“Sarah speaking in thinly veiled ‘white code’ shouting things like ‘this is the real America where people love their country’.”
Well… it is indisputably the case that she was visiting areas where people express higher levels of patriotic feeling, serve in the military more, and care less about what European intellectuals think than the lotus-eating urbanites who voted for Obama. And her ticket was running against a man whose wife had made plain her feelings that America is “mean” and unworthy of pride. Whether it was politically wise to point this out is a different question.
Moreover, I don’t buy the “white code” allegations. Politicians of all stripes have been telling their base that they are the “real” America for two centuries. It’s manufactured racism, just like the allegation that speaking of “socialism” was code for “black”, or the allegation that raising the specter of lily-white Bill Ayers was bigoted because Ayers is a terrorist and most terrorists are Muslim. What a ridiculous, race-baiting stretch that was. I could as easily say that criticizing Gov. Palin this way is sexist, because she’s only performing the usual attack-dog role that many male VP candidates filled before her.
