BRING ME YOUR BITTER!
Everybody laughs at the Greeks and Romans because they made up all these gods and creatures and fantastic stories to explain their reality. Of course their creations are collectively called mythology, as in making up stuff up. But slowly but surely, over the millennia, people figured out how most things work on Earth. We figure we have progressed beyond all that myth making.
Naw. We still make stuff up. In fact, with the Internet, we’re actually going backwards. It even has people back to believing in "Intelligent Design" – i.e., Zeus did it all. The grand system that Gore invented has become the Disinformation Superhighway. Or Misinformation. Or Noninformation. Whichever you prefer; but it’s anything but "Information". That’s limited to a small side dirt road along the superhighway.
And no, Gore didn’t invent the thing, and he didn’t even say he did...
Which brings up back to mythology.
Another bit of modern mythology is that Bush won the election of 2000 because he wasn’t an "elitist" – he seemed like a regular guy you’d like to have a beer with.
That’s actually two, two, two myths in one: a) that he was actually a regular guy you’d want to have a beer with; and b) that he won the election. And he didn’t win it in 2004 either.
But these myths persist, as they did in the days when those Greek boys were conjuring up Apollo and Hades.
In any case, on the beer drinking thing, you’d think that particular prerequisite for being President would have been completely dashed, after being completely fooled by Bush.
It seems not. It seems small town white people whose jobs have disappeared, whose health insurance is gone, whose 401ks have been robbed, whose houses are being foreclosed, whose schools suck still think the most intelligent person in the room is not Presidential timber. And it’s not just having the beer, it’s whether it’s Heineken or Pabst Blue Ribbon.
And so the charge of "elitism", once made, can be as sticky as Velcro when thrust at a candidate, like "Liberalism". And if you are branded a "Liberal elitist", which I guess is a redundancy, that’s toilet paper on the shoe. Then, throw "San Francisco" into the mix, you’ve got Nancy Pelosi, and you’ve got something Scarborough and Matthews can really get to jawing about. "Can Obama only appeal to black people, or can he appeal to regular people, too?" so inquired Matthews. The amazing part about this quote is that the idiot still has a job.
Back to myths, the standing one about Obama is that the only way he can lose the Democratic nomination is to implode by making some terrible mistake. His opponents of course don’t want to wait around for him to do that. They are apparently trying to turn every inartful comment into the implosion they are depending upon for.
And sure enough, somebody had the crappy tape recorder going when Obama was speaking at an liberal, elitist fundraiser in San Francisco. A Pelosi "three-fer". He basically posited that small town folks are bitter because their lives suck, and all they have to cling to, lest they go mad, are their religion, their guns and dread of illegal aliens.
A ha! He’s an elitist! Stick a flag lapel in him; he’s done!
It’s interesting how a guy who gets 90% of the African American vote, and a lot of college kids who probably aren’t wealthy, can be branded elitist is pretty amazing.
Still where there’s smoke, there’s fire. The evidence has been mounting on this front, and now it’s exploding.
Let’s start with the pretentious name, come on. Barack? Why not "Barry", as a "regular guy" would casualize his name. Like Jimmy (as in Carter). Or Bill (as in Clinton). Or Dick (as in Cheney). Or Dick (as in Rumsfeld). I know Rumsfeld’s name is Donald, but never mind that.
And did you see Obama suck at bowling? Da- yem! Hmmm. Is Mr. Matthews onto something? Being shitty at bowling, a small town, regular folks pastime, is a driplet of proof that he’s not a "regular person". At first he was bad at bowling because he was black, and good at basketball for the same reason (again, the Chris Matthews assessment)... but now he appears to be bad at bowling because he sucks at bowling because he’s an elitist; you don’t have to play the race card.
And, après bowling, I didn’t see him go through the motions of downing a shooter and a brewsky at a scruffy Scranton bowling alley bar, with back pounding locals who don’t seem all that bitter at all!
No in fact, when it comes to liquids, it’s documented that Barack eschews coffee for orange juice. What a snob!
There’s more. He went to Harvard law school. Hello! We can’t have a President who was really well educated, from some ritzy Ivy League school. What does he know about "us"?
