Now I remember why I get the HuffPo digest email every day.

So I can get these gems... like this bit of reportage from Mayhill Fowler. She gives Kat and Ry a run for their money on being... verbose. Some of which, I suspect, is her wanting to show us how educated and observant she is. Heh. Not like I don't suffer from that, now and again.

Anyway - Ms. Fowler is reflecting on following the Obama campaign through Pennsylvania, and more specifically, Senator Obama's fundraiser speech to rich Californians where he lays out what's wrong with Pennsylvania.

These qualities of hospitality, patriotism and endurance are exactly what Californians need to hear about Pennsylvanians. And when he spoke to a group of his wealthier Golden State backers at a San Francisco fund-raiser last Sunday, Barack Obama took a shot at explaining the yawning cultural gap that separates a Turkeyfoot from a Marin County. "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," Obama said. "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."

Emphasis mine.

Ms. Fowler continues:

Obama made a problematic judgment call in trying to explain working class culture to a much wealthier audience. He described blue collar Pennsylvanians with a series of what in the eyes of creamy Californians might be considered pure negatives: guns, clinging to religion, antipathy, xenophobia.

I'm not sure this is what at least this lot of Californians needed to hear about Pennsylvanians. Such phrases can reinforce negative stereotypes among Californians, who are a people in a state already surfeited with a smug sense of superiority and, as an ironic consequence, a parochialism and insularity at odds with the innovation, prosperity and openness for which California is rightly known. (Of course, this is a generalization, and as such does not fit everyone; but as a state characteristic I stand by it.) Californians might be better served by hearing that Pennsylvanians have a strong sense of their place in American history, for here California is wanting. California needs to hear that other Americans have gone through hard times and survived, humor intact. Since Barack Obama sees himself as the candidate best able to unify the country, these are the messages he needs to carry and his frank words about Pennsylvania may not have translated very clearly.

Heh. Or perhaps they translated *very* clearly, Ms. Fowler. Those of us who cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment do so only because government has failed us.

And if we elect the Enlightened Senator from Illinois to lead us from the morass of armed superstitious bigoted populist thought in which we wallow, all would be sweetness and light, and we would cast off the shackles of faith and shift ourselves to Bill Maher's worldview, becoming *smart* in the process, beat our guns into iPods, take illegal/legal immigrant families into our homes and provide for them...etc. Heh. And we'd send what was left of our income to the government to send to other poor people the world over. Or something like that.

Heh. Could it be, possibly, that perhaps we cling to those things because we had them all our lives, and our parents had them, and we're stubbornly cling to them because people like "creamy Californians" (a frankly somewhat creepy description) superciliously and paternalistically, and patronizingly pat us on the head and tell us we're stupid and bigoted, and should just do what we're told - when... as in the litany of governmental failure laid out by the Senator... government is as often the problem as it is the solution? That they've worked better for us than government has... And that rich people, who will be comfortable pretty much regardless of what happens, rarely suffering the consequences of their policy failures, just have a credibility problem with the people who *will* suffer? And you, Senator, thus far, are just another glib, gifted orator who isn't really proposing anything really new, but are able to tell us we're superstitious bigoted rubes. Heh. Bill Maher has that niche already, Senator. We don't care that much for him, either.

There are kernels of insight into the Senator's statement. Both into we superstitious bigots and the patrician Senator. So far, I'll stick wth my tribe, Senator. I don't feel welcome, much less respected, in yours. But then, I'm a middle-aged white male, and we're personally responsible for everything that's wrong in the world, since the beginning of time. I know, I went to college, and they told me so.

Or, as Senator McCain's campaign staffer Steve Schmidt put it:

"It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking," Schmidt said. "It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans."

Ayup.