So far, the most interesting analysis of this election (via Glenn).
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And we’ve got Peggy Noonan complaining she doesn’t know what Palin stands for after 7 weeks. Guess she doesn’t listen to the “vulgar” crowd. This after she waxes about how Harry Truman rose out of nowhere America to do great things. What was up with Harry after 7 weeks, I wonder. She has the nerve to write a book on grace and say that Bush comes out like a cuckoo clock when making appeals to Americans about the financial crisis.
“My Friend Bill Ayers”, the article in the World Street Journal by Thomas Frank, (http://tinyurl.com/4ncn4j) is a perfect example of what Sam Schulman is writing about. Thomas Frank is livid that McCain dare attack Obama’s friendship with Bill Ayers, who according to Thomas Frank is “a man who poses no conceivable threat to the country, who has nothing to do with this year’s issues, and who cannot or will not defend himself.” You almost feel like you should stand up and cheer Mr. Frank’s courageous defense of this poor defenseless individual. After all Mr. Thomas tells us that Bill Ayers “is today a dedicated servant of those less fortunate than himself; because he is unfailingly generous to people who ask for his help; and because he is kind and affable and even humble.” From Mr. Frank’s description of him, you would think that Mr. Ayers was in line for sainthood. Just because Mr. Ayers was “a former member of the Weathermen, which planted bombs” surely shouldn’t be held against him. After all, didn’t we all do some “silly” things in our youth? The fact that he never was brought to justice for his crimes doesn’t bother Mr. Frank in the least. Mr. Ayers, as a member in good standing of the Leftist intelligentsia, is, by definition, absolved of all of his sins. In fact, according to Mr. Frank, Mr. Ayers “may once have been wanted by the FBI, but in the intervening years the man has become such a good citizen he ought to be an honorary Eagle Scout.” I had to read that sentence twice to realize that he was not being sarcastic. Of course, Mr. Frank has nothing but contempt for the rest of us for attempting to sully the “good name” of Mr. Ayers. After reading this article, there is no doubt that the Left has a profound hatred for the rest of us.
The dominant, well heeled left, who monopolistically impose their opinions and tastes to the exclusion of all opposing views are posers. Hypocrites who don’t practice what they preach. So what else is new?
Think of NYT heir, Punk Sulzberger, living in an exclusively white building in an exclusively white neighborhood, blindly and reflexively promoting any and every conceivable black cause; Think of uberliberal Ted Kennedy and his opposition to wind farms off Cape Cod; Think of film and publishing moguls endlessly spewing socialist propaganda while crudely and stubbornly opposing collective bargaining by writers and artists in their own industries; Think of billionaire currency manipulator, George Soros supporting and financing radical leftist causes and organizations, not least those underlying the Obama campaign. Fat greedy posers one and all.
The landed and wealthy classes have played this game since the end of feudalism. Hypocritically ingratiating themselves with the unthreatening lower class while openly opposing the upward struggling, competitive and threatening middle class.
Obama’s elitists supporters are as empty and false as their candidate.
Great article. You may also have seen this one by Melanie Phillips much in the same vein: http://www.spectator.co.uk/melaniephillips/2447021/the-culture-war-for-the-white-house.thtml
Interesting indeed, but is it true? Perhaps the election will turn on how many “undecideds” are really upper middle class (UMC) wannabes and how many really are undecided. I don’t know the truth of the matter, but my hunch is that there are more of the latter than of the former. My thankfully limited experience with the UMCs is that they tend to over-rate both their importance and their popularity. But what do I know? Like Joe the Plumber, I just work for living.
In my world, Bill Ayers is trash. Sarah Palin is class.
Btw. I’d have more respect for Noonan and those of her ilk if they’d ever had been held accountable for running anything larger than their mouths.
How odd. The title, “Why is Bill Ayers a respectable member of the upper middle class and Sarah Palin contemptible?”–is Schulman serious? Obviously the answer is Palin is running for office on divisive and insulting platform while asking Americans for their vote; Ayers isn’t. Conversely, she isn’t running for admission to upper middle class social status.
Neither is McCain’s “story” of “struggle” similar to Palin’s. Palin has worked her way from the middle class background of school teacher parents to become one of the most popular governors in the country (and while the size of the state may be relevant to what the word “governor” means in this case, it’s obviously true). McCain’s “struggle” was during his capture, his five and half years as a POW.
