I go away for one day so I can attend a indie show here in Detroit (International Pop Overthrow-Detroit stop), and everyone's losing their damn minds over Barack Obama's usage of the term "bitter" to describe people in small towns that have lost jobs, and turn to the things they know to get by.
Hillary Clinton and John McCain's responses were quite typical and completely unsurprising. I'm offended by the criticism, though, and here's why. I'm going to tell my story, and it's going to sound a lot like other people's stories, too, I'm sure.
Follow the jump...
Since the Bush administration took office, I watched gas prices soar and jobs flee the nation. I was declared ineligible under the new Pell Grant regulations on a $13,000/year earnings, and with my mom raising my two brothers on Social Security income, forcing me to take out tens of thousands of dollars in student loans to finish school. I was in deep debt and needing a good job out of college to start digging out of my hole.
Three years ago, I graduated the University of Michigan and moved to Los Angeles to pursue a career, given the horrible state of Michigan's economy. I worked as an associate and later accepted a promotion to department manager with a major retailer, and despite the promotion, which did give me good insurance, I was barely making $11 an hour as a manager with a college degree.
I finally got out, thanks to a great job with California State University, that I then lost two months in. I spent some time on unemployment, got another job through a temp agency, which while paying decently, wasn't secure. The placed I temped for offered me a permanent position and then retracted it without any reasoning given. I found myself unemployed again, from September until February, as I moved back home to Michigan so my family could help me.
I'm now making minimum wage, no health insurance, and struggling by on a shoestring budget that doesn't even allow me to clear my debts, but just cover current expenses. Thanks to taxing on my unemployment, I found out that I'm getting my lowest tax refund ever, which will be enough to pay off ONE debt. I'm making less than half of what I was a year ago.
Bitter much? You bet.
Despite that, I support Barack Obama. I believe in him, and have from day one. I admire the fact that he speaks the truth in a game where telling that truth often costs someone, and I get exactly what he meant in his original statements. He's not an elitist. He got down in the dirt and worked with people in the inner city, and taught law school at night. He overcame the obstacles in his life, growing up at a time where racism was still obvious in many ways, getting through drugs and apathy towards school to make himself better.
Hillary Clinton grew up in a solid middle-class family. John McCain was the son of an admiral in the United States Navy. They have their own personal stories to tell as well, but they didn't have to overcome the barriers that were in Obama's way as a child. Their struggles came later, and while I applaud them for getting through those times, their attitudes as the anointed ones in this campaign are far more elitist than anything Barack Obama said.
So, yes, I'm bitter about what's happened to me. I am a graduate of one of the most prestigious universities in the nation, with the ability to work in any number of industries, doing any number of things, and I'm working in retail for minimum wage because the job market sucks. It freaking blows. Barack Obama said the damn truth, and I'm tired of a political world that takes the truth, spindles and mutilates it until it becomes something it clearly is not, and then tries to tear apart those who speak the truth. God forbid someone say something, anything negative about America and its state these days, or its governmental actions.
I'm tired of spin, I'm tired of stupidity, I'm tired of real elitists in the Republican Party calling a liberal an elitist when those hypocritical jackasses haven't spent one day in the inner city, or with working poor. And Hillary Clinton, who is grasping at straws to get the nomination she's already lost on numbers alone, shouldn't be enabling this stupidity, because she should know better with all her years in Arkansas and its vast amount of poor people.
Despite being bitter, I still hope and believe we can do better, and Barack Obama is the only person who talks about doing better, about being better, and about treating the world as it is, instead of what we wish it to be. He's not an elitist, he's a realist, and people need to wake up and stop trashing those who speak the truth about the way it is.