A shining light unto nations
by hakmao, 3 October 2008
She was not asked whether she thinks — sorry, believes — that the universe and everything in it is 6000 years old (give or take), or whether she expects to be whisked up to sit with Jesus while driving her humvee along the interstate any day soon now, or about an imminent apocalyptic battle at a place called Megiddo, or her reading habits, but she did trot out the ‘city on a hill’, Americans are god’s chosen people line on cue … and she still hates polar bears. Doggone and goshdarnit, I clean forgot it’s immoral to criticise the ‘working class’ business-owner and employer who may be a myocardial infarction away from being armed with 5,000 odd nuclear warheads and the Book of Revelation.
Saturday 4 October 2008 at 0:33
“I clean forgot it’s immoral to criticise the ‘working class’ business-owner and employer who may be a myocardial infarction away. . .”
No, not immoral at all. But criticizing her on the basis of her working class characteristics, which was the first line of attack chosen by much of the American liberal-left, was helpfully instructive of the degree to which bourgeois rot has enfeebled the Yank left.
Saturday 4 October 2008 at 6:56
Hardly working class is Sarah. Fancy homes and airplanes.
Saturday 4 October 2008 at 8:11
There’s nothing wrong with having a pop at working class tories.
Saturday 4 October 2008 at 11:40
More on this from Hitchens.
Saturday 4 October 2008 at 16:30
What is it about this that is so hard to understand?
This isn’t about whether Palin is working class (planes, big house - she is the governor for Pete’s sake), or the legitimacy of having a go at working class tories.
You go after her for being “common”, you betray yourself. So go ahead.
Saturday 4 October 2008 at 18:12
But criticizing her on the basis of her working class characteristics, which was the first line of attack chosen by much of the American liberal-left, was helpfully instructive of the degree to which bourgeois rot has enfeebled the Yank left.
Much of the American liberal-left? Who? When? Let me guess - was it a blogger? Oh, well, damn that whole half of the US, then. I know plenty of conservative rent-a-quotes have come out with this line about the liberal elite attacking Palin on the basis of her class - I haven’t seen anything to make me think it’s more than just spin. People didn’t attack her “on the basis of her working class characteristics” or for being “common”. They attacked her for being a Christian conservative.
There’s nothing wrong with having a pop at working class tories.
As the son of working-class Tories, I heartily endorse that statement. Mind you, even they think Palin is a vile fuckwit.
Saturday 4 October 2008 at 22:57
“Who?” When?” Gregg: You haven’t been paying attention. It’s why you don’t get it.
Sunday 5 October 2008 at 9:36
It’s why you don’t get it.
That’s such a bullshit line. Whenever someone trots it out, it’s a sure sign that “it” is an emperor with no fucking clothes on.
Sunday 5 October 2008 at 18:02
Gregg: it’s just that I couldn’t be bothered to do your basic reading for you is all, but since I’m charitable to the uninformed, try Andrew “Trig is not her baby” Sillivan, Heather Mallick, almost anything at Huffington Post, Sarah Bernhardt, Erica Jong . . . hey,wait a minute. You’re the guy who says a Palin win will mean the breakup of the United States into feuding demi-states. No wonder you don’t see anything hysterical in any of this.
You go have tea with your tory parents. I’m sticking with the trailer trash, no matter what stupid decisions they make at the ballot box.
Sunday 19 October 2008 at 0:02
You go have tea with your tory parents.
Sorry I’ve taken so long to reply - it took ages for the kettle to boil. Incidentally, only someone on that side of the Atlantic can make having a cup of tea sound so uppity.
I’m sticking with the trailer trash, no matter what stupid decisions they make at the ballot box.
You make it sound like you’re conducting some sort of anthropological experiment.
