You know, I don’t think Obama has any clue how utterly elitist he comes off. From his speech to a crowd of Hollywood celebrities and money people last night, in a $28,500 dinner at a mansion we’ve all seen in the movies. Here’s what Obama told the guests who ponied up $57,000 a couple:
Obama asked the crowd to “keep steady”†in the remaining 48 days until Election day and to remember that his campaign “is about those who will never see the inside of a building like this and don’t resent the success that’s represented in this room, but just want the simple chance to be able to find a job that pays a living wage.â€
And then he went to pay his respects to the Hollywood proletariats, who could only afford the $2,500 cost of the ballroom speech (although many stars, of course, went to both).
Please. If this guy ever felt the same pressures as the working man and woman in America, I have yet to hear about it. Obama never had to juggle the bills, deciding which could be put off and which had to be paid on penalty of getting them thrown to a collection agency. Obama never had to worry where the money for the rent was going to come from, or how to afford to feed his family after paying all the other bills. It shows every single time he tries to relate to “the common man” in his speeches. He constantly comes off as an elitist, out-of-touch snob complaining about the price of arugula. Hey, Obama? The working man and women, they mostly eat lettuce. Iceberg. Sometimes romaine. Arugula? That’s for cooking shows.
Keep on making speeches like this, and you’ll eventually stop wondering why your support is disappearing. This is America. Nobody likes a snob. Wait, that’s not true. Snobs like each other. But us working stiffs? We see right through you.
The Obama/Biden elitism is more intellectual than economic. They don’t just feel superior to the factory worker–they feel superior to the factory manager, or to the guy who started the manufacturing company, even if he’s much richer than they are.
This wing of the “progressive” movement is very much like a Tory landowner, circa 1840, who feels contempt mingled with pity for his farm laborers, and straight contempt for the man who made his money in “trade,” did not come from a well-known family, and did not attend Eaton and learn to speak Latin.
I don’t think that members of the Obamanation feel superior to people who actually have to work hard for a living. They KNOW that they are superior. I will guarantee you that it irks them to no end to have to ask for votes from the little people. It would be much easier if we would simply accept them as our lords and swoon at their feet.
David Foster, speaking of factory managers, did you know that Palin did a fundraiser with W.J. Timken in Ohio yesterday? Yes, the same Bush “ranger” who laid off 1,300 working men and women from his plant a few years back. It plunged Stark County into economic chaos. And, btw, Meryl and David, did you know the fundraiser was at a country club? (Where I’ll bet that arugula is sometimes served.) So much for McCain/Palin’s love of the working man.
And Meryl, at times in his youth, Obama’s mother was on food stamps. I think he may know a little more than Johnny Mac, son of Navy commander, about how to stretch a household budget.
And finally, a question: if S. Palin were a democrat, would you think her lies would be okay?
Selling on eBay, you ought to check your facts before using them as proof Obama was poor.
It’s quite a different thing, having to go on food stamps because you’re a poor college student and a single mother who’s being aided by your parents, and being a working stiff who doesn’t have parents to help you. And, uh, unless Obama was a super-genius at the age of two, he still knows nothing about stretching a budget. He went from privilege to privilege. I didn’t go to Harvard Law. I didn’t get a sweetheart deal on my condo from one of my politican connections.
Um. I do believe the topic here is Obama, not Sarah Palin, but I don’t know what you are talking about, so I can’t answer if I think she’s being truthful about it or not.
He’s elitist because he eats Arugula, but McCain is not even though he cannot answer how many homes he owns.
By the way, Streisand and Damon are taxpayers as well. While I wish they’d keep their opinions to themselves, they can use their soapbox just as you do and face the consequences in viewer backlash if there is any.
Just to get this straight, it’s ok to be part of a nepotistic, moneyed elite but not ok if you work your way up from food stamps (no matter why you need them) to editor of the Harvard Law Review.
As for fund raisers…
The $5.1 million McCain raised Monday night where upporters paid 50,000 dollars a ticket to attend the buffet dinner in Miami’s InterContinental hotel. But I guess money from people like Ken Lay is better than a Hollywood liberal.
Actually, the situation that you describe is because Senator McCain does not deal with the investments in his family. His wife owns the homes and takes care of the family investments. As a result, the Senator is careful not to be involved so that he will not have any conflict of interest problems. This is the exact opposite of the situation with Senator Obama who has used sweetheart deals to pay for his mansion and steered cash to unsavory characters in response.
So now a sweetheart deal is getting paid for a books you actually write, and are bestsellers, unlike many politicians who use ghostwriters. And if you want to bring up rezko, I’ll counter with Keating 5 which is eerily similar to the current financial crisis and government response.
