What if I said.
 

All you people from small rural areas, bitter about imigrants cling to your religion and your guns and your antipathy.

Is it true? Discuss:

Perhaps.... What do you think?

I don't understand the question. And could you clarify; legal or illegal immigrants?

NO. I think people have their religion and their guns in exercise of their rights first. Then it's steeped in geographic culture and should not be regarded as a cultural anomoly as I think the Rev. Wrights comments were.

I don't know. I couldn't find an exact quote of Obama's statement.

Oh. Man, I keep flip-flopping on Obama..... I jut don't know....

i'm an Ohioan, no guns ( I hate guns) am pagan, believe in the goodness of the Universe, love Mexican wokers and think the country needs them and their pilgrim-like work ethic, and family values. Bring them on.

I also believe in socialized medicine. and free nachos.

the only people I have a prob with are those gd socialists like the unutterably compassionate DanaC. wink. I have had probs with Dana, but I have come to see her POV and to TRY to embrace her total love of mankind---no matter how slimey they are~ ;) to explain: Dana loves more than I do. I'm ok with that.

"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."

That's one way to look at it, but I wouldn't agree. :headshake

Do carry on. I have to take a nap before work. I'm not skipping out on ya :)


thnaks ut and bruce for the source quote

The statement was made at a San Francisco big big money fund-raiser. It's probably what they expected to hear.

Half of all dwellars are in rural Pennsylvania, or have family and friends there in spades. Here's the deal.

Pennsylvania small town provincialism didn't start 25 years ago. It started as soon as the society became mobile. People interested in constant change, creativity and exploration started moving to the urban areas.

Obama's real gaffe here is that his statement is the entire opposite of what his campaign has been so far. It's negative, when his campaign has been all about the positive. It's divisive when the campaign has been about unity.

Most of all, it's wrong. The differences here aren't easily explained by frustration or jobs or promises. They're just different schools of thought.

One of my own recent themes in life has been strenuously avoiding characterizing those who have different points of view as "stupid", or "broken", or "bitter", or even "wrong", because our harsh divides are too harsh now and somehow we must resolve our differences and stop being assholes. So this one hurts a little.

Wow! Very well put UT... especially

My family in rural NC is damn well bitter. And so am I.

Saying they're bitter is less offensive than pretending nothing is wrong.

Being bitter isn't the original reason for owning a gun or getting a religion.

I think you guys are buying the Hillary/McBush spin waaaay too much.
In CONTEXT... Obama's comments are absolutely not offensive. Of course some people are going to be fucking bitter - The government's pissed on them for generations. Hell, the government's pissed on all of us for generations.
I personally applaud Obama for not backpedaling so much like everyone is trying to make him do. He said what he meant, and while it may be unpopular to actually say it, it's definitely true about SOME people if not all of them. Obama's got guts to say it and stick with it.

I believe he was trying to pander to the donors and the electorate at the same time. On the one hand he agreed to the sterotype and in the same way he was trying to to not completely ignore the predicament of many rural areas in the US. He got it wrong on both accounts. Each area is distinctly different from others. Many of the rural areas in decline have been heading that direction for a long time and due to many factors. The guns and religion comment was just ignorant on his part and shows that he really is from an elitist part of society. I am not really convinced that his comments will hurt him much but they do give his rivals talking points for which they can beat him about the head relentlessly. He is learning the value of choosing his words carefully.

Naah, he's obviously discrediting their communication skills. Like they are ignorant folks that cling to stuff because they are too dumb to voice things adequately. Obviously pandering to the elite crowd that nods their heads, but he also gets to put his 2 cents in on why they are like that. "Urban" is to black as "Rural" is to:

This will be just another little chink in the armor or the image they've created for Obama the Uniter. It won't ruin his campaign but it will get a few people to stop and think about the possible disparity between his words and his ideals. I view this as somewhat similar to Kerry walking into a store and asking, "Can I get me a hunting license here?" Seriously? You want to gain the support of the middle class and you think this is how they speak and think?

It's an interesting way to state the opinion. It's phrased in terms of I understand where you're coming from, and I don't blame you for being that way, so essentially he's characterizing a group or people for having a character fault, albeit an understandable one.

