Great Day 2 Run-Down on Obama's Redneck Rampage Speech

Good stuff here from Tom Maguire, including FoxNews' observation that Obama defended his remarks -- but only those remarks which were uncontroversial, ignoring the actual remarks that have people incensed.

Plus some good snark by Kaus:

I used to think working class voters had conservative values because they were bitter about their economic circumstances--welfare and immigrants were "scapegoats," part of the false consciousness that would disappear when everyone was guaranteed a good job at good wages. Then I left college. ...

P.S.: Because Obama's comments are clearly a Category II Kinsley Gaffe--in which the candidate accidentally says what he really thinks--it will be hard for Obama to explain away. [He could say he was tired and it was late at night?--ed But he was similarly condescending in his big, heartfelt, well-prepared "race speech" when he explained white anger over welfare and affirmative action as a displacement of the bitterness that comes when whites

are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition ...

Obama's new restatement confirms the Marxist Deskwork interpretation of the race speech, removing any honest doubt as to his actual attitude.

Thank you. I've been talking -- as in actually, with my mouth, talking -- about this latest gaffe being almost precisely like the prepared, thought-out statement in his speech on racism, in which he did in fact say that white concerns over affirmative action's unfairness and black criminality were basically illegitimate and irrational and misdirected anger over The Man and the White Corporate Power Structure that oppresses us all. I thank Kaus for actually writing it out for me.

When he thinks it out before hand and writes it and then also unthinkingly blurts it out off-the-cuff, guess what, it's a pretty damn good indicator that that's precisely what he really believes.

Stealing more from Maguire (but there's still plenty good eatin' left on that bird!), here's Transterristal Musings with a Man on the Street interview with one of Pennsylvania's backwoods The Hills Have Eyes cannibal mutants:

By cracky, it's like the man sees into my soul!

"Thirty years ago, I had a good job in the mill in Pittsburgh. I was bringing in a good income, going to jazz clubs, discussing Proust over white wine and brie, with my gay friends of all colors. I was all for free trade, so that we could sell the steel overseas, and I never bothered to go to church, let alone actually believe in God.

"But then, the plant closed down, and I couldn't get another job. I went on unemployment, and found odd jobs here and there, but they barely paid the rent in the loft, and the payment on the Bimmer. I couldn't afford the wine and brie any more, and had to shift over to beer and brats.

"Of course, as a result, I started hanging out with the wrong crowd--the beer drinkers.

"And it wasn't just the beer. Some of them actually went out in the woods in the fall, and shot animals. And kilt 'em. With real guns!

"I was shocked, of course. For all their diversity, none of my gay friends would have ever thought of doing anything like that. But with my job loss, and lack of money for pedicures and pommade, they didn't want to hang with me any more. So I borried a twelve gauge over'n'under, and went out with my new beer-drinking animal-killing friends in the woods. And I'll tell you what, when I shot down that eight-pointer, I felt a sense of power over the helpless in a way that I hadn't since I'd been looking down on the rednecks when I had that good job in Pittsburgh, driving around town in my 528i."

And there's more there, too. He didn't even get to his new hobby of gay-bashing yet.

posted by Ace at 11:57 AM

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