Follow-up on yesterday’s post:
This week’s Newsweek is on shelves today, and (unsurprisingly) features Sarah Palin on the cover. After reading the article, I’m left with one of two conclusions: 1) I’m way more out-of-touch with average America than I thought; or 2) She’s the one who’s not like us.
A few quotes on her life:
Of her father:
“Today he travels to different schools as a volunteer, teaching “Alaskana”—skills, Palin told NEWSWEEK in August last year, that include “hunting, fishing, avalanche survival, fending off bear attacks and taxidermy.”
I’m sorry… outside of Stephen Colbert, are bear attacks something the American public is concerned with? Avalanche survival?
Sarah and Todd Palin:
“When Sarah and Todd were first married, they shot, butchered and cured their own meat. She doesn’t have much time to cook now; that’s usually Todd’s job, though the kids complain about his elk stew.”
Maybe that’s a life the Unabomber can relate to, but I’m gonna guess most kids’ parents just made grilled cheese.
Now, I bring this up for a couple of reasons. First, because of the year-long narrative that Barack Obama has lived a life of which very few Americans can relate (growing up in Hawaii, educated in Indonesia, awakened by his mother at 4:30 each morning to study before school…). And I’ll concede that point. Obama and his campaign surrogates have gone out of their way to portray his life as the classic American dream – the hard-luck kid who became a leader through hard work and good ol’ American ingenuity. But while that’s technically true, the idea that he has traveled the same Horatio Alger path that marks most stories of Americana is admittedly a stretch.
But if Obama’s life is tough to relate to, is Sarah Palin’s, with her avalanche-avoiding father, elk stew-cooking husband, any easier?
Second, I bring this up because I have earned points to spend on this. I may be ideologically in line with Blue America, but I don’t know that the same holds true culturally. I do sense a dismissive attitude toward Americans from many on the Left, and I’ve talked about (and written about) that many times. Some of us do look down on the working class, the less educated or the church-goers. I certainly have friends who mock families who vacation at Disney World or eat dinner at Bob Evans, or – heaven forbid – bowl for recreation. So, according to my balance sheet, I’ve sufficiently distanced myself that cultural elitism, and have earned the right to say: Elk stew and moose-hunting? That ain’t America either.
The Right wants to take shots at Obama and his arugula or John Kerry and his windsurfing, that’s fair. But until I see evidence that most Americans spend their weekends studying taxidermy and avoiding avalanches, I’m not buying this “woman of the people” thing.
