skippy the bush kangaroo

Saturday, April 12, 2008

what's all the hub-bub, bub?

jill at brilliant at breakfast wonders why the political world is in an uproar over obama's remarks about small town pennsylvania:

but it seems that barack obama has simply pointed out the obvious:

"you go into 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," obama said. "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. and it's not surprising then 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 this is a shandeh -- why?

i see this as a statement of fact, except it isn't limited to pennsylvania. for nearly two decades, americans, particularly in blue-collar areas, have seen their standard of living drop. they've seen the jobs that gave them a comfortable life dissappear. they've seen their incomes drop. they've watched as their children joined the military because it was either that or work at wal-mart. politicians have played on their fears of the future by pointing these americans' attention away from the corporate ceos making hundreds of millions of dollars a year by sending their factories overseas, and from senators and congresspeople who have sided with corporations time after time. they've sold these americans "trickle-down economics", which told them that if they just sit tight while the rich shovel cash into their pockets, sooner those rich people will piss a few bucks down upon them. they've played on their fears, first of black people (willie horton and the jesse helms "white hands" ad), then of terrorists, then of latino immigrants. they've succeeded by saying, "look at the guy below you....he's your problem, not the guys who talked you into buying a house you couldn't afford, then bundled your mortgage into bogus investments sold by bear stearns, whose executives pocketed millions of dollars before the whole scheme went bust, leaving you with a house you can't pay for and can't sell. that guy below you on the ladder is the real problem, not a president sho cut taxes to give more cash to his rich friends and who allowed speculators to drive the price of gasoline to $3.25/gallon and heating oil to nearly $4."

it's worked for republicans for decades.
joe gandelman at the moderate voice has a round up of responses from candidates, pundits and blogtopia, and yes, we coined that phrase!

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posted by skippy at 12:14 PM |

3 Comments:

Honestly skippy, I've been getting away more and more from all of this because I'm pretty well disgusted by the process. Your post on cover songs was the one I found most interesting in weeks. (Nothing personal, just making a point.)

You know I support Clinton, but when the time comes I'll vote the Democrat that wins and unfortunately that looks more and more like Obama. He's not evil, just not my choice. And frankly if I stay too involved in all of this, it might become impossible to support him, to vote for him at all.

That said, Obama statements come across as blanket anti-small town. That because of XYZ, all of those people are gun nuts, religious nuts, and/or are now bigots. Seems to me to be blanket stereotyping from someone who should know better. OR is he trying to make a correlation between them and Rev. Wright?

This is the same campaign that criticized Bill Clinton for saying that South Carolina once supported Jesse Jackson.

No one likes being lumped in as a stereotype, especially for negative reasons.
commented by Anonymous sean on li, 4:18 PM PDT  
It's a hub-bub because it helps keep attention off of the recent expose of the Bush White House war crimes, especially of ordering torture of innocent and suspect detainees,
commented by Anonymous Anonymous, 1:43 AM PDT  
i dont see the big deal in the statement --- we have gotten to the point where every word is parsed and redefined ----

and we have also gotten to the point where this drivel is more important - or rather a cover - than talking about the stuff that matters ---
commented by Blogger Distributorcap, 3:12 AM PDT  

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