How divisive is that? It's condescending, of course, but is it harshly negative?

Maybe a necessary part of coming to terms with people that you disagree with would be by trying to understand where they're coming from. I don't think the final destination of that thought process would be filing them away under a half-baked stereotype, but I think it might represent the middle part of an ongoing attempt to understand something that is, by definition, not within your personal belief system.

Some other popular methods would be to dehumanize the opposition, to villify them and to characterize their beliefs as purposefully destructive.

He's not doing that.

~snip~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.~snip~

Antipathy to people who aren't like them...Is this a polite way of saying racist?

this kind of scrutiny on exerpted comments from a politician is retarded. you can twist a lot of things a lot of ways. The "pouncing" demeanor that I'm noticing from the Hillary squad is more disturbing to me.

The scrutiny is ok when the comments are used as quotes throughout history however....

Ah well.

The wife just remarked to me that the TV commentators are "making dead-horse jerky" of this.

Of course, the Dem Party isn't selling anything I'd buy, so... :corn:

I heard on NPR this AM her bringing this thing up in yet another speech, and her audience was murmuring and on the edge of booing her for it. I think this "issue" has just about played out. If she tries to milk it any more, it will blow up in her face.

We can only hope.

"Never criticize, condemn, or complain" works well.

All together now;
Kumbya my Lord, pass by way....

Nah, as my redneck friend goes "I hate black people, I hate brown people, I hate red people, I hate yellow people, and I most certainly hate white people".

This sort of thing was bound to happen sometime with Obama's campaign. The US is too culturally diverse for one person to relate and understand them all.

We don' take too kinl'y to yur kine 'round here.
:D
We don' take too kinl'y to takin' too kinl'y 'round here, neitha, hawk- ahh.

Noo stereotyping going on here, move along.

I don't give two squats about any of the candidates so I will roam around and diagnose any of the comments as I please......
:D

Here's an article from the NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/04/14/op...14kristol.html

But it’s one thing for a German thinker to assert that “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature.” It’s another thing for an American presidential candidate to claim that we “cling to ... religion” out of economic frustration.


I am one of those potential crossover voters. I am waiting for the general election debates so I can make my decision.

Most people would agree that this administration has left people bitter but to say this group of people is more bitter than the rest is devisive because it is a narrow view of human motivation. It is a gross generalization and anyone that finds questioning such statements disturbing is probably more often than not disturbed about life in general. There is nothing wrong with an open and honest look-sie into the motivations of our next elected officials.




Funny statement. hehe I like her :)

I am not so happy with Hillary either. If McCain comes center which I predict he will and is sucessful in pulling democrats and independants from Obama during the General election he will be our next President.


I think you might be one of the smartest persons on this site but what makes you so appealing is your humor regarding your opinions. I admire that so much! :D

hehehe diagnose just cracks me up!

Obama's main mistake is not punctuating his comments with "I understand and empathize with their bitterness", echoing Clinton's "I feel your pain" mantra.

I take your point, but I must clarify something. There is *no* path that does not offer the opportunity for criticism. Even doing nothing can be ridiculed. All statements by all the leading candidates in the race at this stage could be criticized.

The task for those of us who wish to be informed voters is to listen, critically. That means including context. That means going to original sources when possible. That means listening to others' analyses, also critically. That means considering the source (thanks Dad). That means not focusing too narrowly, taking second hand paraphrases of other's words out of context. This is tiring endless work. But the reward is worth it.

Well said, V.

Thank you, sir.

it's not a mountain-making contest
 

Give me a break already! This paragraph is just as stupid as the original controversy.
They've taken a mountain made out of a molehill, and made an even bigger mountain out of it.

If you were to use the word "all", it would be very different than anyone in the media might have said. When I hear someone say "all people", I already know they are wrong.

I believe in the case of Barrack Obama, he was saying that people are losing their jobs, keeping less and less of what they make, they're having a harder and harder time making ends meet. They are desperate and angry when they see their company forced to go elsewhere to make a profit, and they see their job go to someone else. These people are clinging on to single issues rather than looking at the big picture. They are clinging to abortion, or guns, or religion, because they feel like they can't get much from government, so they will pick their battles carefully and choose a few areas where they think they can win, rather than spreading themselves thin and trying to win everything.

