A week or two ago I caught wind of a quote that was making the rounds, a completely unfounded, naïve dismissal of middle america: “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or antitrade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
Those of you who have been following the war over the Democratic nomination don’t need to be informed that this quote came from Barack Obama.
Mr. Obama has of course since admitted that he “chose [words] badly.” And lord knows I’ve been known to shoot my mouth off without thinking, so I sympathize with the dude if it’s as simple as that.
I’ve been to middle America. And I’ve seen some insane shit there. Kids with guns. Pregnant 16 year olds with a beer in one hand and a cigarette in the other. Religious zealots screaming savage profanities at homosexuals. All the hippies and liberals have heard plenty of stories about how fucked up the rednecks are. But I’ve been there, and while lord knows I’ve never been known for tact, I would never make such a broad generalization. Even if I was rapping with a bunch of San Francisco libs as Mr. Obama was.
You know what’s worse than not understanding the people you’re employed to serve? Thinking you understand them and being totally dead fucking wrong.
Mr. Obama is a great speaker, and has earned many loyal followers by saying a lot of things that many people were wishing all along a politician would someday “have the balls” to say. Stupid young metropolitan liberals everywhere share Obama’s view that the “red states” are full of nothing but bible-hugging, gun-toting, miserable paranoid people. But thankfully these people aren’t running the country, because they do not know or understand the people trying to make a living in it.
Maybe Obama does. And he just misspoke. Or maybe he was just trying to earn the money (I mean support) of the nutballs that showed up to the fund-raising rally in San Francisco. Maybe he just got carried away. I’m sure it’s tempting to know that if you stand up there and just go “YO FUCK BUSH,” a million bloodshot eyes will open wide, half a million cottonmouths will erupt screams of solidarity, and those hippies would fucking make it rain.
I mean, don’t get me wrong, fuck Bush. But pandering is pandering.
And so that’s what it comes down to. Is he pandering? Or is he ignorant?
As Arthur C. Brooks pointed out in the Wall Street Journal on Saturday in an op-ed entitled “Trigger Happy,” gun owners “have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners. Americans with guns are neither a small nor downtrodden group.
Nor are they “bitter.” In 2006, 36% of gun owners said they were “very happy,” while 9% were “not too happy.” Meanwhile, only 30% of people without guns were very happy, and 16% were not too happy.
In 1996, gun owners spent about 15% less of their time than nonowners feeling “outraged at something somebody had done.” It’s easy enough in certain precincts to caricature armed Americans as an angry and miserable fringe group. But it just isn’t true.”
Let’s hope he’s just pandering to the hippies.
About Skwerl
Kevin "Skwerl" Cogill was taught his first computer programming language by his Mother's marijuana dealer at age ten. His first job involved hustling TicketMaster lines on behalf of a New Jersey concert ticket broker at age fourteen, followed by a job in graphic design shortly after graduating high school and trade school simultaneously in 1998. He built his first website in 1996 or so, and continues to do things the way they should be done, rather than the way everyone else does. He's a bit of an asshole, but he's fiercely loyal to his friends, and to fellow fans of good music.Born and raised in Philadelphia, Skwerl now resides in Los Angeles.
April 22nd, 2008 at 12:14 PM
That’s a lot of words and surprising ignorance, my boy. Having been born and raised in exactly the kinds of places Obama was talking about, I can say with authority that his comments, no matter how politically damaging they could have been, were dead-on. Guns and religion are cornerstone elements to small town people with small town mentalities who, by and large, have never bothered themselves with any real study of politics or current affairs, because it has no tangible, visible impact on their daily lives. They are the reason Toby Keith sells records, the reason Pat Robertson is on my TV every day of the week, the reason we still see confederate flags flying. But they’re also the reason family still exists in America, and the divorce rate isn’t double what it is now. They hold the torch of tradition and are the heart of America’s work force. They’re not inferior people, they just live in a world very different from that of anyone in a coastal or major metropolitan area.
Needless to say, I’m having trouble grasping your reasoning behind the statement that he’s “totally dead fucking wrong” in what he said. You’re right, stupid young metropolitan liberals might share his view, and they cross the thick red line between elitist ignorance and calling it what it is based on exposure and experience. But many others outside that demographic agree with his comments as well, myself included. Furthermore, I don’t remember him calling them miserable or paranoid, but that’s besides the point.
