Hell No You Can't
Sharon Cobb is someone who I consider a personal friend, so she'll just have to forgive me for giving her a good drubbing for engaging in the same thing that many liberals accuse conservatives of doing constantly: Rank stereotyping.In her post of yesterday bemoaning the reality that Barack Obama is going to take the drubbing of his life in West Virginia today, Sharon wrote:
To be clear, most of West Virginia residents are good, hard working people, but most of them aren't online or calling both campaigns checking the FACTS about Obama and and the Clintons. They're good, trusting people, so when the Clintons tell them something is true, many of them believe it.
Hidden (in Sharon's case quite unintentionally, I'm sure) within this kind of statement is the implication that people in West Virginia are either too ignorant or too stupid to make up their minds on their own who to vote for, that they are lemmings who will believe whatever Hillary tells them, and that their views are irrelevant to the larger political picture-and that the cultural liberals who populate the Obama campaign and the Democratic Left know what is best for people in West Virginia better than the people who live there.
As a descendant and relative on my Mother's side of a three-time U.S. Senator and former Governor of West Virginia, I find this mentality to stink with effete snobbery. There are often times that I wonder if some of the educated hippies, yippies, yuppies, and guilt-ridden wealthy white people who populate the Obama campaign secretly stand around and sing "Elitism is Neat" while mocking those of us who live the life of the typical Middle American. If Liberals wonder why it is that Barack Obama can't win the votes of blue-collar whites, the mentality expressed by Obama's supporters is the reason why.
Barack Obama couldn't win in Pennsylvania, and he had Philadelphia votes to fall back on. Demographically, West Virginia is a more Southern version of Pennsylvania-and there is no Philadelphia. If this is the mentality Obama and his people have toward the people of West Virginia-and folks with the blue collar everywhere-then Barack Obama deserves to lose as badly as the polls are projecting. I personally hope he loses so badly that he will be too shamed to ever show his face in Charleston for the rest of his life.
If Obama is the Democratic nominee, West Virginia will go Republican in November for the third straight time. As much as I dislike and distrust John McCain, it might just be worth it for him to win in November for no other reason than for Barack Obama to be beaten to a political pulp.
Barack Obama thinks people like me are bitter. The more I think about the mentality of Obama and many of the people in his campaign, I'm not sure that I am bitter-but I'm just plain mad.
Labels: Democrats, Presidential Election, Republican Party
posted by Deacon David Oatney @ 10:44 AM
8 Comments:
David,
You're wrong. Telling someone that they've been had by con-artists is not calling them stupid. It's just pointing out a fact. Another fact is that many people do feel stupid when they discover (or been told) they've been conned and so don't report it and just ignore it.
Most people (in WV and elsewhere TRUST their leaders and so don't check, some can't, some just won't and so on. IE: How long has Ragsdale been lying? And why has he gotten away with it for so long.
As for stereotyping:
"...that the cultural liberals who populate the Obama campaign and the Democratic Left know what is best for people in ..." what do call that?? If all Obama had was the 'lefty elite' he'd have been gone a long time ago.
Oh, and yes, you are bitter. Bitter and angry. You can't see it but I do. I see it in your choices for the words you use, tone you use and so on. Everytime you reply to some real (or imagined) slight or insult to you, or your beloved 'Southern Culture.'
SteveMule
Oh how angry you are!I guess you think not having the internet or maybe a phone makes you stupid or ignorant.Because that is what she said and that was your conclusion.It also makes me laugh when she agrees with you that Hillary may not be so truthful and you do not agree,but rage on about how insulted you are about your own conclusions.I don't see how being uninformed makes you stupid.But I do see how speaking out of anger can make you look foolish!
You seem to like to use Elite or elitism,I looked it up and don't see the connection.
They're good, trusting people,..
Hey at least you're good trusting people - up in Pa we're ostensibly a bunch of bitter xenophobic gun-totin foot washers!
Wow!! Talk about proving the point. The two commenters above obviously will *never* , will they, David?
