Right Voices

Is this supposed to help Obama?

I never thought I’d say this, but I’m beginning to think she might have had a point. As dumb as things were back then, it’s fair to suggest today’s culture is even dumber. Granted, the police aren’t raiding highbrow cultural events and arresting anyone who uses a three-syllable word, but something uncannily similar is playing out, minute by minute, on television and the Internet. With political discourse reduced to screaming contests and actual news eclipsed by exclusive and shocking footage of celebrities without makeup, we’ve become not only impatient with but downright opposed to the kinds of ideas that can’t be reduced to a line on a screen crawl or a two-sentence blog entry.
What’s more, a lot of people who harbor an intolerance for complexity see it not as a character flaw but a cognitive virtue. That’s because they’ve fallen into the trap of believing that complicated ideas (“complicated” now constituting anything that requires reading, watching or listening to in its entirety) are the purview of the “elite.”
The effect of that trap has been on a continuous loop in recent days, following Barack Obama’s ill-chosen remarks about bitter rural Americans clinging to guns and religion. The takeaway, of course, is that this sentiment proves once and for all that Obama is an elitist fatally out of touch with the average American. But in deference to my onetime dinner companion, let me ask this: Is he vulnerable to the out-of-touch charge because he is an elitist, or because he is usually (even if not in this case) comfortable with and in command of nuanced ideas? Is he bashable because he’s a snob or because he’s an intellectual?

Meghan Daum made it a point to overlook the fact that people reacted in anger to Obama’s remarks, because the remarks were ignorant, not the people reacting to them. Didn’t Obama attend church on a fairly regular basis until his God-damn Pastor problems? I’m guessing that’s different though? Is Meghan deliberately trying to overlook the fact that Obama made the speech at the Getty Estate on ‘billionaires row’ in SF? A person’s bank account and/or address does not make them an intellectual. The translation of his words was correct; Vote For Me, You Corncob-Smokin’, Banjo-Strokin’ Chicken-Chokin’ Cousin-Pokin’ Inbred Hillbilly Racist Morons.

Ed:

In short, Daum provides an example of why Obama is so “bashable”: it’s because both of them are phonies. Daum aspires to intellectual snobbery, as she herself describes in the article, while Obama attempts to hide his, but both are as inauthentic as can be. Further, she essentially agrees with Obama’s assertion that people outside of her intellectual circles are Bible-thumping, gun-hugging bigots out of Deliverance who can’t understand concepts that take longer than the average Geico commercial, but chastises Obama for saying that so bluntly and in an unnuanced manner.

Romney takes swipes at ‘elitist’ Obama