But as the product of exclusive schools, wealth, and political and social connection, and his subsequent marriage to a multimillionaire heiress, that makes his the story of “struggle” analogous to hers?
I know this will be hard, but let me try to help. On the one hand, Obama is running against McCain, not Bush. On the other, McCain is running against Obama, not Ayers. Impugning the patriotism of half the country is divisive. As the attack dog with lipstick, Palin’s job is to channel her party’s anger and try to tear down the opposition. That’s her job, and she’s doing it. It’s her job to channel the other party’s anger away from the top candidate, but he’s so awful, she can’t do it even if she paints a target on her back.
The terrible mistake of the McCain campaign is to cry crocodile tears when: (1) Obama seems to “play the race card,” because, honestly, Americans don’t care; (2) McCain plays the sexist card, because Americans don’t care; (3) McCain plays the socialist/terrorist card, because Americans don’t care; Schulman plays the class card, because (ready?) Americans don’t care.
The result is that his campaign looks like it has no focus (even if it does) because he’s NOT focused on the problems Americans want to focus on, complain about, worry about, have seen friends, family, and neighbors struggle with.
It’s really as simple as this: If my brother’s out of work, and/or my mother’s losing her home, and/or I can’t pay my kid’s college tuition, can it possibly matter to me whether Ayers is upper middle class? Really, I wouldn’t care if Palin had hands laid on her by a witch doctor anti-Semite minister from Kenya if she talked sense about securing the future. All she says is she’s going to shake up Washington. She’s going to end questionable ethical practices (ha-ha). She’s with McCain in ending earmarks in spending bills.
Shake up Washington? The closest McCain comes to focusing on any of the obvious problems is his (brand new) idea of saving my mother’s home from foreclosure by diverting half the “bailout” to it. That’s a start, but that, along with another round of tax cuts, seems to be an end. My five thousand dollar health insurance check is chickenfeed, and won’t affect my deductible, but will cost more for my premiums. That’s just small minded. Meanwhile, I’m told I’m not a real American?
Most of us don’t care if Palin is born again, Hindu, or Zoroastrian. Most of us don’t care if McCain has the scars to prove it. Would somebody on that side of the aisle help these people?
Noonan’s Irish washerwoman grandmother would have stuck a bar of soap in her self-precious granddaughter’s mouth and told her to try to be more like that hardworking and HAPPILY MARRIED Sarah — and then go to the pub with Palin. Wirrah, wirrah, wirrah…
Sam’s essay: !!!!
from the linked article
something else to consider. Obama is in many ways a manufactured candidates. Those who made him believe he will remain controlled. As opposed to Palin, she was not made by others but self made. And she is certainly not controllable but her Republican masters in Alaska. And with McCain it seems to me she has been a good team player with McCain but her disagreements are discernable to anyone who cares to look. Certainly Noonan didn’t care … or maybe she is blind … and somewhat fearful of a rising persona in the GOP that doesn’t give a damn about what Noonan or other talking heads have to say.
That Sam Schulman analysis is so GOOD. It describes my relatives who are entering professions (lawyers), and want to be ‘cool’, and definitely not prole in a trailer.
There is one other factor though: the attraction of blood and violence inherent in palling around with Ayers and Dorhn: they so physically attractive in an upper middle class manner; able to host just the right kind of party with multicultural appetizers and wines; and a history of murder and group sex in the back of a van. Those were the days, those Days of Rage!
also, Obama is the first national politician to come out of the non profit foundation world.
Abraham Lincoln: the farm; Washington, the army; Clintons, lawyers; Bush II, business; Reagan, entertainment and business; and now:
ta daaaa:
non profit scavenging of fortunes made years ago by successful entrepreneurs.
What Schulman ignores is that Americans by and large are not looking for people of a certain class, but people who have class.
“…just as Richard Stern persuades himself that the still-radical couple he dines with are merely Unitarians in a hurry.”
Heh.
Which ordinary Joe would the Inflated One prefer on that island, the plumber, or the Oracle from Delaware?
Wow. Great stuff! Thanks for linking to it.
Has there ever been as conservative of a candidate as Obama? I don’t mean politically or economically conservative. I mean institutionally.
