Carl Rove is working hard to get us to see Barack Obama as an elitist. My friend Chris wrote a funny post about Rove’s now-well-known “the-guy-at-the-country-club” story. Rove’s little vignette made me laugh for the obvious reason…country club + black = ? It seemed ridiculous in the extreme. But it’s also a little troubling. Rove is the “architect” who used another candidate’s intelligence against him, which resulted in our more “plain-spoken” president stealing getting a second term in office.
John Kerry never got past the flip-flop label; it was his undoing. Now any person of real intelligence knows that a smart man, when presented with new information, may change his views. Kerry tried to articulate this point, and he also used the term Orwellian. Middle American doesn’t know Orwell; they know foam footwear…$2.99 at WalMart.
So I’m getting more and more worried about this elitist label, which originated with Hillary Clinton. That’s why it’s taking root so well. If everyone’s saying he’s an elitist, even his own people, maybe he’s an elitist, right? Now, for sure, Hillary and Barack each took a fair amount of shots at the other over recent months. My point is that sticking with the elitist label is a clever move for Rove. Clever and easy.
I was called an elitist this week, and not for the first time, and it’s gotten me wondering what characteristics make us elitists? Is it because we stand up straight? Keep our hair trimmed? Press our clothes? Is it that we speak in exact language instead of the borderline inarticulate colloquialisms that our nation has come to expect from its leader? Is it phrases like “inarticulate colloquialisms?” When did being smart become a negative character trait? Shouldn’t we want our president to be really smart? Smarter than us?
The person who called me an elitist also continued to refer to his own experience in the “real world.” Of course, I quickly set him straight and explained that my “real world” included a solidly working-class upbringing. My father dropped out of high school to become a mechanic, and my mother manages a dry cleaners. I worked at one or two real world jobs while paying for two degrees without any help from mom and dad.
I’ve always particularly resented this false book smart vs. street smart paradox. Some people are both; some people are neither. But the implication is always that the street smart people are better prepared for the real world, and the book smart people have heads full of impractical ideas and thoughts.
I for one want a president who can craft an interesting sentence using complex vocabulary and perhaps even some compelling imagery. Someone who can enunciate and allude. Someone who’s literate enough to have read Orwell (and not just 1984 and not just the movie). These aren’t my expectations of all people. I’m okay with the Middle America pop-culture of Nascar and American Idol, but I would like the leader of the free world to be more educated and wordly.
Barack Obama is these things, but I’m worried that he won’t shake the elistist label or that he’ll crumble under its weight. I think he should own his elitism…stand up straight and wear it and make everyone think, I want to see what this guy is all about.
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June 27, 2008 at 4:45 am
Paul
i’ve had the dubious pleasure of visiting several Country Clubs around America. One of the more notable features of every club I have been to is that the Martinis are not usually being drunk by African Americans leaning against the wall, but rather delivered to members (overwhelmingly white) by African Americans. Any wall-leaning smartasses I experienced looked more like Rove (rotund, arrogant, certain of the rightness of their views); than our skinny, calm, curious, President to be.
Karl Rove should know this as one who has hung around the very rich like a nerdy Kato Kaelin. Again, Rove tries for a cheap character assassination. Why, Karl, don’t you use that fine brain of yours to discuss Obama’s policies and retire the cheap attacks.
June 27, 2008 at 7:53 am
lonetruth
Back in equatorial Africa, my parents saved and scrounged to send all their kids to the best schools that they could afford. They would often do without, so that their kids (especially me, the last-born) could have a good education. I did them proud (I think), by being a grade-A student and exceling in my studies, especially English. Even at age 12, I was reading and writing at college-level. I regularly had coherent and vocabulary-blasting discussions with college-level adults.
Fast forward many years, I showed up in America, ready to take on the world. Only to be ridiculed, put down, and nearly beaten up… for being/talking/acting “intelligent”. Once, I was called “and uppity college nigger”.
I think that just about sums up America’s attitude towards intelligent black people. Especially “jungle niggers” AKA Africans. In their collective subconscious minds, an intelligent, articulate black/African person simply “does not compute”.
Rove is just saying what most Americans (prejudiced or not) are thinking. This goes deeper than racism… this is the stuff of pure subconscious. And it needs to be addressed at some point, but probably not anytime soon, because America is not ready to look in the mirror.
June 27, 2008 at 10:21 am
nguyen
good though,you are a smart men
June 27, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Mary Corder
I couldn’t agree more. I also can’t believe that CNN has had the “Rove/Obama is an elitist” story on the front page of its Web site all week. Why is that news? Does Rove work for CNN, too?
I, too, want my president to be smarter than me. I also come from a working class background and worked really hard for my college degree and have had tons of jobs at low wages. If it wasn’t for dirty tricks and totally playing people with BS, W wouldn’t have made it to the White House twice. Yeah, anyone who is anti-intellectual in this country doesn’t seem to understand that people like W do nothing but isolate us from most of the rest of the world. He’s a doofus who I don’t think anyone takes seriously any more, if they ever did. And Turd Blossom, well, I am still hoping he’s taken down for all the illegal crap he’s engineered. Great post, great blog.
