When it comes to condescending to PA, nobody outdoes top Hillary aide/crony James Carville. Here we are parsing a single adjective used by Barack Obama -- "bitter" -- when in fact Carville once wrote off most of the state as redneck country. More below the fold.
Carrie Budoff Brown recently revisited Carville's characterization of Pennsylvania in The Politico. The flap over Obama's use of "bitter" seems silly in light of Carville's damning characterization:
Twenty-two years ago, as a Democratic strategist working on a gubernatorial race, Carville described the state as Paoli (a suburb of Philadelphia) and Penn Hills (a suburb of Pittsburgh) with Alabama in between...
"People think it meant that basically there are two areas of the state where people can read and write and treat people with a certain amount of respect and the rest of the state is redneck trailer trash," said Larry Ceisler, a Philadelphia public affairs consultant with ties to the Democratic Party. "It ended up being a slander on people who are living in those places. I would like to see the line retired."
"People dreaded hearing it again," said Stephen Medvic, a government professor at Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster. "There ought to be a better way to describe the state."
Alternately amusing and offensive to Pennsylvanians, the meta-narrative was born in 1986, the product of an upstart consultant with a gift of quick retorts. (See "It’s the economy, stupid," and the recent comparison of New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson to Judas for endorsing Barack Obama.) Even he doesn’t remember how or where he said it, although he recalled in an interview this week that he meant the central and northern tier of the state were culturally conservative with a large number of churchgoers. Hence, the comparison to Alabama.
"I couldn’t think of any other possible interpretation," Carville said Monday. "This is the first time anyone has ever questioned what I was saying. ... It is the first time in all of my life that anybody ever thought it was a negative thing."
Much more damning than "bitter" -- and yet Hillary's top aide and confidante seems baffled that anyone could find his statements damning. Let's make sure the traditional media are aware of the hypocrisy of Senator Clinton's attack.