I'm the same way. I know that I will give a certain amount of money to charity. Do I give a dollar to every charity that has a worthwhile cause? Or do I give a thousand dollars to one or two charities where I think my money might actually make the most difference?

Not if over half the rest of the population doesn't do the same. :rolleyes:


(Cic, you might check my grammar on that...should it be doesn't or don't?)

I respectfully disagree, case. I think you're silently assenting to my first assertion, that it is tiring endless work. We agree on that point. I think you're taking issue with my second assertion, that the reward for that work is worth it. That's where we might disagree.

Yes, hard work. Yes, worth it. No, it doesn't always result in the best candidate for the job being elected to the office. But it is still worth it for a couple of reasons.

1 -- *I* will have done *my* best for myself and my city/county/state/country/PTA/fellow shareholders/etc/etc. That's priceless.

2 -- It greatly increases the chances that the best person will be elected, because I'm able to make a better choice, and those people I communicate with will know more about "the facts", "the truth" and will be better informed as well.

3 -- The people I come in contact with while doing this work might be more motivated to vote because of my efforts, if even to counterbalance my vote against some right wing nut job. More voter (informed voters) is a good thing. Misinformed voters can have unpredictable results.

4 -- I set a good example for my kids and the other young people around me who aren't yet old enough to vote.

5 -- I preserve my right to bitch about the winner of the election because I put my two cents in. That's true whether my candidate wins and I've been betrayed or my candidate loses and I cry "toldja so!" for the rest of the term.

Still worth it. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

In short, too much is taken too literally. All those position papers, etc are only sufficient to say which way their wind blows. Much of what all three promise to do and what others accuse them of saying, instead, will not happen. Do you really think anyone will rescind NAFTA? Do you really think anyone will immediately pull all troops out of Iraq? Do you really think anyone will cut taxes or institute massive tax increases? Of course not.

We get pissy about a comment made in San Francisco that is also (in simpler terms) somewhat accurate? Yes, when times get bad or people get frustrated, then people seek to blame others or things. So what? People do that. Why is that so important?

Only metric to measure any of these candidates is how they manage the overall campaign. For example, Kerry did a very poor job explaining himself about "Mission Accomplished" or knocking down outright lies from the Swift Boat coalition. It may have cost him enough votes to lose. We measure our leaders by watching what they do in these long and painful treks over the nation and airwaves. At least the minority who think for ourselves - who do not vote as ordered will judge on how they managed the campaign - not get lost in silly details or perceived insults.

It is a silly controversy. Just another day in a campaign that should have been mostly ignored until after the Super Bowl - and that is still too long.

Thoughts like that are better left in the back of one's head. He was going for points by putting down the very constituents he needs to win. Yes there are simple minded people but did he have to say it out loud? and what about the people whos religion is more than a single issue and who's love for guns is more about tradition than an understanding of the issues. I love how Obama gets a pass or a look over when if it had been Hilary who had said it the lynch mob would be out with torches and the dogs.

Candidate on a High Horse

By George Will


Barack Obama may be exactly what his supporters suppose him to be. Not, however, for reasons most Americans will celebrate.


Obama may be the fulfillment of modern liberalism. Explaining why many working-class voters are "bitter," he said they "cling" to guns, religion and "antipathy to people who aren't like them" because of "frustrations." His implication was that their primitivism, superstition and bigotry are balm for resentments they feel because of America's grinding injustice.


By so speaking, Obama does fulfill liberalism's transformation since Franklin Roosevelt. What had been under FDR a celebration of America and the values of its working people has become a doctrine of condescension toward those people and the supposedly coarse and vulgar country that pleases them.


When a supporter told Adlai Stevenson, the losing Democratic presidential nominee in 1952 and 1956, that thinking people supported him, Stevenson said, "Yes, but I need to win a majority." When another supporter told Stevenson, "You educated the people through your campaign," Stevenson replied, "But a lot of people flunked the course." Michael Barone, in "Our Country: The Shaping of America From Roosevelt to Reagan," wrote: "It is unthinkable that Roosevelt would ever have said those things or that such thoughts ever would have crossed his mind." Barone added: "Stevenson was the first leading Democratic politician to become a critic rather than a celebrator of middle-class American culture — the prototype of the liberal Democrat who would judge ordinary Americans by an abstract standard and find them wanting."


