In Defense of Elitism, Part 2

[cambro]

Apparently a lot of people want somebody like them in the White House. We saw it with Bush and we're seeing it even more so with Palin. I'm not talking about questions of experience or judgment. If you really think Palin's qualified enough, fine; it's difficult to argue that she's less experienced than Obama. If you agree with her stances on the

Comments

[derekasaurus]

I don't get it either. In the most important situations we dismiss superficial differences - most people don't care if their pilot watches the same TV shows or if their surgeon also loves to knit - but the leader of our civilization better love football and Jesus as much as I do. It just makes no sense

[cambro]

Just the kind of response I'd expect from a big-city elitist like yourself. (I still can't believe they're getting away with that double standard. If it's bad to mock small-town voters and "regular folk," why the heck is it OK to smear city dwellers and intellectuals?)

Excellent analysis. I can't add much to it. I think more people are waking up to the fact that we now face serious problems which cannot be solved with slogans, but there are still far too many folks who are willing to be distracted by contrived culture war BS. Still, McCain-Palin's pandering has gotten so clumsy and transparent that it may backfire on them. I can't believe anyone's really fooled by the lipstick-on-a-pig manufactured controversy, and perhaps this blatant disingenuousness will make voters wonder which other truths M-P are eliding.

[derekasaurus]

Thanks. I really want to give people the benefit of the doubt, to assume enough of them will see past the slogans and pandering, but I have my doubts. I made the mistake of vistiting ireport.com earlier today, which CNN.com sometimes links to for reporting by People Like Us. Type "Obama" or "McCain" into the search box and you'll quickly be rewarded by screens of nonsense barely more cogent that YouTube comments. You can scroll for miles without coming across a report (I use the word loosely) that touches a real issue. Most are neck deep in the frivolous, fabricated nonsense you've been writing about. I'd like to think these folks are a small, self-selected population, but the results of the last two general elections lead me to think otherwise. But ever the optimist, my fingers are still crossed that it's not too late to turn this mess around.

P.S. Of course I meant to say gas instead of oil when I made that $10/gallon comment. While it's inevitable that oil will cost that much eventually, hopefully we're still a few years from $