This is rich. On CNN this morning, Republican strategist and former Mitt Romney spokesman Kevin Madden attacked Obama for vacationing in Hawai‘i:
President Obama right now has suffered very greatly in the last few months because of the fight over health care, and he has very little political capital right now. So Republicans feel it is in vogue to criticize this president.
And then lastly, you have to also remember the fact that the president being on vacation in Hawaii, it’s much different than being in Texas. Hawaii to many Americans seems like a foreign place. And I think those images, the optics, hurt President Obama very badly.
Host John Roberts and guest James Carville appropriately jumped down Madden's throat, reminding him that not only is Hawai‘i a state (we even have our very own star!), but that Obama's from Hawai‘i!
Madden stuck to his guns, replying:
I absolutely agree he’s entitled to a vacation, but to many Americans, Hawaii seems like this very tropical place, and the optics of many of these reporters reporting about the president’s response with surfers behind them is much different.
Of course, no mention was made of the fact that Rush Limbaugh is also vacationing here, and thank God Madden seemed unaware that Nancy Pelosi is on the Big Island. I wonder whether Madden would get upset that Sens. Inouye and Akaka spend their recesses in Hawai‘i during a "time of war."
This isn't the first time of course. A lot us remember Cokie Roberts' idiotic remark when Obama visited Hawai‘i last August.
"I know his grandmother lives in Hawaii and I know Hawaii is a state, but it has the look of him going off to some sort of foreign, exotic place." Roberts continued: "He should be in Myrtle Beach, and, you know, if he's going to take a vacation at this time."
As a long-time Hawai‘i resident, I would like to share a few things about our great state with these nimrods:
Hawai‘i has been a state since 1959 (in fact, last August was our 50th anniversary of statehood). Yes, we do get the occasional tourist who asks us if we use "American money," or the mainlander who says things like "When I get back to the States ..." but for the most part people recognize us as pretty much American. We have Wal-Mart and K-Mart. We have Safeway and Long's Drugs. We have Whole Foods and Costco. We have Macy's and Victoria's Secret. Barnes & Noble and Borders Books. (We don't have Trader Joe's or Bed, Bath & Beyond, which we sorely need, IMHO).
We have interstate highways (three of them, even though they don't, you know, literally connect to other states). We have the largest concentration of military personnel in the country. We get the same insipid cable TV stations as everyone else in the country, including the esteemed CNN. Most everyone speaks English--probably a higher percentage do than in places like, say, Texas. A flight to Honolulu from Los Angeles costs just about as much (and takes about as long) as a flight from LA to New York City. Honolulu is the 49th most populous city in the country according to the 2008 census (374,676, putting us ahead of Arlington and behind Colorado Springs). And guess what Kevin Madden? Our governor is a freaking Republican.
We live in houses, not grass shacks. (Single wall construction, but still undeniably house-like). We drive SUVs and Hummers even though almost no one takes them off-road, just like the rest of the good ol' USA. And even though we have fulgent sunlight year round, we're still way behind the curve on solar and other renewable energy sources, just like the rest of America. Our children is not learning because of NCLB. And we're wisely using our ever more limited cash to build a light rail system at a time when state workers are being furloughed and services cut back. Our prisons and landfills so full that we're shipping our felons and our garbage to the mainland (a lot of it to Texas). Does that sound "exotic" to you? Sounds pretty damn American to me. Yes we have palm trees and beaches. So does Florida. Yes we have surfing. So does California. Yes we have volcanoes. So does Washington.
Of course, Hawai‘i is different from the mainland in very special ways, which is why I live here, and a lot of other people too (too many people, if you ask just about any permanent resident). It's beautiful. And despite our myriad environmental catastrophes, many people here love the land and feel a deep connection to it, unlike many places on the mainland, where the landscape is merely a substrate on which to build housing developments and commercial parks. There's also an intact and vibrant indigenous culture woven into the social fabric, unlike on the mainland, where native people have been pushed off to reservation areas, out of sight, out of mind, out of the mainstream. We have an incredibly mixed and multicultural population where no one ethnic group dramatically outnumbers any other. The result is a unique blending of cultures who all not only tolerate one another but pretty much get along (and that is about as American an idea as I can imagine). My wife is "hapa," mixed: Hawaiian, Chinese, Portuguese, English, Irish, Dutch, Norwegian and American Indian. I'm Jewish, and our daughter is going to have the best of all these traditions. These multicultural traditions and this sense of caring for the land inform the best of Obama's values; they're part of why we elected him.
What's truly "exotic" to Hawai‘i is the resort industry, which is what most people who have never visited the state imagine: beautifully manicured golf courses, oily vacationers on chaise lounges sipping mai tais out of tiki-shaped highballs, grass skirts, cheesy lu‘au and lei-draped tourists mangling the hula. All that exists, but most of us residents don't hang out in these places (unless we work there). Obama is staying in Kailua, where I live, a residential beach town where there are no hotels!
So Kevin Madden, why don't you get out of your imaginal, enchanted, Lilo & Stitchified idea of Polynesia and come to Hawai‘i. Have an exotic Starbucks at one of our many exotic shopping malls and see for yourself how exotic Hawai‘i really is.