A reader gave me a heads-up to a piece in the Chicago Tribune in which a supporter of Barack Obama rebuts Sarah Palin by insisting that the Democrat is from a small town, too. A sample:
We know about the power of faith. In Hyde Park we brave the bitter winds to gather in Rockefeller Chapel on Thanksgiving morning. We are welcomed by African drums; we are blessed by rabbis, priests and preachers; then we are sent home to our holiday feasts by the smell of burning sage offered by Indian tribal leaders.
You know, I can really dig this, because when I was growing up, Bennettsville was just like that!…
No, no, I’m sorry, I shouldn’t make fun… not even when people seem to be going out of their way to tempt me… And earnestness, particularly of the "politically correct" variety, can be so wickedly tempting. (And I HATE that trite phrase, "politically correct." But how else do you describe something that so painstakingly, self-righteously invokes the concept, like, "look at me; I’m doing my best to be a cliche…")
Oh, and please, please, you who are earnest and self-righteous — PLEASE don’t try to explain this to me. I get it; what is offensive to me is when somebody thinks I DON’T get it, and goes to such lengths as this to overexplain to me the virtues of "multiculturalism." I got it when I was in the first grade, I promise — probably earlier. We’re all God’s children, regardless of race, color or creed — even the irony-deprived among us. But no one with a sense of humor can see it ladled on that thick and not crack up.
And don’t worry, this writer doesn’t expect you to get the point from that excerpt above; for those of you just too clueless to get it, she drops it on you like an anvil in the last graf:
The people of rural America do not have a monopoly on these principles. And they are not the only Americans who count….
Ow! Got … to… have… release…. "So a preacher, a priest and a rabbi walk into an herbal tea bar in Hyde Park…"
SORRY, dang; I can’t help it! Get thee behind me…
The Kulturkampf is wearing me out.
Related Posts
Oh, and just to make sure I’m not flying under a false flag. I’m not claiming to be a small-town boy. Yes, I spent a good deal of time in Bennettsville growing up, and I think of it as my home town, because we spent summers there and spent the 9th grade there (while my Dad was in Vietnam) and that’s where my grandparents lived. But I mostly went to school in places like New Orleans and Tampa and Norfolk and the Philadelphia area.
In other words, I’m no more a small town boy than either Barack Obama (who graduated high school in the same city I did, Honolulu) or John McCain (another Navy brat) is….
every passing day shows more evidence of the brilliance of having palin on the ticket. the dems wanted to run against “W” and “McSame”, but now the campaign is all about sarah!
what’s next, biden bowhunting this fall?
Thanks for that article, Brad. That’s one of the funniest opinion columns I’ve read in a while. One other observation, the author claims small town values of rural America and then has a hyphenated last name. I don’t begrudge her for that, but I wonder how many women in rural America decide to hyphenate their name after they get married…
There is something that the dudes need to know about women that live in small towns. They are different. They go hunting and fishing with their husband and if he can’t make it she will go by herself. She not only knows how to load a gun but she knows how to reload the bullets.
I know this because I live in a small town and they come into the check station with the deer and turkeys.
These are real women. Not the kind that Obama is worried about with lipstick. Around our town, it is the lipstick on the collar of the husband that could be the cause of his death on the death certificate.
Make fun of Palin if you like, but there are a lot of women that can identify with this lady.
Slugger, that was classic. I don’t know if you intended it to be funny, but I had a good laugh. Reminded me of my Mom’s home town in Arkansas.
In support of slugger’s point, I wonder how Hyde Park males compare to Governor Palin or the gals slugger knows in the list of 25 Skills Every Man Should Know:
Their list of essential skills starts off:
Tomfliesthebonnieblue –
If he gets arrested, authorities will put Biden on suicide watch and keep an eye peeled for Dems trying to throw belts, straight razors, and rope through his cell window.
I drove 500 miles to NoVA today and think that the Large Hadron Collider experiments pushed me into another dimension.
He may be Biden his time, but is he Palin in comparison?
