Finally! An Honest Liberal!

[deacon blues]

This is a point I have been trying to drive home for several weeks here. Its refreshing that there is a Northeast liberal journalist who actually understands the problem many of us have with the Obama candidacy and those in the media that support him.

Editorial from today's Boston Globe, a left leaning newspaper that has endorsed BO:

The Dangers of Liberal Bias
By Joan Chevalier
October 23, 2008


OBAMA sports a halo on a Newsweek cover; the magazine's photo of Palin unveils the witch behind the beauty. Of the many examples of media bias to which the right points, however, it was the Public Broadcasting System poll that swept this liberal into its vortex. The poll asked: "Is Sarah Palin [not Governor Palin] qualified to be Vice President?"

Fair enough, I thought.

Then came the e-mail from the left: "The last thing we need is PBS saying their viewers think Sarah Palin is qualified!"

So, we should keep our polling to ourselves?

My otherwise thoughtful friend on the left prefaced the e-mail appeal with this: "Lord, it just never ends with these people."

According to a study commissioned by the Kellogg Foundation, the Republican base depends "greatly on their strength in rural communities." But due to a vacuum of leadership on issues central to its rural base, the Republican Party was ripe for disaffection among "these people" - farmers, ranchers, miners, foresters.

During the primaries, those same ranch women were open to Obama. They found him "likable." It was inevitable that he would sweep primaries in the west, where the Clinton legacy was Secretary of the Interior Bruce Babbit's "war" on local communities and economies.

Echoing Obama, another liberal acquaintance asked me: "Well, rural people don't seem to know what is in their own self-interest, do they?"

It never occurred to this NYC musician, living in an adjacent suburb to the Big Apple, that she might not be qualified to know what is in their best interest. With no direct experience of tacking up a crazed horse in below-freezing temperatures, never having sat in a saddle for 12 hours, not knowing what scours are, with no pig bucket under her sink, not having to drive 30 miles down the road to her own mailbox - of course, she knows what is best for them. She recycles, eats organic produce, and there's a bird feeder in her backyard: all signs that she is right with the world.

The ferocity, bordering on fury, with which the choice of Governor Palin was received by the left sealed the deal. We made our views abundantly clear: The heartland is a red monolith of empty space and empty heads; the great rural reach of the country is mired in "ignorance," and their emissary is Sarah Palin.

There are legitimate questions about Palin's experience level, just as there are legitimate questions about Obama's experience level. But according to The Huffington Post, Obama's lack of experience is immune from criticism because he attended Ivy League schools, "was a serious and successful student," is a well-traveled, published author, and has a diverse background. Heck, he's me!

Yet, in every one of my encounters with America's rural communities, the diversity of my privileged experience was eclipsed by the depth of theirs. I had rhetoric; they had well-measured speech, punctuated by forbearing silences. I had easy answers; they knew there was no such thing.

It is not that the Republican base is anti-intellectual, as David Broder claims; they are anti-elitist. An Ivy League education is hardly a universal signal of competence in anything other than the liberal cultural canon.

Despite the lofty call to unity from Obama, behind which most of us on the left supposedly rallied, this election looks like all of our previously divisive ones. Rural Americans are bracing once again for war on their communities at the hands of liberal interest groups sharing cultural preferences remote from the realities of their lives. The most liberal candidate in a generation has indeed raised up fear of his potential presidency, and I have heard nothing from those most afraid about his race.

It's that darned halo that seems to have the man himself and his supporters so enthralled.