While I am college educated (and have a phone [even if it does have a crank] and access to the innertubes), the 'typical white person(s" hill people I grew up with have resented jerks like these two for centuries.
*They* are Obama's problem, because they typify what my friends and relatives believe Obama and his backers think about them.
Why not ask, "why do those [illiterate, easily-led hicks] voters believe that Obama is exhibiting an elitist attitude toward them? Instead, you get more of the same.
Way to attract their votes, guys.
The people of West Virginia are as wired as anyone else. A couple of months ago I stopped for gas along I-64 deep in the mountains. The guys in the general store I stopped at were talking about the quality of their DSL. This was a place that sold hunting licenses along with gas in a town with a population in the hundreds.
If people in West Virginia voted for Clinton over Obama it was because they preferred her not because they are ignorant.
This is pathetic:
1. You might vote for McCain out of _spite_? Look, you may not agree with Obama's positions, and that's fine. I don't agree with a lot of them either. But to vote against him because you perceive that he and his supporters look down on you is exactly what's wrong with the American electorate today. There are far more important things at stake in this election than your bruised ego. Make a thoughtful decision, not a reactionary one. Personally, I don't give a damn if Obama's the reincarnation of Marie Antoinette - he's right on Iraq, and McCain is very, very wrong. The wrong decision there will (and has) hurt America - and those common working class whites - far more than a snooty attitude ever could.
2. How many people in West Virginia believe that Obama is some sort of crypto-Muslim? Higher than almost any other state, I'd wager. Either that or the media are conspiring to make it look that way - just do a Google News search. That ain't ignorance? That ain't just plain laziness and gullibility?
With apologies to Rudyard Kipling the poet; here is my reworded version of his poem “the White Man’s Burden* which praised the “benefits” of colonialism. The new “Sahib” or “Bwanna” is our left-wing media and their cronies out to correct (deconstruct)those vulgar Appalachian savages from their “unenlightened” worldview:
The Left Wing’s Burden
Take up the Left wing’s burden
Send forth the same old breed –
Go bind your journalists to brief exile
To serve your hillbillies’ need;
To wait away from Starbucks
On fluttered folk and wild –
Your captive, sullen peoples,
Half devil and half child.
Take up the Left-Wing’s burden –
In condescension to abide,
To veil the threat of exposure
And hide the evidence of pride;
By duplicitous speech and lies,
An hundred times mad plain.
To take another’s profit,
And steal another’s gain.
Take up the Left-wing’s burden –
Our savage campaigns for “peace”
Shut down those coarse distractions
And bid “bitter” ignorance cease;
And when your goal is nearest
The presidency for others sought,
Watch guns and Small-town Folly
Bring all your hope to nought.
Take up the Left wing’s burden –
And reap an entitled reward:
The blame of those ye enlighten,
The hate of those you deconstruct
The vulgar cry of the working class ye condescend
(Ah, slowly!) toward the light: –
“Why brought ye us from bondage,
“Our loved Appalachian night?”
Take up the Left-wings burden –
Ye distort what Obama meant –
Nor call too loud on freedom
To cloak your true intent;
By all ye preach or publish,
By all ye leave or do,
The silent, sullen peoples
Shall weigh your party and you.
Ragnell
All Hail the new “Bwanna” Media
Do they need some native appalachians to haul their monthy supply of Starbucks when they trek out to the “Heart of Darkness” land?
*The White Man’s Burden http://www.poetryloverspage.com/poets/kipling/kipling_ind.html
"Telling someone that they've been had by con-artists is not calling them stupid. It's just pointing out a fact."
Wow. SteveMule, whether any set of voters has been "had by con-artists" is never a matter of fact, it is a matter of opinion. That opinion must depend upon such things as what your values are - what "good things" you want to move towards and what "bad things" you want to move away from. Your claim that there can be factual answers to questions of values suggests to me that you want to innoculate yourself against other opinions by persuading yourself that people who disagree with you are stupid and thus should be ignored.
Useful exercise for you: ask yourself, why might intelligent people who have access to the same information that I do and have reasonable goals disagree with me?
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