Michael Kinsley writes that America's never had a president who was not an 'intellectual snob.' | AP Photo
Whenever Democrats raise the issue of growing income inequality or oppose some tax cut skewed to the rich, Republicans accuse them of “class warfare.” Meanwhile, though, Republicans have done rather well fighting the class war themselves on two different fronts: first, protecting the interests of Big Money in all of its forms; and second, shifting the target from financial to cultural and intellectual elites.
The last two Republican presidents — both named George Bush, both Andover, both Yale — were especially brilliant at painting their opponents as Ivy-covered elitists and themselves as jes’ folks.
It’s been hard, though, to figure out how to use this strategy against the first black president, especially one with Barack Obama’s amazing life story. But Michael Gerson — formerly George II’s speechwriter and now a Washington Post columnist — has found a way. In a column Tuesday, he picks up on a few words Obama uttered recently to a group of Democratic donors and calls the president an “intellectual snob.”
This puts us in the fashionable world of “umbrage politics,” where the game is to take as much offense as possible at something someone said or did. Usually this will involve giving the controversial statement or action an interpretation, or at least an importance, your victim obviously never intended and hiding the obvious fact that — far from being “saddened” or “outraged” — you are delighted to have this stick to beat him or her with.
Obama said that “facts and science and argument [do] not seem to be winning the day” at the moment “because we’re hard-wired not to always think clearly when we’re scared. And the country is scared.” Gerson riffs on this: “Obama views himself as the neocortical leader — the defender … of cognitive reasoning. His critics rely on their lizard brains — the location of reptilian ritual and aggression.” In short, he takes this single sentence from the president, deconstructs it thoroughly enough to qualify for tenure in many an English department and calls the result “some of the most arrogant words ever uttered by an American president.” Then he goes to town. Obama’s snobbery “destroys the possibility of political dialogue” (with all those eager Republicans, I guess). He is “abandoning American ideals.” He is “in the throes of pseudo-science.” It’s his fault if “reactionary populism ... targets minorities, immigrants and intellectuals.
SOURCE: POLITICO
NOTE:
OBAMA'S BEEN CALLED "INSANE" BY THE FRENCH PRESIDENT; HE IS CALLED IGNORANT BY SOME WHO GIVE HIM THE BENEFIT OF THE DOUBT; BUT TO ALL AMERICANS, HE IS THE PRESIDENT WHO HAS MANAGED SOMEHOW TO PASS UNWANTED BILLS THROUGH CONGRESS; BULLIED OUR ALLIES; REFUSES TO LISTEN TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE; AND THIS NOVEMBER, FOR ONCE, HE WILL HAVE TO TAKE NOTICE THAT AMERICANS HAVE HAD "ENOUGH" OF HIS AGENDA - AN AGENDA THAT UNDERMINES AMERICA AND ITS CONSTITUTION.
CAN YOU HEAR ME NOW, WILL BE THE CHANT TO THE WHITE HOUSE ON NOVEMBER 2ND.
BEE STING