Jeff, Obama never worked his way up from anything. Do you even read the comments, or just spout off? His mother was on food stamps while she was a college student, being helped by her parents, when Obama was TWO. He never received food stamps. He was solidly in the middle class through his mother and her parents.
Obama is pulling this working class crap. It’s the hypocrisy, not the fact that McCain came from a more privileged background. It’s Obama’s elitism, and his pretense that he’s not elitist–not McCain’s fundraisers.
The guy’s a poseur. Common man? Common touch? Common bullshit.
Obama went from privilege to privilege?
Obama never worked his way up from anything?
Go ahead and criticize Obama’s policies and positions. Tell us that McCain would make the better Commander in Chief. Explain why you find Obama condescending, patronizing, or elitist *in his attitude and/or statements and/or POV*. Tell us why he is an *intellectual* elitist. All of that is fair game, for sure. While many will disagree, there are certainly arguments to be made that Obama has forgotten his common man roots. Go for it, as is your right.
But saying that Obama “went from privilege to privilege” and “never worked his way up from anything” goes well beyond rank cynicism and partisanship to blindly ignoring the facts and history and choosing to create a new narrative. Fact: Obama’s grandfather on one side was a third world goatherder. Fact: His grandfather on the other side was an American heartland farmer. Fact: Obama grew up in modest circumstances with no elite connections.
Doesn’t arguing about exactly when and under what circumstances Obama’s mother collected food stamps pretty much wipe out the “privilege to privilege” argument pretty effectively? Or is being “solidly in the middle class” enough to make the “privilege to privilege” claim? Or do we start the clock upon Obama’s graduation from Harvard Law and forget all the prior history (now there’s a tactic we should find familiar)?
Not everyone gets into Harvard Law School. And very few make it to become Editor-in-Chief of the Law Review there. But I have heard nothing from anyone to indicate that family connections, money, or anything other than merit and hard work were behind the Horatio Alger story of Obama’s graduation from Harvard Law.
Drew
Heartland my ass. By the time Obama came around, his family was in Hawaii. Poor people don’t move to Hawaii. Can’t afford it.
I’m missing the heartland farmer part of the equation there.
But it’s moot. His words and deeds keep showing how he has no common touch. He never had to struggle from paycheck to paycheck. He never had to worry about latchkey children, or where the rent was coming from, or how to find the extra money for rising gas prices.
He’s a poseur.
As for Harvard Law, well, Affirmative Action was alive and well when Obama applied. I’m not saying he wasn’t smart enough for it. I’m just saying that it was a factor, and you and I both know it.
It’s a factor right now. He would not be in this race if he were white. He would have been knocked down as inexperienced and told to go home and grow a little before trying again after Hillary was done.
With all due respect, please don’t tell me what I know. I will tell you what I know.
I speak from experience because I came from a humble background, but attended Ivy League institutions. Those institutions had historical policies of restricting the number of Jews they would accept. They also had historically accepted few candidates from modest means. By virtue of their lifting those restrictions at the same time that they encouraged a more diverse student body, Jews of modest means received a major benefit. As one of those, I met classmates whom you might have been ready to knock down a peg as beneficiaries of affirmative action.
But they were plenty smart enough and accomplished enough. In fact, they were typically far more impressive than the “legacies” (2nd and 3rd generation and beyond) who benefited well beyond their competency level from the operation of the “old boy” form of affirmative action. Yet it was typically the legacies with their family connections who had far higher expectations as to what they supposedly deserved.
Drew
Yeah. Obama is such an elitist. He’s married to a super-millionaire, and doesn’t know how many homes he owns. Wait… what?!?
Having conducted a little more research, I stand corrected and apologize for my error. In fact, Obama’s maternal grandfather was not a farmer in the heartland, but rather worked in a farm store in Kansas before he became a furniture salesman. His move to Hawaii was apparently to take a better job as a furniture salesman.
Meryl, you’re losing it. Obama has always worked. He just gets paid more than you. So what? He’s more qualified and accomplished than about 99% of Americans. Again, so what? Do you think he doesn’t deserve it or something? If you do something better than just about anybody else, you should get paid more than just about everybody else. Last time I checked, they called this the American Dream.
Also, arugala? You’re criticizing his food preferences? It’s elitist to like tasty leaves in your salad? Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?
Excuse me?
Wow. I take it back. He’s not the elitist here. You are.
And Jon, I didn’t say he didn’t work. I said he has no common touch. And he never struggled. He is an elitist. His speeches show it, over and over again. The arugula remark is an example of his elitism.
But you go ahead and keep ignoring my cites and building up more strawmen, Jon. Because that’s the way to debate.