Confessions of an Elitist

I'm an unrepentant elitist. I must report that I even read the New York Review of Books and the London Times Literary Supplement. No kidding. I enjoy them. Not bragging, just confessing. I should have been out more playing in the fresh air when I was a kid. And most of all I deeply admire literacy and rationality in others. See, I have enough guts to start a sentence with an and? Only an elitist would do that. It's the confidence that allows us (or is it we?) elitists to toss out the rules and live by our own notion of what makes a good life or a good sentence. But what I don't have this week is patience with those who have come down hard on Barack Obama by calling him an elitist (read: snob) for making a clumsy but rational and compassionate statement about those people who cannot escape the crushing misfortune of unemployment with its debt and despair; a statement of concern for people who lack health care, and who are forced to live by the first rule of George Bush's America which states, "get rich quick or get out of sight and die quietly."

If you don't believe that small-town America is suffering from despair take a drive through some of those quaint old New England villages with their iconic white churches and their moribund Main Streets that were killed years ago by some massive Kmart mall a few miles away, a mall in which almost nothing is sold with a "made in the USA" label. It's hard to find a town without a storefront that carries the ubiquitous sign "Drug Rehab Center." It's a sign more frequently seen than "Fresh Apple Cider and Maple Syrup sold here." Small-town America is hurting. And when Obama pointed that out it was a humane judgment about the cramped and desperate lives of so many people who live far from the more prosperous cities and their opportunities. His rivals, Clinton and McCain, have tried to turn his somewhat awkward observation into a fatal political blunder. And they are doing a good job of it, word twisting is a highly competitive Olympic sport in which Republicans excel, but a gal like Hillary can easily compete. The rip snortin' gun totin', beer guzzlin' Hillary Hell Raiser, trained to shoot straight during her heroic counter-insurgency exploits in Bosnia, also knows best what the poor feel and need. Didn't she go to Wellesley College and take Miss Witherspoon's Compassion 101 course? This elitist charge about Obama has been picked up and treated with the usual intellectual shabbiness by a mainstream press, and its right wing pundits. The conservative press really wants us to believe that the world is made up of the caring rich (Bush, and McCain) and the happy poor, so that nobody does anything to alter the way things are.

John McCain -- no elitist he -- but a world class opportunist -- has picked up Hillary's song and is singing it loud for all the world to hear. He once did a lousy imitation of Barbra Streisand, but his attempt to impersonate Hillary is far better, he gets the scolding, self-congratulating tone just right. Listen to his new commercial which attacks Obama for his elitism, so filled with the glee of gotcha politics, with the bully boy chuckle scarcely concealed underneath. McCain, who succeeded in financing his ambitions by divorcing one wife and marrying upwards to his rich Cindy doesn't think that Obama has a clue about the white, rural poor. After all, how can a poor black kid ever know what poor white people feel? Hunger, fear, and desperation obviously have different DNA in black and white folks.

Yes, I've had my own problem with Obama's cool demeanor in the past but I see it now for what it is; the careful manner of a man who occasionally puts up a protective shield between himself and the world. And well he should. Let's cut to the chase, as they used to say in Hollywood. What the elite-mongers are actually doing is calling Obama an uppity ni**er and he knows it. What they are saying is "How dare this black man who was raised by a single mother on food stamps and managed to make his way through Harvard pass judgment on those poor whites who didn't have his good fortune in being born black and poor?" Why can't he be more like that decent Colin Powell who took his orders from Bush and spread his lies before the United Nations and then went home to choke on them? Or more like Condi who does a little tap dance with the truth every time she is called before Congress to testify about her egregious failures of judgment? That's the way decent black folks are supposed to behave in government these days.

If elitist means that you were against the Iraq war from the start because you were informed enough to see the horror ahead, then I am an elitist, as were so many in this country, particularly Barack Obama. For me being elitist means making intelligent judgments and rational distinctions and trying to understand the dilemma and the concerns of those who haven't gotten the breaks. Okay, I'm an elitist. But I'll sock anyone in the nose who dares to call me a snob.

