Obama Slammed by Right for Speaking Blindingly Obvious Truth

"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…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."- Sen. Obama

Response from Steve Schmidt, McCain adviser:

“It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking,” Schmidt said. “It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.”

Yup, that's right. Any suggestion that there could possibly be anything wrong with the precious snowflake culture that is the AMERICAN HEARTLAND is "elitism."

The "average American" comment is especially rich. The fact that small-town Americans can possibly still imagine themselves to be America Incarnate after a century of rural flight is a testament to the power of human delusion. We are an empire of three hundred million people, hundreds of intermixed ethnic groups, dozens of finely delineated and contradictory economic castes, and innumerable shades of different religious beliefs, hobbies, tastes in art or music, understandings of the world, etc.

If there was ever any such thing as an average American, those days are long dead. Residents of south Chicago have just as much of a right to declare themselves "average Americans" as the Wahoo homecoming queen, and though
the right is rather overt in it's opinion that the inner-city poor are an aberration from the "real America" (Never mind that they outnumber the small-town snowflakes.) far be it for me to suggest that they are racist, or even "elitist"
for doing so.

Just willfully blind is all.


For a good time, read the comments at righty blog Hot Air:

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/04/11/obama-on-small-town-voters-bitter-xenophobic-religious/