Bitters and tonic

Yes, I’ll admit that I was one of those that heard how horrible Obama’s recent comments were about some small-town Pennsylvania residents before I heard the actual comments. And then when I did hear them, I kept waiting for the horrible part.

For the record, here it is:

“But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. 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. 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. So it's not surprising then that 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.”

Now you point out to me the part of that that isn’t absofuckinglutely true.

Or call me elitist, I guess. But you’ll have to call me an elitist from a town exactly like the one that Obama is on about. And as for my knowledge of Pennsylvania, well, I can tell you that the guy putting his French fries under his sandwich bun is from Pittsburgh, and the gal buying Cheez Whiz is from Philly. I spent 6 years in Pennsylvania, and I’ve toured Erie, Scranton, Altoona, Lancaster, York, Reading, Wilkes-Barre, Johnstown, Harrisburg, and every tiny shithole in between. I’ve been broke down in the middle of the night on the Pennsylvania Turnpike, and subsequently spent two days cooling my heels in the flea-speck coal-mining town of Charleroi. I’ve been swimming in the Monongahela in my underwear, and I’ve stumbled out of club in Philly at 2 a.m. in a bad neighborhood and in bad company. And let me tell you, I sure did laugh out loud when I saw the young men in The Deer Hunter drinking Rolling Rock, because everyone knows, Mr. Cimino, that they should’ve been drinking Iron City.

Sorry about the PA-credential waving, but I’m getting a little tired of being accused of being a snob just because I think it’s better to face the truth about the futility of some people’s lives than to blow smoke up their ass about how all they need is Jesus, the flag, and a gun to call their own. Yes, those people are fucking bitter, and goddamn it, they have every fucking right to be. They got screwed. And no one has done a damn thing about it except promise them it will get better, but it never does.

The funny thing is, that if it were not for Reagan, who is still beloved by so many of the cluelessly bitter, things might have gone very differently for many of them. It was Reagan, more than any of the others, who unleashed the dogs of deregulation upon them, and yet most of them still regard him as someone who looked out for them in a fatherly kind of way, not as someone who pulled the rug out from under them and set them adrift in various bleak corners of America, where they have, over the years, become gradually more and more grateful for a job at the local Wal-Mart. Yeah, the Wal-Mart, where they can buy the very foreign-made products that are the reason their lives are in the crapper in the first place! Yeah! Fuckin’ irony! Woo hoo!

So what exactly does one say to people who still idolize those who screwed them? Do you say “Good for you, you god-fearing people! You are the salt of the earth!” Or, do you dare to be called elitist, and say something more along the lines of WAKE THE FUCK UP!!!!!

Not that it’s likely to do much good. I mean, this, this whole deal is some tough shit for humans. You see it all the time, you know, where someone is hurt in some way by a loved one, whether it’s a parent, or a spouse, or a lover, and when they’re abused, wounded, hurting, where do they go for comfort? Isn’t it frequently to that same loved one? It makes no sense, and yet, it is kind of who we are. It is the essence of being human, in a way, to look to those who have hurt us to make the hurting stop. Because who else can wound us as deeply as those who love us the most?

C’mon, y’all know what I’m talking about. Having learned where to go for love, it is a damn difficult thing to unlearn, no matter the urgency. And I’ll wager that there are a good many of us that have been struggling with some version of this dilemma our whole lives. And we’d be lucky, damn smart and lucky, if we ever figured it out. If we ever.

And there is some little nugget of that propensity at work in our social and political lives, isn’t there? Oh, one could argue, I suppose, that it was a politically unwise thing to do, for Obama to speak such truths. After all, the Democrats supposedly can’t win if we don’t pander to those who think that immigrants, gays and feminists are the cause of all their problems. But if Obama’s not the guy who speaks, as they say, the inconvenient truths, then who the fuck is he? Not the guy he started out to be.

So as far as I’m concerned, the antidote to too much truth is more fucking truth. And you know what? I’ll bet there are lots of voters out there who feel the same way. I’m starting to wonder if Obama isn’t the electoral embodiment of that old “what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger” chestnut. It’s certainly confounding to the Republicans that he is responding to these pseudo-scandals by refusing to tuck tail and hide, and hey, me likey whatever confounds the Republicans.

And lastly, I have to say that the my-every-campaign-move-is-one-big-sloppy-valentine-
to-the-Republicans award this week goes to Hillary. In trying to make hay out of Obama’s statements, Hillary referred to him as someone who, for example, “goes to a closed-door fundraiser in San Francisco, and makes comments that do seem elitist, out-of-touch, and frankly, patronizing.”

San Francisco.

Get it?

San Francisco.

Hillary very carefully makes sure we all know where he was. In San Francisco, that tried-and-true Republican code name for immoral latte-swilling immigrant sodomizing atheist liberals.

Except it’s Hillary saying it. It’s Hillary invoking the stereotype we usually have to go to a Sean Hannity or a Rush Limbaugh to enjoy. Hillary, calling forth the San Francisco bogeyman against another member of her own party.

I’m sorry, but of all the dirty names I could stomach her calling Obama, the one I least expected was “Democrat.”