Comments

[Clinton]

This is a good post. The elitist thing is pretty tiresome, and it is clear that any traction it gets is likely due to the fact that it appeals to some of our worst instincts. As it was designed to, since HRC and McBomb really have nothing substantial to use against Senator Obama. They have no real alternative other than these cheap shots. It is clear that he is doing a great job of remaining above the fray, and if this gets falsely interpreted as elitism, little can help that. People who are threatened by someone of such evident quality are difficult to persuade. His remarks vis the economic plight of small town America were apt.

[anon004]

Here, Here!!

[apoyo]

Obama is right, a thousand times over. The language was correct and the sentiment was correct.
Everyone knows that. But we can't possibly have a president who truly cares about the people! Just think about what that would mean. Opportunity would knock on so many doors that the MSM would have nothing to distort and blow out of proportion. How can they make money that way?

[DDeBlaine]

Right on Sherm!! This is the most right-on post I've read recently.

[Tejano1]

awesome.

[MPeter]

Here is what Robert Reich noted:
Large numbers of people in Pennsylvania and across the nation are losing their homes and losing their jobs, and the situation is likely to grow worse. Consumers are at the end of their ropes, fuel and food costs are skyrocketing, they can’t go deeper into debt, they can’t pay their bills. They aren’t buying, which means every business from the auto industry to housing to even giant GE is hurting. Which means they’ll begin laying off more people, and as they do, we will experience an even more dangerous downward spiral.

Bitter? You ain’t seen nothing yet. And as much as people like Russert, Carville, Matalin, Schrum, and Murphy want to divert our attention from what’s really happening; as much as HRC and McCain seek to make political hay out of choices of words that can be spun cynically by the mindless spinners of the old politics; as much as demagogues on the right and left continue to try to channel the cumulative frustrations of Americans into a politics of resentment - all these attempts will, I hope, prove futile. Eighty percent of Americans know the nation is on the wrong track. The old politics, and the old media that feeds it, are irrelevant now.

Robert Reich is Professor of Public Policy at the Goldman School of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley. He has served in tas secretary of labor under President Bill Clinton

[jinjinpinti]

Mpeter: Thanks for that nitty gritty on the "bitter" issue. It validated my and so many others' feelings about this ridiculous story.

[blaqntelligence]

BRAVO!!!

[drkazmd65]

Well said,... from another (apparent) elitist. This particular one born in rural Indiana to parents that (at one period) qualified for Government Cheese handouts during the early 1980s, and that got through a State University with what little my parents could do to help me, a few Grants, multiple Summer Jobs, Work-study, and some Loans.

I'm not a gun guy, or particularly religious, but for some reason I 'got' exactly what Barak Obama meant anyway.

Hillary Clinton doesn't have a clue - and worse - thinks that we don't have one either.

[Researchguy66]

Perhaps, Dr., your present circumstances explain it all. I, too, was raised by dirt-poor parents in a small central PA farming town. To your contrast, I do enjoy firearms, hunting, fishing, and I believe fervently in the sanctity of human life (yes, I even oppose capital punishment).

As I also worked my way through an Ivy-League university...multiple jobs all the time, grants, loans, etc., I also "got" exactly what Obama was saying. It's not the words, it's the underlying philosophy - and that's what Obama, and his groupies, don't "get".

[blueraven]

Thoughtful people who use their intellects get it. It's the "underlying philosophy" of recognizing that the working class has been getting shafted. I'm someone else whose childhood included jobs going away because the factory shut down, government handouts that kept me fed, and so forth. Obama was right. People do resent what's going on and vote their resentment instead of what might save their bacon because they buy the lie that they're voting to save their old way of life. Why, what else could Obama have possibly meant? *raises eyebrow*thinks "this should be good"*

[Gma11]

Okay, I'll join the "club." Born and raised in the midwest. My father was one of the original artificial inseminators trained by ABS after WWII. He had dreamed of being a vet. But a boy whose own dad lost the family farm during the depression had far too many obstacles. I started college at 30, three little girls, welfare, etc. - oh, and a full-time job besides. I grew up in these little town and know them well. I don't particularly care for hunting - but I've got a granddaughter who does. My dad was heartbroken over what's happened to family farms - and small communities. We fully understood the bitterness of small-town America before Obama had the audacity to speak the truth.