Now…
but since I’m charitable to the uninformed, try Andrew “Trig is not her baby” Sillivan, Heather Mallick, almost anything at Huffington Post, Sarah Bernhardt, Erica Jong
Just accepting your premise for the moment, are you honestly saying that these six are representative of the Yank Left? This is what I mean about some guy on a blog - you’re extrapolating from these people, in comments on blogs or in newspaper columns, to dismiss the entire Yank left. How do they represent the American left? Are they elected representatives from the left? Are they the leaders of trade unions, pressure groups, grassroots organisations? Are they influential political theorists on the left? No, they’re none of these things. They’re people with blogs or newspaper columns or open mics at NY comedy clubs. Hell, Sullivan’s a right-winger and Mallick’s Canadian. But this is who defines the American left for you? Not the millions upon millions of working-class people who think Palin’s an idiot, not the people who criticised Palin on policy (and that, not “working-class characteristics”, was the first line of attack of nearly everyone) - they’re irrelevant to you, because a handful of rent-a-quotes are much more instructive, for you, about the nature of the Yank Left?
Now, as to the premise itself, going by what I can find on Google, most of the comments aren’t attacks on Palin being working class. What does Sullivan’s “Trig is not her baby” rumour-mongering have to do with class? It’s a plot from ‘Desperate Housewives’, for fuck’s sake. What does Bernhardt’s (deeply offensive) routine about what would happen to Palin if she visited NY, have to do with class? Even the comments that do go on about “trailer trash” are mostly talking about how these stereotypes are being deployed to characterise anyone who might a bit too intellectual as elitist and un-American.
hey,wait a minute. You’re the guy who says a Palin win will mean the breakup of the United States into feuding demi-states.
That’s not quite what I said (I don’t recall any feuding demi-states). But I do think that if Roe v. Wade is over-turned and abortion law is devolved to state level, it will split America in two. The whole red-state-blue-state thing is a conservative myth to try and paint everyone from the north east and west coast of America as effete, elitist and un-American - but I think abortion is the issue that will make such a division real.
No wonder you don’t see anything hysterical in any of this.
Oh, I do see some hysteria in it. It’s hysterical that when, for the first time in twenty years, the Democrats don’t take the working-class for granted, actually do come out with some policies that will help the working-class, they come under attack for being liberal elitist because they don’t fall at the feet of some conservative whack-job just because she’s a working mother. It’s hysterical that those coming out with this “Democrats are liberal elitists” crap are dismissing the millions upon millons of American lefties who are working-class - who are Palin’s staunchest critics. All of the Americans I know are working class. None of them would piss on Palin if she was on fire. I’d bet that the majority of the Yank Left is working class, and the majority of the Yank working class will vote for Obama. But apparently, people aren’t authentically working-class in America unless they fit one conservative-approved advertising stereotype or another, unless they’re a “Joe Sixpack” or a “Soccer Mom”. Hell, according to Palin’s latest pronouncements, unless they live in small towns and vote Republican, they aren’t even real Americans. The attacks on Palin aren’t liberal elitism - they’re the revenge of the urban working class.
Sunday 19 October 2008 at 0:14
Thank you Gregg. Well said.
Fuck all the stupid pro-Palin narrative shite. Invented as it is by absolute cunts.
Cool use of interwebsnet here for ridicule purposes.
Sunday 19 October 2008 at 12:25
Fuck this ‘working class’ schtick. That was just Karlie Marx doing a bit of rhetorical oversimplification and then reifying (good word that) his own invention. What we have here is Palin as a representative of a class of loud mouthed, vulgar, theiving liars. She, personally, would have got serious and well deserved abuse in any of the factories I have worked in and would have been in deep shit when I was a cleaning lady (I was, I really was). On the other side we have me, a representative of several different classes of rational, courteous, autodidactical people, of the sort you can find in any factory (if you can still find one), laboratory or office (and I have worked in all of them, so there), and probably in any class of school kids or university common room (where I have not worked).
Bollocks to vanity reifying stuff, though only ordinary bollocks, and big, like forty foot diameter and very hairy bollocks dropping on top of Sarah Palin and squashing her flat.
Also, I don’t like football (soccer) because in my adolescent home town it was overwhelmingly home for working class nazis. My guess is that Palin’s crew of hockey fans are the same kind of people.
Sunday 19 October 2008 at 12:28
Sorry, should have said ‘rational courteous people’ like me and Will.
Sunday 19 October 2008 at 13:17
…make having a cup of tea sound so uppity.
TG lives within spit of the Empress Hotel, where they charge you 50-60 CADs for ‘Afternoon Tea’. Tea doesn’t constitute one of the Canucks’ 5 main food groups — they think it’s all silver service and china teacups, rather than a mug and a teabag and a custard cream if you can be bothered.