All his youth, Obama was a object for others. Even his mother’s energy and will to have a multi-racial baby. Obama was but the political/sexual object. And after having him, she abandoned him for useless work in basket making economies in the third world, where most people would be ecstatic to be a L.A car wash worker.
So, Obama begins to make his way, fatherless, motherless, raised by white leftist grandparents that parade him around like a liberal status symbol. He enters elite, white leftist school, where he is the only black. A type of pet for the children, where whites could get their racial solidarity ticket punched. Obama the pet.
Like a cat to a crazy cat lady, he learns what it takes to get rewards and off he goes, repeating the same behavior to the same liberal stimuli for the next thirty years.
He drifts through soft, liberal schools until he colors, and fills in, with in the permissible, his warped sense of identity at Occidental, and the then usual politically conservative acts (in lefty world) of smoking marijuana and hanging with the afro-ed Black Liberationists. He doesn’t do well, but Columbia is desperate to have black males and affirmative action bubble makes them rare and hard to get, thus again the white liberal burden of Obama, and he no doubts is let known of the favor.
Obama gets, somehow, into Columbia in the fall of 1981, the same fall that the Black Liberation Army with the Weather Underground robs for the people a Brinks truck and murders two police officers and a working class Brinks guard( Power To The People ). So too at Columbia is superstar and famous Bill Ayers, fresh from a decade in hiding who is also starting his Masters, only a couple of years ahead of Obama, the Junior.
Did they meet? Maybe. Obama is very quiet about Columbia, not having released any of his records, at all.
Obama does or does not graduate; it’s not clear from Columbia and goes into the lefty equivalent of working in McDonalds, community organizing in Chicago. Is there a reason even Obama, the rare, nice, clean, lefty articulate Black object couldn’t get into a prestigious lefty law school? Odd that he would go back to Ayers home town, where the Ayers family is wealthy and influential and he takes a intern at a Ayers family law firm. Just a coincidence.
After time, somehow, Obama gets into Harvard Law, where he is again objectivized, and petted up to the head of the Law School. Oh, how happy were the many of the anointed left. They looked and had seen they had done well.
I had read that Obama was a bit disappointing, in not being ethnic enough, left enough, but what the heck, if you are a lefty you got to go with the stereotype that you got.
Obama goes back to Chicago, with his liberal promotion as a Harvard lawyer, slowly climbing the party steps, doing the proper things, behaving the way proper lefties want all their black people to behave. Not all Afro and raised fist like those blacks from the ghetto, but clean, quiet, non-threatening, studious. Something to be proud of and worth all the support. Proof that leftism is the road for blacks and that lefty whites were right. Obama, the classy black. Watch him speak.
How Obama must of enjoyed Wrights anti-white, anti-Semitic sermons. All his life, being an object of whites, their pet. How Obama and bitter clinger, Michael, must of enjoyed every slam against the insufferable patronization of the liberal whites and Jews, whom schooled them.
I feel that Obama is a very cynical man. Long practiced in maneuvering though white liberal delusions and the thin, weak, prison cell deep thinking of the Black grievance industry. And industry that makes late night community access channel preachers seem like MIT lectures in Physics by comparison. There is nobody that he has even had decades even of comradeship, that he hasn’t thrown under the bus. Stalin would be proud. Even Nixon kept friends for decades.
But, Obama isn’t a motherless, fatherless pet, living in the soft bigotry of elite leftists anymore.
Since his conception, people have been waiting for Obama, and Obama has done what lefties wanted. But like Michael’s lobster and Iranian caviar lunch, now it’s Obama’s turn. Now it is him who will have his wants and it is others that will conform.
He’s never had to be an executive, always operating in the predictable, elderly pattern of late stage leftistism. Even Jimmy Carter, at least, had a governorship under his belt and an education in the physical realities of nuclear submarines, and we know how detached ersatz sweater wearing Jimmy was, and still is. At least he had a family. Obama doesn’t have any of that, save the smoldering Michael, who reminds me of a female Nixon.
It will all be for the best. Honest. Trust Obama.
All the undecideds aspire to be withit upper-middle-classniks? I rather doubt that. Besides, the economy trumps every other consideration in a time of economic peril and the electorate have decided to blame it on Bush. That’s what makes winning an almost impossible task for McCain, not class considerations.
And Paul from Florida:
another support for your analysis: Obama married Michelle.
excellent!
This is fantastic writing and thinking. Thank you Roger, for showing it to me.