Small Town People Caricatured…again. Obama Misunderstood…again (so he says)

April 15, 2008

Sen. Obama is being ‘criticized’ for recent remarks he made behind closed doors to a group of his ‘wealthier backers’ in San Francisco. Mayhill Fowler of the The Huffington Post broke the story, and archived Obama’s comments - comments made as he, in the words of Fowler, ‘took a shot at explaining the yawning cultural gap that separates a Turkeyfoot from a Marin County’:

‘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. 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.’

In Fowler’s judgment ‘Obama made a problematic judgment call in trying to explain working class culture to a much wealthier audience.’ Fowler continues, ‘He described blue collar Pennsylvanians with a series of what in the eyes of Californians might be considered pure negatives: guns, clinging to religion, antipathy, xenophobia.’

I appreciate Newsweek’s Andrew Romano’s analysis of Obama’s remarks. In his, ‘Bittergate: Is Obama an ‘Elitist’?,’ Romano highlights two ways of interpreting Obama’s ‘bitter’ comments:

Pro-Hillary Interpretation:

‘The first comes from his [Obama's] critics, who claim that the Illinois senator has suddenly, inadvertently revealed his secret view of ‘Pennsylvanians as bitter, gun-toting, racist, religious fanatics.’ Unfortunately for Obama, it’s not particularly challenging to construe his remarks, if read literally, as condescending. For starters, he seems to suggest that blue-collar voters ‘cling to’ ‘religion’ and ‘guns’ because of their economic ‘bitterness’–when, in reality, people own guns because they like to hunt and go to church because they believe in their religion. Secondly, he appears to equate ‘guns’ and ‘religion’ (which most blue-collar Pennsylvanians value) with bigotry (i.e., ‘antipathy to people who aren’t like them’ and ‘anti-immigrant sentiment.’) Because everyone agrees that bigotry is bad, the parallelism makes the senator sound as if he believes guns and religion are bad, too–as if he is, in effect, dissing rural voters’ religiosity and fondness of firearms.’

Pro-Obama Interpretation:

‘Understandably, Obama and his supporters are clinging to an alternative interpretation. While conceding that he ‘regret[ted] some of the words [he] chose,’ Obama said Friday at a town hall meeting in Terre Haute, Indiana, that his San Francisco slip was simply shorthand for the argument that Thomas Frank made in his 2004 bestseller, ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas?’–i.e., that Republicans use social wedge issues to convince lower-income Americans to vote against their economic interests. ‘They don’t vote on economic issues because they don’t expect anybody’s going to help them,’ Obama said. ‘So people end up, you know, voting on issues like guns, and are they going to have the right to bear arms. They vote on issues like gay marriage. And they take refuge in their faith and their community and their families and things they can count on. But they don’t believe they can count on Washington.’ In other words, I didn’t mean that small-town voters suddenly discover religion or guns because they’ve lost their jobs, but rather that they feel so ‘bitter’ after decades of empty economic promises that some now ‘cling to’ guns or religion as electoral issues.’

Romano comments: ‘Truth be told, this [the Pro-Obama take] strikes me as the more plausible interpretation of what Obama ‘meant to’ say–even if Clinton and McCain are under no obligation to pretend that it’s what he actually said.’

I like Romano’s article because he takes seriously the fact that meaning is produced, in part, depending on political location. Romano’s is a very reasonable analysis. However, whether one takes Romano’s more charitable interpretation or a possible Clinton supporter’s interpretation as true - it seems to me both options result in the same interpretation…indicating, it seems to me, what people heard when they listened to Obama.

Let’s take Romano’s interpretation as the truer/better one. Does it feel right to argue ‘lower-income’ people can, essentially, be duped by Republicans into voting their ‘values’ - and, therefore, against their economic interests? While the Pro-Clinton take suggests Obama is arguing the poor are, e.g., religious because they are poor (religion, then, is a type of denial) - the Pro-Obama take is arguing the poor vote their values because they are easily manipulated by Republicans. Both takes result in the same interpretation: poor folk or rural folk are not smart - that is, they do not have have valid reasons for their values, lifestyles, and for voting Republican.

I am not writing an anti-Obama screed. In fact, I think Clinton’s response to Obama’s comments should be more charitable given what she has been through (and I am a Clinton supporter). I am (as a product of small town American) simply sick of the way in which rural or small town people are construed…again and again.

Beyond that, one reality I continue to find amusing is the uneven manner in which the media ‘reports’ Obama missteps. It seems a lot of people, like Romano, are willing to deploy a charitable hermeneutic when it comes to Obama’s statements. For instance, how many times have I heard today (and had I not been in Hong Kong, I probably would have heard this all weekend): ‘Well, Obama is right: people are bitter.’ I am not sure ‘bitter’ is the right word, but even if that part is true…that’s not all Obama said (even Obama seems to have a selective memory). Clinton has not been and would not be treated so softly. In fact, it seems Obama can say whatever he wants and no one cares or is unwilling to interpret his ill-put statements negatively…because as of today, according to MSNBC, the polls show Obama has not lost ground.

Anyway, I AM BITTER because of this election…and I have turned to watching numerous hours of Alias and drinking copious amounts of Diet Coke…I may even start clinging to prayer, conjure-up some homo hate, and, to top it off, I think I will volunteer to build the fence along the border….

Posted by Tony Posted in Bi/Partisan Politics