Slugger means it for real, Mike C means it but at least tries to be a little humorous about it…
It’s contempt for those whose lives are somehow a little different from one’s own. And of course a definite contempt for the urban residents of America. That’s nothing new for the right wing, of course (remember the famous “Ford to NYC: Drop Dead” headline of the mid-70’s), but consider this folks:
Obama makes a kind of ambiguous, off-handed comment which is then inflated to a major campaign theme by the GOP (even though of course Obama’s policies are more favorable to working people across the board than McCain’s)…The GOP by contrast devotes most of an ENTIRE CONVENTION to the politics and rhetorics of cultural division, reminding that only certain Americans are REAL Americans.
The codespeak is clear.
And in McCain’s ridiculous hypocrisy of the last couple days, it all becomes more clear. McCain does not just represent more of the same in terms of Bush’s economic and geopolitical policies. He, sadly, now promises to bring us more of the same for the next 4 years in terms of divisiveness, cultural politics, categorizing Americans as either “real” or not.
If that’s the America you want, by all means vote for John McCain. If you want a true, authentic change to our political discourse, to the partisanship and style of politics that have made most of us sick to our stomachs, then we have (thank God) this ONE opportunity to make this change. If we miss it, who knows if we will have this kind of opportunity again. Barack Obama is the only candidate running who does not divide Americans into “real” and “not real.” On this day above all others, keep that in mind.
Phillip, get off your high horse. It’s a long way down and you might bump your head.
Do you seriously believe that Obama is going to unite this country? If so, I’ve got some ocean front property to sell you in Nebraska. At best Obama has only hit around 50% in the national polls and you expect us to believe that he’s going to transcend the partisan rancor and unite us all? He’s done a great job of transcending the partisan rancor the past week or two, hasn’t he? I don’t know what world you live in, but I don’t consider 50% of the people “united.”
On the contrary, it’s folks such as yourself who believe that the Holy Obama will wave his hand and magically make all partisanship disappear are the ones who are the danger to America. Yours and other’s blind allegiance to this man is scary. At least the vast majority of McCain’s supporters don’t look to him or the government to be their savior. They realize that getting ahead in life is their own responsibility, not that of the government or “the rich man” who owes us because he’s been successful in life. They succeed by hard work, not having the government destroy their will by giving them handouts.
And secondly, the only people that I hear questioning patriotism are those folks such as yourself who accuse others of questioning patriotism. McCain, Bush, Cheney, et. al. have NEVER questioned anyone’s patriotism. On the contrary, the only ones I hear dividing Americans into “real” and “not real”, “black” and “white”, “religious” and “non-religious” are the ones that are so blinded by party loyalty that all they can do is spew Democratic talking points rather than actually thinking for themselves. And contempt? The contempt I hear comes from the left against those who don’t buy into man-made global warming, are pro-life, or attend church on a regular basis. Talk about contempt, you need to examine your own side of the aisle a little bit closer.
I’m not beholden to McCain. In fact, I don’t even really like him as a presidential candidate. I certainly didn’t vote for him in the primary, but I whole-heartedly say “No thanks!” to the change that Obama is proposing. I prefer to keep our representative republic rather than dabbling in socialism. I’ll hold my nose and vote for McCain because at least I know what I’m getting with him. The one thing that you and other Obama supporters keep forgetting, change goes two ways.
And talk about codespeak: change and hope? That’s the epitome of codespeak. In fact, it’s such good code that no one can really define what “change” and “hope” really means. Maybe Obama should be hired as a cryptographer at the CIA.
And talk about more of the same? Obama and his ilk like to quote about how McCain has voted 90-95% (I guess it just depends on how he’s feeling that day because he’s thrown out both numbers) with President Bush. What he fails to mention is that he’s voted 97% with the Democrats that control Congress. The same Congress that holds a 9% approval rating. Bush’s approval ratings compared to Congress make him almost look like a saint. Obama promises more of the same of a Congress with approval ratings that are ONE digit. Yeah, that’s the change I want…
Yeah, you got me riled up. You vote however you want, that’s your right. But quit with the illogical, down right stupid excuses. It’s not becoming.