Completely unfounded?! Come on, man. I know you’re behind McCain so far and everything, but let’s get a fucking grip here. The “broad generalization” Obama made was insensitive and a stupid thing for someone trying to get into the Oval Office to say, but beyond that, having witnessed exactly what he meant throughout the first sixteen years of my life, I can honestly say I agree with his words completely. Growing up among a sea of cowboy hats where there are spitoons in high school hallways and the word nigger is used as commonly as any other can have that effect, I guess. These people, with lives much more connected to the ways of the past than ours, are much more prone to superstition (religion), and susceptible to the tricks, smoke and mirrors that aware, involved and more critical eyes and minds have learned to sniff out. The catch is that their numbers are massive, as is the impact of their collective decisions (see: the past two elections).
So, Arthur C. Brooks’ piece got you quoting strange gun owner statistics relating to happiness and outrage, with accusations of the caricaturization of middle America. But what does that have to do with Obama’s comments? They weren’t directed at gun owners - guns were referenced as one of the things these people cling to. Your statistics are pointless distractions.
And pandering? What is it you think the entire election process consists of? Pandering to the lesser of evils. There is no other way to rise to power in modern American politics. Obama himself described his comments as a mangled mess of what he meant, but it seems to me that he’s just backpedaling now, trying not to lose votes today. He meant what he said, but he realized that his comments were a bit too revealing in terms of the fact that he, like the other candidates, are about as far from Joe Average as a person can get. As far as I’m concerned, it was one of the truer moments of the campaign so far, and I agree with every damned word he said.
Pandering to hippies. As opposed to what, pandering to the engineers of corprorate imperialism? Maybe there’s something to be said for trying to relate to a group of people concerned with finding ways to fuck our world up a little less, or slow down the process at least. It might be a good feeling to strap on your stilts and sneer down at people trying to slow the destruction of rainforests by recycling paper, or who protest the cruel animal treatments in the food industry by not eating any meat or dairy products, but what’s your point? These people happily accept the “hippie” label, despite the fact that only a tiny percentage of those people have cottonmouth and bloodshot eyes, waiting for the chance to scream “Fuck Bush!” like a pack of giddy 8th graders on a trip to D.C. It gets a bit scary when everyone from tree huggers to pot smokers to vegans is lumped together and labeled with a sneer.
But hey, if that’s all it takes to make it rain…
April 22nd, 2008 at 1:32 PM
nice retort. and so one asshole’s opinion becomes a real discussion.
at the end of the day, obama’s elitism scares me. at least enough to write this piece. what i loved about bill clinton was that there wasn’t a motherfucker in the country he couldn’t relate to. i don’t want a president who will treat middle america the way the current administration treats the “hippies,” compartmentalizing them and dismissing them. i want a president willing to understand the plights and gripes of these people. of everyone. and you know… if i have to choose between a president who comes from and caters to middle america’s working class, and a president who is focused on the nation’s image, foreign relations, and metropolitan issues, i’ll take the former. it may not help me much directly, but i’m not the one hurting right now. i’m gainfully employed in los angeles, and i don’t give a fuck about guns or abortions right now ’cause i don’t need either. but those people he’s dismissing as bitter and ignorant are hurting. they’re struggling to make ends meet while their sons and daughters are coming home in boxes. a little sympathy is in order.
behind mccain? i guess. i’m not gung ho about anyone this year. i mean i’ve always liked mccain and he’s my favorite of the three characters, but i need to dig deeper before i can make a decision. political campaigning has become no different than advertising in this age. it’s hard for me to trust anything anyone is saying right now, and hard for me to buy a product that i can’t see. when the final candidates are nailed down, i’ll do thorough research into their backgrounds, pick a horse, and cross my fingers. like i always do.
i just have a real hard time seeing obama as president of the most powerful nation on the planet. he just doesn’t seem to really understand the world yet. not the world in america, nor the world outside.
for some reason, i’m thinking of the moment in bowling for columbine where michael moore asks marilyn manson what he would have said to harris and klebold. and showing an impressive depth of character and maturity, he replied, “i wouldn’t say a single word to them, i would listen to what they have to say and that’s what no one did.”
now if that came out of the mouth of a presidential candidate, that’d be someone i could fucking get behind. i wouldn’t want to see something like columbine dismissed as a collateral product of simple ignorance and bitterness. that wouldn’t tell me that the speaker is really interested in solving any real problems.
we can dismiss it. we can shrug it off and go about our business. maybe we wouldn’t even be wrong to be so flippant. but we’re not asking for the responsibility to solve these problems like obama is.