Stevenson, like Obama, energized young, educated professionals for whom, Barone wrote, "what was attractive was not his platform but his attitude." They sought from Stevenson "not so much changes in public policy as validation of their own cultural stance." They especially rejected "American exceptionalism, the notion that the United States was specially good and decent," rather than — in Michelle Obama's words — "just downright mean."


The emblematic book of the new liberalism was "The Affluent Society" by Harvard economist John Kenneth Galbraith. He argued that the power of advertising to manipulate the bovine public is so powerful that the law of supply and demand has been vitiated. Manufacturers can manufacture in the American herd whatever demand the manufacturers want to supply. Because the manipulable masses are easily given a "false consciousness" (another category, like religion as the "opiate" of the suffering masses, that liberalism appropriated from Marxism), four things follow:


First, the consent of the governed, when their behavior is governed by their false consciousnesses, is unimportant. Second, the public requires the supervision of a progressive elite which, somehow emancipated from false consciousness, can engineer true consciousness. Third, because consciousness is a reflection of social conditions, true consciousness is engineered by progressive social reforms. Fourth, because people in the grip of false consciousness cannot be expected to demand or even consent to such reforms, those reforms usually must be imposed, for example, by judicial fiats.


The iconic public intellectual of liberal condescension was Columbia University historian Richard Hofstadter, who died in 1970 but whose spirit still permeated that school when Obama matriculated there in 1981. Hofstadter pioneered the rhetorical tactic that Obama has revived with his diagnosis of working-class Democrats as victims — the indispensable category in liberal theory. The tactic is to dismiss rather than refute those with whom you disagree.


Obama's dismissal is: Americans, especially working-class conservatives, are unable, because of their false consciousness, to deconstruct their social context and embrace the liberal program. Today that program is to elect Obama, thereby making his wife at long last proud of America.


Hofstadter dismissed conservatives as victims of character flaws and psychological disorders — a "paranoid style" of politics rooted in "status anxiety," etc. Conservatism rose on a tide of votes cast by people irritated by the liberalism of condescension.


Obama voiced such liberalism with his "bitterness" remarks to an audience of affluent San Franciscans. Perfect.


When Democrats convened in San Francisco in 1984, en route to losing 49 states, Jeane Kirkpatrick — a former FDR Democrat then serving in the Cabinet of another such, Ronald Reagan — said "San Francisco Democrats" are people who "blame America first." Today they blame Americans for America being "downright mean."


Obama's apology for his embittering sociology of "bitterness" — "I didn't say it as well as I should have" — occurred in Muncie, Ind. Perfect.


In 1929 and 1937, Robert and Helen Lynd published two seminal books of American sociology. They were sympathetic studies of a medium-size manufacturing city they called "Middletown," coping — reasonably successfully, optimistically and harmoniously — with life's vicissitudes. "Middletown" was in fact Muncie, Ind.

Stating the fact that the vast majority of Americans aren't very bright isn't intellectual condescension. The fact is stupid people breed more, and they tend to vote Republican.

My mom said it was. :p

Oh he didn't say 'those Republicans' and their single hammer issues!' That would have made it alright because that's what he meant to say. :smack:

You must have seen me getting a compliment......:D lol!

Thank you for being sweet Sky!

Yeah, but I was just trying to see if you were paying attention.

Tw, you drown in Kool-Aid: the Swift Boaters were never refuted on a single point of fact. Just who processed any of Kerry's Purple Heart citations? In reply... nothing but silence. No one remembers doing them. Persons who grasp reality better than you do recall this. You, however, must not -- in order to sustain your madness, doltishness, and sociopolitical Dilbertianism. You are conspicuously out of it.

Snopes did.

A Wiki summary, FWIW in giving a rounded view of the affair. And it still illustrates why I don't vote for Democrats these days.

