SansPretense

Over the last week or so Senator Obama has been taking a lot of crap about his “bitter” remarks about small town America, reinforcing an image of a snobbish Obama.  Accusations of “elitism” has been flying around, and Obama supporters have either been quick to deny that thier candidate is an elitist, or explaining why being an elitist isn’t a bad thing.  Whoopi Goldberg, for example, explained how all Democrats are elitists.  Let’s take a look at some excerpts from the conversation in which she made that statement, along with Joan Juliet Buck, Lesley Stahl, Liz Smith:

JOAN: What is this thing of Obama being perceived as an elitist? Is it important? Is it going to harm him? What do you think?

LIZ: I think it does harm him. And the National Review story on Michelle Obama complaining to ladies in Ohio about how could the two of them live on $500,000 a year, and how they couldn’t pay for their children’s tennis and dancing lessons, or piano lessons, or something. But, honestly, you have to admire the Obamas. They’re an upscale, young American couple. They’re a model for every downtrodden person in America. So, I think a little elitism goes a long way. I think it both helps and hurts. It’s like people having money or being rich. Well everybody wants that. The public wants the same thing. So I think it’s sort of a two-edged sword. But do I think the Obamas are intellectual elitists, probably. They’re smarter than the rest of us.…

Is that really what people are mad about? That the Obama’s are smarter and more educated than the rest of us, therefore we think they’re snobby? (click “Continue reading” for more…)

They go on…

WHOOPI: Well, what’s the matter is the Democrats are an elitist group. That’s the truth.

…

WHOOPI: … You know, so this idea that he’s an elitist – so she’s an elitist, we are elitists. We are. We feel like we know what’s best for the country – just like the Republicans. We’re all elitists, because the people we’re listening to, those are not the real people of the world.

LESLEY: What the Republicans do is say these people – Adlai Stevenson, Michael Dukakis, John Kerry and now they’re trying to put Obama in this category – are out of the mainstream. They’re not like you and me. They’re odd. They’re effete.

JOAN: Well, this is part of the anti-intellectual stance of the United States of America where anyone who’s an intellectual is a wimp, a loser, and therefore an idiot.

…

Really? We’re “anti-intellectual because smarter people are wimps, not manly, and not like most people?

LIZ: …There are elitists in America, but there was a very famous one named Franklin Roosevelt, and he managed to get elected four times.

LESLEY: I know, but Obama – he wasn’t like Franklin Roosevelt, raised with a silver spoon. He had a single mother. They lived on food stamps for a while. So this is a guy who …

WHOOPI: Everybody knows that and yet this is still happening.

LESLEY: I know.

OOOHHHH! I get it; since Obama was raised in a “normal” household he’s not really an elitist even if he is smarter than the rest of us. Makes sense…right? We’ll come back to this.

WHOOPI: Everybody knows it. And it’s because they can’t say: “Listen, we’re nervous about this guy because he’s black and we don’t know if this is going to work.” They can’t say that. So they think, “Oh, well here’s what we can say …” It’s kind of like patting somebody on the head and saying, “You’re so articulate.”

 
So, really people aren’t mad that Obama is an elitist that’s not really an elitist, but because he’s black and we don’t know how to deal with that so we label him like we do other white guys running for the Democratic ticket in the past as an elitist. So he’s not really a snob even if he does dismiss the feelings of small-town America as rooted in “bitterness” rather than genuine belief since he’s black.  BULLSHIT. I’m not even going to give this the dignity of further comment.