Well OK, Bush went to Yale. But it was no doubt on a legacy. And he didn’t obviously didn’t study much of the elitist curriculum. So that doesn’t count. He may be from Connecticut, but listen to that old boy’s West Texas drawl. He successfully reversed evolution within himself just to be one of us bitter regular folks – of course made more bitter by his policies, but whatever.
So the conclusion is, Obama is justifying why these bitter folks won’t vote for him. Just because the government has let them down, lied to them, let their jobs go away, and their schools crumble, this guy accuses them of being bitter. How out of touch can you get! He probably thinks they are pissed at $4 a gallon for gas, and $5 Cheerios. Oh, and what about that sub prime mortgage stuff, stealing their homes from under them. I supposed they are "bitter" about that, too, Mr. chi-chi suburban dwelling best selling author.
So the beer thing may be a myth, but a lot of smart people are buying into it to such a degree that is being made real!
But the elitist charge has its complications, that perhaps weren’t thought through by the elitists who have been fostering the charge.
One thing about this elitist dust up is they’ll have to start referring to Obama as "the white guy candidate" instead of the "black guy candidate" because, even with Joe Six Pack or Ray the Reagan Democrat, it stretches credulity to believe a black guy who wasn’t born into the Cosby family (real or TV) can be branded "elitist". So playing up Obama’s white guy side (he is, after all 50% white) would make the moniker a bit more plausible. And, added bonus, it could serve to turn off the 90% of black people who are voting for him.
And this elitist business also negates the Reverend Wright business, as well as Hannity’s Weather Underground business - because Wright and the Weather Underground were trashing elitist institutions, if not trying to bomb them (in the case of the latter). So it can’t be true that Obama is in cahoots with them when, as an elitist, he’s really in cahoots with the fellow aloof big shots who those guys are criticizing. Or wanting to bomb. Or used to want to bomb. 40 years ago. When Barack was 8.
Of course 8 was about the time, according to Michael Savage and others, Obama was attending that Madrassa Muslim hate-America school in Indonesia where... damn, again, they were probably ginning up anti-elitist viewpoints.
Okay that’s out, too, if you want the highly prized Scarlet "E" to stick.
And that reminds me of the "middle name thing"; have to drop that. You know, Barack Hussein Obama. I suppose Saddam Hussein was an Iraqi elitist, but the critics who use that name are playing the terrorist card. Since the Bush/Cheney/Rove/Hannity/Dobbs propaganda machine dictates that terrorists are 9th century thinking zealots who sneak in the country on false visas, or climb under (or over) border fences to "kill us", being a secret Muslim erases the elitist accusation. (And by the way these same guys buy into the myth of meeting x number of "virgins" in heaven upon glorious death in, say, a car bomb; that myth is almost as hard to shake as Bush being a great beer buddy).
Yes Osama bin-Laden is rich, a would-be elitist, but he still prefers cave living last we heard.
And finally what’s up with the lapel pin? Or lack of. Clearly it’s elitist not to deign to wear that particular PPA (patriotic proof accessory).
Anyway, I am happy that Obama was thus exposed for what he really is. An elitist white guy.
To the "bitter folks" he was accused of trashing, clinging to religion, guns and xenophobia well, I’d say: go McCain. There’s a street guy, with no solutions but plenty of war rhetoric and flag lapel pins. He doesn’t seem all that smart, so that’s good. And he skated through the Savings and Loan scandal, costing the millions of "regular people" their life savings. But he’s a great guy.
Need more encouragement, bitter guy? Well, you saw him strolling through that Iraq bazaar. Since he was a fellow serviceman (that’s a regular guy thing!), hundreds of his compatriots in uniform were happy to hang out with him and go shopping. And, in a touching move, a few fellow jet fighter pilots constantly flew over head, dipping their wings with respect. It was decidedly bittersweet. And certainly McCain’s bulletproof vest proved he has a healthy respect for gun toting citizens.
Of course McCain’s also a religious guy, with the support of James Hagee, another regular fellow who takes the book of Revelations literally – a clear proponent of mythology.
So no reason to be bitter. You don’t have to endure some sea change of change brought about by some over educated elitist. As usual, vote for the great guy who orders Pabst and wears a flag pin. On Sunday morning, do some prayin’, then take your AK47 to the border and pick off sneaky terrorists.
To paraphrase Jesse Jackson, keep myth alive!
published in the April/May newsletter of www.valleydemsunited.com
by Robert Illes