April 15 at 11:55AM
Jon Stewart: Barack Obama Makes Elitism the New Liberalism
Jon takes a crack at the fallout of Barack's recent comments about Western Pennsylvanians:
Is elitism a problem for you? It's not like Americans have ever held a superiority complex.
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Actually, the Republicans brought the smut to the White House. There has always been sort of a mutual "keep your mouth shut about that kind of stuff" with a prez going on until the Repubs just couldn't find anything else to use for revenge on the Clintons. Lets just give credit where credit is due. Let's instead try to focus more on the peace, prosperity and JOBs that were available with the Clintons. Those jobs weren't there before or after the Clinton administration so it kinda looks like maybe they did have something to do with them.
I don't see anything elitist about what Obama said. Since when does an accurate perception of a segment of society constitute elitism? His quotation (at least in its out-of-context form from the nightly news) includes some generalizations about people, but what social commentary doesn't? The fact that Obama understands the psychological underpinnings of a lot of people's beliefs doesn't mean he can't sympathize with them or that he won't serve them well as a president.
Hillary is so lame. She'll say ANYTHING to get the nomination. She's the REAL elitist!
Obama claims that he will be the president to bring the people together, republican or democrat, black or white, rich or poor. Yet he makes divisive stereotypical comments about small town folk like myself. According to Barack I am a gun baring, immigrant hating, unenlightened person from rural U.S. I am surprised that I have the capacity to write this comment. For some reason Jon let him off the hook. I guess someone raised in South Jersey doesn't understand how offensive his comments are to people like myself. I admit, Hillary embellishes a bit (as if she's the only politician that does so), but she does not categorize people. She does not lump them together and make generalized statements. Maybe Barack got his inspiration to make these remarks from his surrogate uncle Reverend Wright. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree. Is this his true side surfacing?
Just to be clear, here's Obama's statement:
"You go into these small towns in Pennsylvania and, like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not.
"And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."
Scott, I don't read this as saying all people from rural areas are exactly like this. I read this as saying it's not surprising if they are. I don't see why you're offended by that. If it's not you, it's not you.
A previous poster said this and I think they said it better than I could–
PEOPLE DO NOT LIKE BEING TALKED DOWN TO, APOLOGIZED FOR, OR EXPLAINED. They can usually do a fair job of that themselves. Obama needs to eschew talk of “motivations” and concentrate on SOLUTIONS.
Thanks and well said.
Actually, people can very seldom do a fair job of explaining themselves (and this has nothing to do with where they live or what class they belong to). They can generally explain how they like to think of themselves, but few people are really clear-sighted when it comes to their own motivations.
And this country would be far better off if we chose candidates based on their solutions (and both Obama and Hillary have proposed those) and not on how well they manipulate people into thinking they care about them. Lots of people in rural Pennsylvania believe George Bush cares a great deal about them, even though his policies have made their lives harder.
B Gatten, with respect, I don't understand. So you are you saying that when I explain I am not a pistol-toting religious fanatic, that I am not being "clear-sighted" and that I don't know my own motivations? I can't imagine you mean that but yet again…poor choice of words that imply some sort of superiority.
I don't think anyone said you were a pistol-toting religious fanatic, cristina. That's a state of being, not a motivation. If you want to explain your personal state of being as someone who does not tote guns or practice religious fanaticism, well, then I'll believe you.
Motivations are harder to pin down, though. Being bitter because you're going through tough financial times could be a motivation for things like disliking immigrants or finding yourself more drawn to religion than you were previously. There are other motivations for those things as well, but I agree with Obama that the financial one is important in the case of a lot of people who do not consciously recognize it as being a factor.
I'm sure someone will tag me as an elitist for the comments I'm about to post. There is a certain truth to what Obama was saying. Each of the points that Obama identified are characteristics that could potentially define the boundaries of a group. The more characteristics that are common to the members of the group, the stronger the individual's identity with that group is. What's more, during times of distress, people withdraw into those groups as a form of self-protection. As evidence, I point to the number of flags you might have seen flying after 9/11 and how many you see today when, the threat being farther away now, the national identity is less salient. Any remaining skeptics might turn their attention to Sudan: when the water ran out in Darfur, the society divided based on socio-economic (farmers versus herders) and ethnic (Jingaweid versus Fur, Masaalit, and Zaghawa) lines. It's absolutely true that people cling to who they are when they are suffering. It's a survival instinct. It turns a mass of people into a bundle of in-groups and out-groups. In-groups are people like you, and out-groups are people not like you. And when times are tough, out-groups are competitors for the scarce resources of survival.
Maybe all that seems a little "out of touch." That's life, though. When survival is in question…as it might be for someone who is structurally unemployed, someone who has maybe been out of a job for (say) 25 years…identity is an integral part pursuing economic and physical security. That is neither patronizing nor elitist, that's just fact.