Maureen Dowd once again blesses us with her homespun wisdom. This time she's set her sights on Obama, and utilizes every bit of her amazing intellect to examine the most important issues of this election:
[Obama's] mother got her Ph.D. in anthropology, studying the culture of Indonesia. And as Obama has courted white, blue-collar voters in "Deer Hunter" and "Rocky" country, he has often appeared to be observing the odd habits of the colorful locals, resisting as the natives try to fatten him up like a foie gras goose, sampling Pennsylvania beer in a sports bar with his tie tight, awkwardly accepting bowling shoes as a gift from Bob Casey, examining the cheese and salami at the Italian Market here as intriguing ethnic artifacts...
This is stupid on a number of levels. Not surprising given that multi-level stupidity is Dowd's primary form of communication.
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She's trying to pass off the argument that Obama doesn't know how to drink beer (apparently it has something to do with his tie), and that he's never seen salami or cheese before coming to Pennsylvania. Really? Obama views salami and cheese as "ethnic artifacts"? Next she'll be telling us how Obama marveled at the mashing together of creamed peanuts and grape preserves between two slices of soft, white bread.
It's not Obama's attitude that's condescending. It's Maureen Dowd and those of her ilk who somehow believe that people in small town America are so completely different from the rest of the country that they must be viewed as cultural oddities by anyone not raised in their community. We are not. I can assure you that neither Obama, nor Clinton, nor Kerry, nor Gore, nor any other Democratic candidate has suffered a culture shock by journeying to Pennsylvania or Ohio. Blowhards like Dowd write about these places as if the candidates have journeyed to some remote village hidden deep in the Congo. It's preposterous.
And despite the proclamations of the Maureen Dowds of the world, we small town types are not some backwoods rednecks more concerned with how a candidate drinks beer than we are with national issues. That Maureen Dowd thinks either of things to be even remotely plausible simply shows how "out of touch" she is with the small town America where she was raised. I think it's all the red hair dye eating away at her brain. She continues:
He hasn’t pulled a John Kerry and asked for a Philly cheese steak with Swiss yet, but he has maintained a regal "What do the simple folk do to help them escape when they’re blue?" bearing, unable to even feign Main Street cred. But Hillary did when she belted down a shot of Crown Royal whiskey with gusto at Bronko’s in Crown Point, Ind.
Does Dowd really think anyone gave a shit what kind of cheese Kerry put on his Philly cheese steak? So what if cheese-whiz is the local custom? Are Pennsylvanians some sort of ignorant, insular bunch who demand that a politician pander to their every taste right down to the cheese on his lunch meat? I don't live in Pennsylvania, but I'm willing to bet Dowd is severely underestimating her native state. Moreover, whether or not you're a Clinton supporter, I believe we can all agree that Hillary downing a shot at a local Philly bar in the aftermath of the Obama comments was the height of pandering. That Dowd thinks she earned "street cred" by doing this... well, it just defies belief. Is Dowd really that stupid? Of course she is:
What turns off voters is the detached egghead quality that they tend to equate with a wimpiness, wordiness and a lack of action — the same quality that got the professorial and superior Adlai Stevenson mocked by critics as Adelaide. The new attack line for Obama rivals is that he’s gone from J.F.K. to Dukakis.
What Dowd describes as a "detached egghead quality," most of us would describe as knowledgeable and reasoning. Call me crazy, but after eight years off Mr. Anti-Intellectual-Firebrand, I think America might have greater concerns than Obama being too smart. In fact, its less the intelligence than it is the media's consistent portrayals of intelligent, academic candidates as "eggheads" and "wimps." There's actually no connection between these qualities, but the media substitutes the second two for the first and then claims that America doesn't want smart presidents. No, America doesn't want wimpy presidents. It's the media's doing that the public equates smart with wimpy. And what a wonder we do so horribly in math and science against the rest of the world. I mean, what do we want to be, a nation of brainy queers or something?
Consider this just the opening salvo in Dowd's attempt to "wussify" Obama.
Cross-posted from The Left Anchor