Tim, you and I may disagree on the issues, fair enough…but if you think so far McCain is running a more honorable campaign on the issues than Obama, then I can’t possibly buy that Nebraska beach-house because you’ve bought up the entire coastline.
Calling out John McCain (which thankfully Obama seems like he is doing, unlike John Kerry or Al Gore or Michael Dukakis) is not about being “on a high horse.” Demanding an honorable campaign devoid of falsehoods and outrageous distortions is what we should all expect from our Presidential candidates.
Obama may or may not be the person to move us to a new model of politics in this country; but McCain is starting to prove on a daily basis that for sure is he is not. I’ll take my chances on Obama.
I don’t think I ever said that McCain is running an honorable campaign. I also never said, nor would I ever say, that Obama is running an honorable campaign. A quick look at FactCheck.org quickly shows that neither campaign is “honorable,” but what else is there to expect from the modern political process? Any objective look at both campaigns would come to the same conclusion. Again, if you feel Obama is the answer to our society’s problems, more power to you, but you are seriously deluded if you really think that either campaign has the moral high ground.
I would be curious, by a strict definition of the word, which campaign in our nation’s history has exactly been “honorable?” Or is that just another buzz word from Obama?
Tim, I’m glad you mentioned factcheck.org. It’s a great resource. But evidently a resource that is not immune to being misused and misquoted by, guess who? the McCain/Schmidt/Rove camp. And Factcheck.org has called them on it.
My gosh, man. Did you not read what I wrote previously? What part of what I’ve written makes you think that I’d be surprised by this? And to burst your bubble, I read this yesterday when it was first written. Plus, if you had spent just a little more time on FactCheck.org you would have seen that there are a good many entries about Obama stretching the facts and telling half-truths as well. It goes BOTH ways, and your inability to recognize or acknowledge that is very disturbing.
And you still didn’t answer my question. Name me ONE presidential campaign, especially in recent history, that has been “honorable.” Or again, is that just another one of Obama’s buzzwords?
The problem with Obama is that he has no normal friends or associates.
No one but his wife spoke at the convention about how they have known him. No one vouches for him. His resume if empty, and there are huge stretches of his life he refuses to explain.
All Obama’s friends are terrorists, swindlers, crooked Chicago political operators and Muslims of some ilk –
his radical communist Muslim father,
his stepfather,
his Wahabe Muslim teachers,
Black Muslim “community organizers”,
Louis Farakan,
“former Muslim” Jeremiah Wright,
Percy Sutton,
Kahlid Monsour,
Prince Alweed of Saudi Arabia funding his education,
and the endorsements and donations to his campaign from Hamas, Hezbollah, and Momar Kadaffi.
Tim, “honorable” might be overstating the description of presidential politics in general in our nation’s history, and certainly way back in the 18th and 19th centuries things were said (and done!) that make today’s partisanship pale by comparison. (“Ma, ma, where’s my pa? Gone to the White House, Ha Ha Ha!)
Nevertheless, I think for most of the postwar period there was more of a focus on issues, and certainly before the evolution of the “soundbite,” the decreasing attention span of the American public, things WERE different. Sure, things have been changing for a long time with the advent of TV—Joe McGinness’ “The Selling of the President 1968” is a great read on the dawn of that era.
But even in my memory…McGovern/Nixon, Carter/Ford, Carter/Reagan, Reagan/Mondale, those elections were contested more on ideological grounds, less on trivial symbology. For me it was the 1988 election and Lee Atwater where things really began to change. Then the advent of political talk radio, especially as a forum for right-wing extremists to combat the Clinton administration, and then Karl Rove, and the rest is history.
Not to say that Obama’s campaign has never engaged in some exaggeration or distortion of some aspect or other of McCain’s record, of course. In general, though, Obama seems quicker to disavow or to avoid the more egregious personal attacks, while McCain (perhaps against his personal instincts) has seemed to be surrendering his campaign to the old-style guys.