June 27, 2008 at 2:38 pm
crseum
I can’t get past the fact that the “elitist” comment directed at you came from someone who lives in such a world of privilege. About the Karl Rove thing, Chris’s post was hilarious indeed! I think if Rove keeps running his mouth, he could single handedly convince people to vote for Barak!
June 28, 2008 at 3:21 pm
Nina
Interesting dialogue going on here, although I know I’m late to the game in my reply! I remember when the “elitist” label originated during the heat of the primaries, when there wasn’t really a clear winner yet. Clinton tagged him with that around the time of the PA primary, because Obama told a private California crowd that he wasn’t surprised the bitter working class would cling to guns and religion.
Now, full disclosure: I supported Clinton, though I think Obama will make a great president. However, I remember bristling when my San Francisco-based boss brought that comment up in a joking way, without knowing that I grew up in said working class. My boss was private-schooled in Manhattan and attended an Ivy League college, so his perspective is vastly different than mine. And his nudge felt almost like, hey, Obama’s right about all these poor morons.
Well, maybe in some cases, yes, there are people who cling to religion and guns to assuage their bitterness. But the thing that bothers me about his comment is the sweeping generalization — putting labels on a wide category of people — especially when addressing a group of wealthy donors in liberal San Francisco about a group of working-class people in PA, people whose paths will probably never really cross. It didn’t seem to fit with his unification theme.
Anyway, labeling people is always a dangerous thing, whether you’re sticking that label on a person or a whole group of people who share a gender, race, religion, income class, etc. I know it’s human nature, but we need to recognize how relative it all is. There are always people who have less of something than we do, and there will always be others who have more. I was reminded of this walking to work yesterday morning, when I walked past a homeless couple sleeping on the sidewalk, and a half a block away, I watched an Aston Martin pull out of the parking garage. The inequity of the haves and have-nots are on blatant display every day here, and words like “elitist” are always shape-shifting for me.
I do want my president to be an intellectual superior, and I think that includes an incisive awareness of the vast diversity of people in every region and economic class.
OK, off my soap box and back to wedding planning. Thanks for the thought-provoking post!
June 28, 2008 at 7:22 pm
Tyler S Clark
It’s the same trick each year: attempt character assassination to avoid addressing the real policy issues underlying the failures at the root of conservative ideologies that are crippling our country’s foreign and domestic agendas. The encouraging thing is it appears not to be working this year.
June 28, 2008 at 9:06 pm
lucy
Great comments, everyone, and welcome new friends.
Crse: I’m actually not all that offended by being called an elitist, but the source of that comment is interesting.
Tyler: I’m hoping that people take anything from Carl Rove a little less seriously this time around.
Nina, Your comment got me thinking, so I looked it up on http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/gunning_for_obama.html
Here’s What Obama actually said:
(April 6): “You go into some of 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 to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.”
I supported Obama in the primaries, but just barely. I liked Clinton a lot, too. I just wish they’d have treated each other a little better. The over-reaching in reference to “the working class” in his comment was in my view, accidental and unfortunate. As someone who lives in one of these towns, I’m not offended; I’m surrounded on all the time by people who meet that description. I understand the spirit and context of the comment. However, I won’t even slightly suggest that Obama wasn’t also unfair and inaccurate in his campaign’s depictions of Clinton. He was…factcheck.org has plenty of corrections leveled at all sides.
And, sadly, I don’t think either Clinton or Obama has an “incisive awareness of the vast diversity of people in every region and economic class,” but I’d have supported either of them in the end. I just want a damned democratic in the White House!
June 30, 2008 at 11:09 pm
Wren
Here, here, Lucy. I wanted to support Hillary for president, but my mind kept going back to her support for the war against Iraq and her refusal to call that support the mistake it actually was. That alone put her out of the running for me, though I’d have loved to see a woman finally be elected president.
However, I also like Obama very much. He speaks the truth, whether it’s about the attitude in small, impoverished towns (I live in one of those too, but in California rather than PA) or about the need for the people of this country to come together to work for positive change. That he’s a black man is a great triumph over the bigotry many of us grew up with and worked to change once we were old enough to understand how unfair it was.
Rove’s “elitist” meme is a false-face one, created only to cause acrimony and division, of course. The only elitists I know are the ones who’re still out there living in their underfurnished McMansions and driving their silly Hummers while paying for it all with credit cards. It won’t be long before those “elitists” are right down here with the rest of us “elitists” who scrape the cash together to buy rice and fresh veggies each week, and who drive 20-year-old cars. At least our old cars get great gas mileage…
I’m ranting now. Thanks for an excellent, thought-provoking post.