Recently, due to Presidential candidate Barack Obama's comments in Pennsylvania, elitism in government has been given a new lease on life. Variations of this insult have been used to deride "academics" and "intellectuals" since 1964, according to the recent article in The Nation called "Who Are They Calling Elitist?”
Barack Obama said that the poor in this country are disillusioned (“bitter” was his exact word). He also said that they “cling to religion” as their hot button issues, forsaking economic policies that would arguably be in their best interests. Immediately the other candidates jumped on him as being elitist, and thus the games began.
In my opinion (and isn’t that what blogs are all about?), Obama was simply telling the truth. I have thought these exact same things about the poor working-class in America, but no politicians have had the guts to say it out loud. I’m sure John McCain and Hillary Clinton, both of whom were born with the silver spoon firmly in mouth, know that what Obama is saying is just the unpopular truth. They also know that it is political suicide in a blue-collar state such as Pennsylvania.
Obama is the only one of the three mainstream presidential candidates who wasn’t born into wealth, but had to work for what he has. In my opinion, that makes him the least elitist of all three.
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