I, Rigoberta Russert
Jesse Walker | April 21, 2008, 1:00pm
Jonathan Chait takes up one of my
favorite themes: the rise of right-wing P.C.
Barack Obama's comments about the white working class have thrown the political campaign into a particularly comic spasm of pretense and hypocrisy, but I was planning to let it go, I really was, until George F. Will decided to leap to the defense of the proletariat. Yes, that George F. Will. The fabulously wealthy, bow tie-wearing, pretentious reference-mongering, Anglophilic fop who grew up in a university town as a professor's son, earned two advanced degrees, has a designated table at a French restaurant in Georgetown, and, had he dwelt for any extended time among the working class, would be lucky to escape without his underwear being yanked up over his ears. Will devoted his column to expressing his displeasure at Obama's "condescension" toward the working class....
Blue-collar whites now occupy the same position in American politics that people of color hold in the smaller political subculture of academia: a victim-hero class whose positions (usually as interpreted by outsiders) enjoy the presumption of moral superiority.
The victim-hero class is the object of competitive flattery and the subject of mutual accusations of disrespect. You can't read a Peggy Noonan paean to real America--"a healthy and vibrant place full of religious feeling and cultural energy and Bible study and garage bands and sports-love and mom-love and sophistication and normality"--without thinking of a junior faculty member extolling the dignity of Guatemalan peasant women. Bill O'Reilly's or Tim Russert's endless invocations of their working-class backgrounds are the equivalent of the campus activist who introduces every opinion by saying "As a woman of color...."
Whole thing
here. Over the next seven months, you should expect many more opportunities to think of those noble Guatemalan daughters of the soil.
Update: A few readers have spoken up for George Will, noting that his
column in question managed to avoid O'Reilly-style phony-populist bluster. That's a fair point, though I think Chait was simply showing how easy it is to turn those rhetorical guns on the Republicans. But for the record: Will has a right to write about liberal condescension toward the working class whether or not he has a proletarian bone in his body. The problem is those conservatives (and Clintonites) whose hymns to Middle America are at least as condescending as Obama's remark about people who cling to their Bibles and guns.
(That's one of the reasons, I think, why Obama's comment doesn't seem to have hurt him in the Pennsylvania primary, though it may yet do some damage in the general election. Nothing he said has been as patronizing as Hillary Clinton's Dukakis-in-a-tank attempts to paint herself as a gun-toting, shot-drinking tribune of the laboring classes.)
Seitz | April 21, 2008, 2:01pm | #
So, 1) You're not allowed to defend the white working class unless you come from it
I'm not sure I would put in terms that stark, but it sounds really bad for a wealthy pundit to "speak for" a working class schmoe.
I can't really think of a better example, so I apologize in advance, but for me, the argument is somewhat similar to the Native Americans/Racist Mascots debate (full disclosure: I'm a University of Illinois Fighting Illini grad). Personally, I'd like to think that most Native American mascots (with a few exceptions) would not offend me
were I Native American. But not being Native American, I can't say for sure how I'd feel. I do know, however, that it would be very condescending for me, as a white dude with a suburban upbringing, to tell Native Americans how
they should feel (either way - I think both sides are guilty here). I can have an opinion, certainly, but I don't think it counts for a whole lot.
Similarly, for Will, or Noonan, or Brooks to tell everyone how working class folks should feel about, for example, Obama's statements, is incredibly condescending. In telling us how those folks should feel, they're substituting their own perception for the people for whom they're purporting to speak, perhaps even more condescending than the comments that started the whole mess.
Guy Montag | April 21, 2008, 2:28pm | #
ChicagoTom,
Idunno, I think there is certainly the effect of believability between claims some make. I don't recall Professor Will ever claiming to have come from a "rough" background, but Sen. Edwards kept yammering about his "Daddy in the mill". The latter did not seem to ring true and it turned out that, yes he did work in a mill but as a Supervisor or higher by the time John Edwards was around.
Maybe that one was not written so well.
When a Marine Harrior driver and I were talking about flying in a bar one day, some former local bartender had to jump in and be disruptive. He was trying to impress everybody, especially the Marine, with his stories of his daddy letting him fly their Cessna Citation when he was a kid. Not sure he got the desired effect because we both went into how we got to flight school and it sure was not through any relatives who could afford private jets.
Idunno, some people might not be able to detect the difference between folks who had to compete to get to where they are, like John Edward's father, and those who benefit from it, like John Edwards, and try to take credit for it in some odd way.
One more try?
When people of certain political stripes find out enough of my resume (the top part) they jump to accuse me of being from some sort of privelage, like that guy a few months ago claiming to have been a Sailor and jumped all over me for being a Field Grade Officer. thing is, I really did start off as a Private, so did my father. I did not get selected for anything because I knew anybody of influence (probably would not turn it down if I did), I just went along doing the best job I could and things worked out for me. Almost the same for that Marine, IIRC, he was a "Mustang" and got to fly the first Harriers delivered to the Marines.
Oh well, probably a lot of wasted electrons here, sorry for wasting time.
