a lot of Obama supporters that don't fit into the media narrative and I hope that the campaign doesn't buy into it. What annoys me is the media's fixation on the white male voter...as if he hasn't had enough of an advantage throughout life. If Kerry and Gore didn't get the majority of the white male "working class" voter, then why does Obama suddenly have to get it to be legitimate?
I am sick to death of these labels. In case somebody asks, I'm an American. Period. Some people might say that I'm an enigma, but I don't think you can figure me out that easily.
Wow. That was bloody brilliant.
hear, hear! there is nothing more condescending than watching these often ivy-league guys in anchorman drag prattling on about "the working class." Has there ever been anything more condescending? Not to mention misguided.
The idea that what one does for a living defines one, or how much money one makes determines one's racial attitudes, is an offensive, out-of-touch stereotype. It's lazy, and it's dumb.
Even worse is hearing Harvard- and Yale- educated folks like Hillary Clinton or George Bush or Lou Dobbs accusing other of being "elitists" and trying to paint themselves as folksy, Schlitz-drinking types.
I may not be in tune with the society as it exists in America - but in my part of the world, the way "elitism" appears to be used in the context of ignorance has little to do with lines of credit - and more to do with exposure to various ideas and concepts so that one is able to see that the world really doesn't exist in black and white. Kolberg would have defined it as the "formalized" vs "morally mature" stage of personality development. I think there is also a separation between the "working class" versus the so-called folks of the "american heartland" and "blue collar workers" that gun-toting, nation obliterating hillary has been appealing to.
In America, working class is a politically correct way of saying low class. Americans, even educated Americans, are totally ignorant of class distinctions and issues. This is why there is no labor party here, no may-day. American workers understand the working part but not the class part of working class. So they possess no solidarity. They are easily divided along lines of race, gender, religion, etc. This is why there is no universal health care and this is why the poor get poorer and the rich get richer in America.
WorkingClass- we have no labor party or solidarity because of the way big business and our government (McCarthy and so forth) smeared unions as communist and all that red scare stuff which still exist today. They did a good job of keeping the status quo. Keep the rich rich and don't let the "working class" unite because they might rise up. divide and conquer.
Great post and spot on. The way the media describes Hillary's voters, I would think they would be embarrassed to show their face.
But, read Bill Clinton's quote again. Doesn't that exactly describe the Clintons?
Apoyo:
Right on! The Clintons are master at playing by different sets of rules from the rest of us. Witness their constant efforts to change the rules during this primary elections. Witnes their constant praise of the Republican nominee while lambasting and try to denigrate their fellow Democrat.
Ali, The irony of Bill's quote would be laughable if it weren't so tragically obscene:
"The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it's by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules."
This coming from the campaign that is trying to discard the rules regarding the primaries in Michigan and Florida.
Agreed and agreed.
Ali, I'm one of those in the "working class" .... a woman, 65 and still working for $30 grand a year. I don't drink latte or chablis or really fit into the MSM mold of Hillary voters they keep "polling" and collecting in boxes. I read Huffpo, The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, an occasional Time, Newsweek, books about Bush et al shenanigans. I'm not entirely ignorant.
Here's something that puzzles me, though. Who are the people listening to Limbaugh, et al, the Fox cast of characters and the Clear Channel preachers? And who are they supporting (besides McCain)?
A subject worth discussing, but Eteraz isn't doing it well. When ABC news says "average," THEY mean middle class, not "working class." They are on a sitcom level of reality there, too.
Compounding the confusion: look how many multi-millionaires desperately want to be regarded as "working class," or at the very least "regular guys." And look how many Americans wanted to believe that George W. Bush was a regular guy --- and maybe still do, just that they now think he's a regular guy who is also a lousy president. But as a dear friend put it, "George W. Bush hasn't had a regular day in his life."
But look at Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, John Mellancamp
Policy despises the working class; fantasy elevates them, especially during election season...
"But look at Bruce Springsteen, Billy Joel, John Mellancamp
Those 3 guys may be rich now, but they weren't born into it, they got that way with a combination of luck, talent, and lots of hard work. Does their success require that they spurn their origins?
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