I’m saddened to think the blue collar workers and unemployed are going to buy this “Elitist” nonsense. In the last two elections, these “folks” were manipulated and pandered into voting for a guy “you could have a beer with” and he thanked them by shipping their kids off to Iraq with a lie and also engineered the biggest transfer of wealth to the ultra-rich in the history of the republic. The GOP executed Karl Rove’s blueprint for these votes with baiting issues like gun rights, gay bashing, immigration, and sickening religious pandering. A dead son or daughter in a flag draped box is a pretty harsh example of the neocons “Family Values.”
The American Heritage Dictionary defines Elitism as “The belief that certain persons or members of certain classes or groups deserve favored treatment by virtue of their perceived superiority, as in intellect, social status, or financial resources.” Hmmm… Let’s look at our candidates:
- Barack Obama has spent much of the last 20 years working on the streets of some of Chicago’s most disadvantaged neighborhoods.
- Hillary Clinton has been a “First Lady” twice and with husband Bill, made $109M last year.
- John McCain, the son of a famous Naval Admiral father and grandfather, hopped on his second wife, a beer fortune heiress in 1979.
I’m confused. Who’s elitist?
Senator Obama’s “Elitist” transgression is uttering an honest opinion, and not pandering for the votes of people who are ignored after their votes are counted. Here are the clingons:
“But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there’s not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of 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. So it’s not surprising then that 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.”
Hillary Clinton and John McCain have pumped the pandering by saying these good folks aren’t “bitter.” Hmmm… Bruce Springsteen has been writing songs for more than these 25 years and has been praised for his honest representation of this blue collar working man. His words seem to agree with Senator Obama’s assessment…
End of the day, factory whistle cries,
Men walk through these gates with death in their eyes.
And you just better believe, boy,
somebody’s gonna get hurt tonight,
It’s the working, the working, just the working life.
Factory – Darkness on the Edge of Town – 1978I got a job working construction for the Johnstown Company
But lately there ain’t been much work on account of the economy
Now all them things that seemed so important
Well mister they vanished right into the air
Now I just act like I don’t remember
Mary acts like she don’t care
The River – The River – 1980I had a job, I had a girl
I had something going mister in this world
I got laid off down at the lumber yard
Our love went bad, times got hard
Now I work down at the carwash
Where all it ever does is rain
Don’t you feel like you’re a rider on a downbound train
Downbound Train – Born in the USA – 1984From the Monongaleh valley
To the Mesabi iron range
To the coal mines of Appalacchia
The story’s always the same
Seven-hundred tons of metal a day
Now sir you tell me the world’s changed
Once I made you rich enough
Rich enough to forget my name
Youngstown – The Ghost of Tom Joad – 1995
If people buy this latest Obama smearing, then they deserve the candidate they get.
Mr. Daley, Chill! It’s transperant to most of us even if we don’t support Obama. I think you watch too much TV
Mr. or Ms. Anonymous, I don’t think you’re in the demographic being targeted with this bs, but they are a majority or swing vote in a lot of places.
I think most of us from or alumni of PA would push-back that the bitterness issue did not turn people into gun-wielding people- haters. I have a ton of respect for down-trodden communities that stay in their towns for reasons more complex then ‘no where else to go’. It is out of loyalty to each other and love of their families. The elitist part of this is not the statement around bitterness. It is about rationalizing that the bitterness has made them all bad people. I know a few very bitter people and though permantly damaged, not unreasonable in how they view others. No winners out of the three candidates on how this was expressed.