So what does Wikipedia say about >elitism?:

Elitism is the belief or attitude that those individuals who are considered members of the elite — a select group of people with outstanding personal abilities, intellect, wealth, specialized training or experience, or other distinctive attributes — are those whose views on a matter are to be taken the most seriously or carry the most weight; whose views and/or actions are most likely to be constructive to society as a whole; or whose extraordinary skills, abilities or wisdom render them especially fit to govern.
…
The term “elitism” or the title “elitist” can be used resentfully [1] by a person who is not a member of an elite, or is a member but resents the elite position or uses it in a condescending or cynical manner in order to ridicule or criticize practices which discriminate on the basis of ability or attributes. Often, such as in politics, it used to describe persons as out of touch with the common people. The implication is that the “elitist” person or group thinks they are better than everyone else, and therefore put themselves before others. It could be seen as a synonym for snob. An elitist is not always seen as truly elite, but only privileged. This is use is often employed in politics in societies where social equality is valued, and the middle and lower classes have political power.

I LOVE how it’s the “party of the people” that continues to put out candidates that believe that the people cling to certain ideals because of bitterness rooted in economic hardship rather than an intellectual decision on which ideals are better for them. This is classical Marxist theory, of course. From the above definition of elitism, the remarks of Obama, and the conversation of the admittedly Democratic women above, the modern liberal ideology of the Democratic party seemingly can be summarized as this: People are stupid and need smarter people to tell them how to live their day to day lives since every non-progressive belief that they have is rooted in lack of economic power (i.e., privelage).

Elitism, in the context of what Obama is being labeled, has nothing to do with his education, his money, his political party, his race, or how he grew up. It has everything to do with his attitude towards his fellow Americans.

The problem with this conversation is that Obama and the women above seem to be missing the point. I’m pretty sure most Americans can acknowledge that the Obamas, Clintons, McCains, and all the other “elites” (in the real sense of the word, not just “privelaged”) and intellectuals in this country are better educated and able to run the country. They should have the pre-requisite training to make the hard decisions on what is best for this country. Sometimes they even have to makde decisions that go against the will of the majority for any number of reasons. That’s why our Founding Fathers set up a republic and not a democracy.

However, the difference between the Obamas and the other “elitists” compared with someone like George W. Bush or Ronald Reagan is that they seemed to never put themselves above the people. Whether it was just great acting or real, they are seen as being more of an ordinary person, in touch with the troubles of most Americans even as a privelaged, educated person, and in no way superior to them. They understood that the American people aren’t just bitterly clinging to their beliefs afraid of change. They don’t want to change because they feel that the change that Obama wants to bring isn’t the change they want. This isn’t just because of fear and mistrust in the government, but comes more than anything from a desire for the government and the elites to just leave us the hell alone.

If the Democrats want to attract more small-town, red-state Americans they’ll learn to stop interferring in our lives and looking down on us just because we think differently. Isn’t that what tolerance is all about?

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Just to refresh everyone’s memory, here’s what Obama said followed by his “apology” (full text of orginal speech found here, link to full explanation article here, hat tip to Rachel Lucas, emphasis mine):

OBAMA: …the places where we are going to have to do the most work are the places where people feel most cynical about government. … and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn’t buy it. And when it’s delivered by — it’s true that when it’s delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama (laugher), then that adds another layer of skepticism (laughter).

…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. …

And to explain what he meant:

“I didn’t say it was well as I could have,” Obama confessed today during a town hall in Muncie, Ind., in response to the controversy he described as a “political flare-up because I said something that everyone knows is true.”

He then launched into a broad explanation of what he was trying to express: “There are a whole bunch of folks in small towns in Pennsylvania, in towns right here in Indiana, in my home town in Illinois, who are bitter. They are angry… So I said, well ya know, when you’re bitter, you turn to what you can count on. So people, ya know they vote about guns or they take comfort from their faith, and their family, and their community, and they get mad about illegal immigrants who are coming over to this country, or they get frustrated about how things are changing. That’s a natural response.”

But these traditions that get passed on from generation to generation are important, he said.

“People don’t feel like they’re being listened to,” Obama said. “And so they pray and they count on each other and they count on their families. You know this in your own lives. And what we need is a government that is actually paying attention, a government that is actually fighting for working people day in and day out, making sure that we are trying to allow them to live out the American dream.”