The audacity of condescension
“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 to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
The first problem with this sound bite is that Obama is psychologizing the voters in Pennsylvania. He’s saying that he understands their motivations better than they do themselves. Which may well be true, but it’s a hell of a thing to say out loud.
But let’s look deeper. What does the sound bite say about Obama? It says that Obama thinks that providing jobs is a legitimate function of government. Not so surprising, coming from a liberal Democrat. Obama thinks that cultural or religious or values issues are somehow less authentic, that they are secondary or substitute issues that people wouldn’t even bother with if they weren’t so bitter about the government not giving them jobs.
I don’t know about this. I suspect that there are a lot of people in Middle America with secure jobs that get just as worked up about values issues as unemployed people do. In any event, the voters decide which issues are important, not the candidates. The voters will decide whether arrogant psychologizing is worse than telling tall tales about dodging sniper fire.
April 15th, 2008 at 6:10 am
Obama thought he was speaking to an audience of other right-thinking Ivy League liberals who undoubtedly simply nodded in right-thinking agreement, forgetting that there is this funny thing called an Internet surfed by bitter, gun-toting, religious, xenophobes (BiGReXs) who do not also attend Reverend Wright’s church.
BiGReXs are authentic culture, and to be embraced if they are urban members of black nationalist churches with roots in the Black Muslims. Otherwise they are to be condescended to.
One thing I do get a kick out of: Obama claims to think that he can provide jobs in small towns when 40 years of Democratic and Republican presidents have failed to do so. I guess the Dems just haven’t cared about people enough either.
April 16th, 2008 at 9:15 pm
When enough people are hurting, things will change.
We have been living through the curs’ed “interesting times.” There will be rapid changes in cultures no matter who is elected.
Ronald Reagan was well-spoken, passionate, and articulate, as he “performed” fragments of various ideaologies that were known emotional triggers featuring contradictory concepts that were never resolved. The cold logic and straight talking of Carter didn’t have a chance.
Obama is usually well-spoken and articulate, some of what he says sounds good, but he is beginning to fray at the end of sentences. He may have been surprised by the way the media analyzes every sentence out of his mouth.
Most of our politicians speak man-talk and are being subjected to man-style critiques; dividing things into smaller and smaller parts, parsing sentences, attributing motives, sniffng out stuff. Every news person (yes women too) thinks they are a mind-reader and a fortune teller. “Let me tell you what I think he means, not what he said, not the facts.”
The real problem is Hillary. She speaks woman-talk. It is too complex to analyze by man-style tactics. Even her memory lapse and description of being afraid of snipers (understandable by those of us whose perceptions are radically altered by fear) is refered to as “exaggeration” rather than a “lie”. She is also a woman of an age when her ability to integrate seemingly opposite descriptions of reality are just coming into play. Her language and phraseology is evolving in a way that indicates she has been engaged in deep conversations with women and has tapped into the strength that expressing deeply felt concepts brings.
Now, Ronnie was able to project that passion without regard to his internal reality. He was a good actor! Although he was Altzshiemered out from the time of his governorship of California (”Let’s empty the mental hospitals and push all the patients onto the streets around the hospital”) most regular people and especially news-people didn’t recognize the strange juxtiposition of statements and were swept away by his elequent and passionate presentation.
Presentation was Obama’s strength until recently. He got rattled in a way that was not possible for Ronnie which only proves he is more in touch with reality.
We have been playing a no-holds barred game of monopoly and it has come to its logical conclusion. A few players have all the cash and the rest of us are bored and want to do something else. Something more fun.
I think men would have a lot more fun if they weren’t constrained by the need to not kill family members. The vid game addictions, extreme sports and just about everything else that threatens life and limb are the challenges that men require to satisfy some instinctual need to compete and/or prove themselves. It is not articulated by men, so is still rather undefined.
Since a democracy doesn’t necessarily have to be a capitalist economy, I suggest that men seeking adventure be freed to do whatever they want as long as it doesn’t impact the rest of us. Go gamble with kwatloos rather than the food supply.
I expected that when women re-defined their roles back in the 60’s, men would re-define theirs. No such luck. Now I know it is because the difference in the ways their brains work. Men think with one side or the other and switch back and forth and women think with both sides at the same time.
I have two brothers and I finally understand them. They would decide to do something that I perceived as being life threatening and they ignored my warnings, I would tell my Dad who would laugh until my Mom would make him go retreive the boys. Now I know that for boys, laying down in the middle of our street with no street lights, waiting for a speeding car to get really close before they jumped up and ran away was the work of only one half of their brains. The other half would have kicked in as they were thrown through the air with a comment like, “*#@(**) That wasn’t such a good idea.” Although I am sure one of them would have tried it again after getting out of the casts.