April 22nd, 2008 at 2:43 PM
I know this is halfway off topic:
When I first heard the line from the song in the movie “Across The Universe”, that this article is named after, I swore he was saying “happiness is like warm cum”.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:20 PM
I’ll keep it short.
McCain approves of the path Bush has us on, and plans to keep us on it. Therefore, I pray he gets assassinated before election day even comes, to prevent the senseless deaths of countless young people in a war that never should have happened in the first place.
As for “gun owners have the same level of formal education as nongun owners, on average. Furthermore, they earn 32% more per year than nonowners. Americans with guns are neither a small nor downtrodden group.” — Bullshit. “Americans with guns” are NOT who were polled about the level of their happiness. I’m willing to bet there are more guns in North Philly than in all of Wyoming, and it doesn’t take long to figure out that those cats are not exactly the happiest of campers, not the most educated, and certainly not the wealthiest. Or does the poll only count gun owners who can actually afford to BUY guns, rather than steal or inherit them?
Anyway, Obama’s “bitter” comment sounded pretty dead on to me, and I only hope that the backlash he feels on occasion doesn’t go too far in changing the open way in which he currently speaks the (sometimes harsh) truth. He is the only candidate with any amount of genuine idealism, and I think that is something sorely lacking from American politicians in general.
April 22nd, 2008 at 7:59 PM
good points, but obama isn’t talking about brothers in north philly. he’s talking about conservative blue collar workers in middle america. brooks’ statistics may not offer a complete picture of all owners of guns, legal or otherwise, in america, but they’re directly relevant to the folks obama was generalizing.
of course, in north philly, obama has a completely different problem. he refuses to pay campaigners to spread the word on the street, while they see ad campaigns on television that put tens of thousands of dollars (or more) into the pockets of already rich network executives. but that’s another story.
yes, he is genuinely idealistic, and i admire that in him. at the end of the day i have mixed feelings about the philly ’street money’ situation because it’s pitting his noble ideals against some shady, but thus far considered necessary, reality and tradition.
i’m not down with everything mccain, or any candidate for that matter, is saying. i’m not sure how i feel about iraq. pulling everything out immediately seems just as crazy as trying to come up with a way to find some stability. and i don’t know how much i can trust promises the candidates have to make to keep the support of their party.
either way, i respect all opinions, and appreciate the discussion.
April 23rd, 2008 at 8:52 AM
“brooks’ statistics may not offer a complete picture of all owners of guns, legal or otherwise, in america, but they’re directly relevant to the folks obama was generalizing.”
Actually no, they’re not. What is this, Fox news? I thought we covered this already. Brooks’ statistics, regardless of how off-kilter they seem, have nothing to do with this discussion. They’re skewed and misleading, not to mention twelve fucking years old. Come on, man, there’s gotta be a better reference than some nutjob trying to convince people that gun owners are happier and earn more money than non-owners - it’s an abstract set of stats that makes no sense. It’s like saying people who masturbate at least once a day are better drivers than non-strokers. It makes no fucking sense and doesn’t relate one bit to the topic at hand.
Besides, even if there was a shred of an applicable point to be made by referencing Brooks, his information was gathered more than six years before 9/11. When you’re using data from a time before this country was thrown into a patriotic pissing contest and assaulted into world paranoia with color coded terror alerts and ak-47s in airports, sorry bud, but all bets are off.
I’ll keep my mouth shut on McCain until we’re a little closer to election time and he resurfaces and starts on the offensive. Right now, he’s doing the best thing he possibly can do: he’s a ghost. You don’t see him anywhere. He’s letting the Dems tear their own party apart while he embarks on “fact finding missions” before the big haul this summer. If the Democratic party doesn’t get their shit together and stop infighting soon, it’s going to be a bloodbath come November. But suffice to say, that fucker would be a nightmare in the White House no matter what the deal is.
May 3rd, 2008 at 2:41 AM
touche. good points.
i still contend that obama is an elitist douchebag, but you’re right, those numbers aren’t as relevant or credible as i presented them.
also, ryan, if you think that my point of reference for ‘happiness is a warm gun’ was the film across the universe made last year, i’m old and there’s an album you need to steal right now.
May 6th, 2008 at 4:37 PM
Swerl,
I know I totally made it look like I thought it was originally from that movie, but I was just trying to point out that the first time I heard that song was in the movie. Hence, I am not a huge Beatle-maniac.