John Kerry is a decorated combat veteran who served with honor and distinction and he had the courage to speak the truth in front of Congress when it would have been easier to remain silent. The unmitigated gall and temerity for a man who used his father's influence to avoid going to war, and who later deserted from the military to question this man's military record is beyond sickening.

The Swiftboat assholes were indeed proven wrong and lied in much the same way that most Republicans lie.

The overwhelming majority of veterans from all wars are against the war in Iraq.

2004, two choices, both sucked, both lied, neither should have been president. Kerry and Bush were both viewed as traitors that let their country down.

How was Kerry a traitor that let his country down, exactly?

See the Congressional hearings he falsely testified in, telling the wildest stories of atrocities by US troops.

And Radar, you haven't got any proof. You've never proved any of your more radical ideas anyway -- not to me. Anti-Republican prejudice only proves you a bigot, does it not? I declare, you've turned violently left -- if, indeed, you ever left the Left. Don't go defending the myopic Democrats; they're indefensible.

The reason I protest this sort of blather as vigorously as I do is that as far as I can read the record, the Republicans and the conservatives simply aren't doing the things the radical left accuse them of; they are often proven more right in the end than the leftists, and so on.

You mean when he testified truthfully in the Congressional hearings about actual atrocities that happened at the hands of U.S. Troops? You may want to look up "Tiger Force" or My Lai before you run your mouth off.

None of my ideas is radical, and all of them have been proven a million times over. I don't like Democrats either, but Democrats are at least honest about their intentions. They say they want to raise taxes, and to take what we earn. Republicans hide their tax increases through inflation by deficit spending and making more money to make up the difference. The value of the dollar is reduced and we have an invisible tax. The Republicans are as scummy as the Democrats if not moreso, but they are also more sneaky.

Republicans are even more fiscally irresponsible than Democrats. They are more sneaky. They are more apt to start wars (especially unprovoked wars in violation of our Constitution), etc.

If it comes down to being robbed or being robbed and having my kids sent to die in an unnecessary, unwarranted, unprovoked, and unconstitutional war of aggression that does nothing to defend the United States and in fact endangers it, I choose the former.

I mean it exactly as I said it, and very much not the way you want to hear it, you eccentric. I recommend you quit playing the asshole and start talking as a human being. You're giving Libertarians a bad name. What's more, you lack proof still, and seem determined to continue reciting your articles of faith -- a faith, Paul, that I do not share. I haven't seen a reason to.

Shrinking the Non-Integrating Gap is more warranted than you know, Radar. Your view is less enlightened than mine, and will remain so until you do your homework. Which will be about the twelfth of never. Your ego is impeding your learning.

I find it amusing that a moron with the intellect of a 2 year old has the temerity to tell someone with the education above that of 99% of the world's population to do his homework.

Your view is less enlightened than a 2 watt bulb and mine is more enlightened than the lasers shooting from the top of the Luxor hotel my friend.

I know what you meant, but I corrected you so you would seem less retarded.

John Kerry never told a single lie in front of the Congressional hearings, PERIOD. Anyone who says otherwise is a liar or an idiot. That especially includes you. John Kerry has more honor and served with more distinction than John McCain.

I won't play the asshole, you've got that part all locked up. I don't recite articles of faith, I repeat the facts when you repeat lies. I set the record straight.

The opinions of 18 men with no axe to grind vs. one man with the desire to obtain a powerful politcal position with all the perks? I'll stand with the 18.
http://www.snopes.com/politics/kerry/swift.asp

Except they did have an ax to grind; specifically they lied in an effort to derail the Kerry campaign. I'll believe the men who actually served with him and who were on the boats where Kerry and they were shot at.

Kerry's military career is above reproach. He's a decorated combat vet who earned each and every one of his medals. He was patriotic, honest, and had enough guts to stand in front of Congress and tell the truth about Vietnam when others remained silent.

Kerry has more honor, courage, intelligence, patriotism, and class than the entire Bush cabinet, and every one of the 18 men you mentioned combined.

Hmmm, at the end that article says only one of the men was actually on the boat...and goes on to quote others who were on the boat who had nothing bad to say.

Just sayin'

(Didja know you can't copy and paste lines in/from snopes pages?)