(This was written on April 16, 2008)The flap over what Barack Obama did or didn’t mean when he spoke of “bitter” working-class people in
But first, full-disclosure: I have an Obama bumper sticker on my car…I’ve never given money to him, I’ve never volunteered for him, I’ve never attended a rally, speech or coffee given by him or in his behalf. Having been a professional Democrat for a large part of my adult life, I reflexively avoid getting involved in primaries unless paid to. It can be like choosing who’s the most attractive among friends: way more downside than up.
Having said that, I have been overall cautiously surprised by Obama’s willingness to reset the agenda – particularly about his tendency not to give in to the hoary old rules about what is and isn’t to be discussed in public. I like that about him; it’s a big part of why I like him. I don’t like his health care reform plan, and I don’t really know much else about his other “plans” in detail; but he seems ready, willing, and (most importantly) able to discuss important issues like a mature adult.
About twenty-five years ago there was a movie called “The Deer Hunter.” For those who didn’t see: it told the story of a circle of working-class friends in Western Pennsylvania (focusing on two or three of them who went to Vietnam) and how they all were changed – not for the better – by their experiences in life, and particularly about the differences in the ways they’d been changed: but all of them had become bitter.
At the end of the movie is a scene of harrowing sadness and some mystery (to me, at least…I saw the movie twice in one day – it was three and half hours long – to understand the last five minutes). It shows the surviving members of the circle sitting at a kitchen table, drinking beer in silence – until they spontaneously begin singing a patriotic song (The Star-Spangled Banner, I think).
Despite the ways in which they’d been damaged by their faith in their country, in the final extremity – when all dreams had been taken from them, they turned to a few “eternals”: camaraderie, numbness, and patriotism. These “truths” got their parents’ generation through the tough times, and their grandparents', too. It is all these people (in the movie) know…it’s what they cling to in their “bitterness.”
As inelegantly as he said it, and the tone he may have said it in notwithstanding, it seems to me that Obama was simply making a similar observation; that we cannot simply sneer at and ignore those people who – against their own best interests, maybe, at least as we see it – have turned toward what they see as anchors (guns, religion, cultural isolation) in a stormy world…a world that seems less predictable each day - a world that marginalizes what they value most in favor of glitz and “reality.” If we simply call them “reactionaries” or pin-headed “right-wingers” without even attempting to understand the motivations they have, we fall into the behavior we say we most dislike in “the other side.”
These “bitter” people – assuming they exist, wherever and whoever they are – are our fellow countrymen and women. More than that, they are our class-mates (in socio-economic terms, not educational!). They are worthy of our consideration, our assistance, and – if we think they’re wrong about something – our best reasons as to why we think that. Too often, instead, we find ourselves jeering at others, or “imposing” changes on people who haven’t been in on the discussions about why the change is necessary or preferable.
Obama didn’t say he had answers about this bitterness, he simply said he has an understanding of its root causes. He also seemed to be saying that to dismiss the bitterness because they who are embittered have turned to symbols we don’t fully agree with is not in our own best interests. He seemed to me to be saying that such people are our allies, whose needs and wants and dreams are closer to our own that we recognize. That they aren’t to be dismissed as “gun nuts” and “Jesus freaks.” That’s what it seemed to me he was trying to say.
What’s made all of the debate in the country over this most painful has been the reaction of the news media. It seems that they relish the unspoken rule that race and class are never to be discussed – or that if one does raise those issues it has been a “mistake,” a “stumble,” a failure to stay “on-message.” They seem gleeful in their race rip his words from their context and doing so to join in the smugness of the "gotcha," eager to belittle the intellectual courage it takes to actually discuss such topics in public. And not one of them has taken a single moment (not PBS, not NPR, not CNN and certainly not Fox News – not one of them) to investigate what he actually seemed to be talking about.
It isn’t – of course – for the media to decide whether he’s right or wrong about what he said: that’s for us out here to decide (and we’re allowed to take our time doing it…it doesn’t have to translate into overnight tracking polls). But it IS their job to look a little deeper into the subject and to illuminate what they find; to hear what other people are saying about the issue (not about the controversy); to give us some perspective on the questions Obama’s speech raised. Instead they seem to be salivating over the sizzle, while the steak goes untouched (sorry for all you vegetarians out there in blogland).
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