Democrats are not above playing low-blow politics…I’ve said earlier here that this year was a very disillusioning one for me in terms of the Clintons and how they (especially Bill) conducted themselves relative to Obama. Perhaps it’s a sad confirmation of the “negative politics works” theory to point out that since the Atwater-guided election of 88, Clinton was the only Democrat to win.
From what I’ve seen,though, Obama seems to be fundamentally a different politician from any I’ve seen before. He gives voice to the voiceless, and he speaks truth to power. It’s really quite simple, most everything he says makes good sense to me, whereas McCain seems not to be talking to me. Obama may indeed turn out to be a bust, a disappointment. But he gives me hope. With John McCain, on the other hand, you know what you’ll get…basically stay the course of the last 8 years, with some slight tinkering around the edges. I don’t think that’s enough for the country right now, but if you do, by all means vote McCain.
However, I’ll give you this—if John McCain is at heart still who he always was, if he is just giving lip-service to the right-wing of his party by his position changes, if he thinks that Palin gives him a chance to win but in private rolls his eyes at her creationist views or extreme anti-choice positions (i.e, if the 2000 McCain still lives but is hidden until after the election) then nobody will apologize louder than me for being anti-McCain, nor will there ever have been such a great opportunity for a Republican President to remake the party away from its recent extremist tendencies and back towards the middle.
I think Brad, incidentally, believes this latter scenario is the case…that the 2000 McCain is still in there somewhere. I’d love for him to be right, but I fear that McCain is gone forever.
Phillip –
Sorry, but you’re really ticked me off with your statement that Obama “speaks truth to power.” When has he ever stood up to anything, anybody, anywhere? There’s no evidence whatsoever that he ever stood tall and confronted the powers that be in his Chicago daze, in his Springfield adventure, or his DC sojourn. He can cite no feat of political courage nor any position of leadership to cite other than his campaign, and that’s not been looking too swift of late. He comes across as a wuss, a pushover. Sure, he’s likable enough, but he’s no courageous captain nor even an adequate lieutenant.
Much as I dislike the old geezer, McCain’s stood up like a sore thumb throughout much of his political career. Perhaps some of it was grandstanding, but he took flack and faced knives in the cloakroom more than most.
Biden’s a loud-mouthed braggart who will distort the truth to win an argument, and that’s his good side.
Finally, Palin is the gal who spent two years in the political wilderness after she resigned a high-paying sinecure and filed ethics complaints against members of her own party. Details here. She did speak truth to power. Just think about the folks, especially women, you’ve seen crushed by the good old boys. She was faced with that, prevailed, and then went after the sonofabitch who’d hoped to shut her up by putting her on the commission.
Bravo! She’s ready for the challenge.
I’m not a Christian. I like an interfaith service that includes me and doesn’t assume that I am going to your hell because because I don’t believe in a Jesus that died for my sins. Why are you making fun of a service that includes non-Christian clergy? Why do you assume this is some kind of empty political correctness? You probably don’t care, but my parents grew up in a time when there was prayer in their public schools. Christian prayer. It takes a lot of faith and courage for a child to stand by their family, their culture, their religion, in face of little Christian classmates who sincerely believe that they going to hell for not saying the prayers. Obama did not invent the interfaith service–the writer of the article about Hyde Park was just talking about where some of us are coming from. I believe in America for all–I believe we can be one nation under the Constitution. The point made by the original article was that the so called small-town values of community, caring, knowing your neighbors, are shared by people who live in places that are not at all rural. Even though our skill set may not exactly match yours (though my husband does 23 of 25 on your list– and I’m betting he could figure out how to clean a bolt-action rifle and hook up an HDTV in a pinch).
Why did I poke (very gentle) fun at it? Because it is, by definition, funny. As in, cliche funny. Find a book of classic jokes, and it will be incomplete if it does not contain at least one "A priest, a minister and a rabbi walk into a…" story.
This is going to come as a tremendous shock to you, but those of us who can see the goofy, unselfconscious humor of this piece also believe in "an America for all."
You have to read this in the context of everything else I write, such as this column. You see, I don’t have any set ethnic or political or social group with which I associate. But I don’t make a fetish of the fact.