SlowpokeBlogCommentary by Slowpoke cartoonist Jen SorensenWednesday, April 23, 2008This Week's Strip: "Cheese Ball Politics" I don't have time to write as much detail about this as I'd like, but to summarize quickly: I think some of the earlier claims about the Clinton campaign playing the race card were overblown; for example, Bill's "fairy tale" comment was in reference to Obama's claiming the antiwar mantle -- not Obama's campaign itself. But something really stinks about the way the Clintonites and the Republicans are portraying Obama as some exotic creature who doesn't fit in with white blue collar workers in small-town Pennsylvania, a milieu I am most familiar with. (Oops! I used the word "milieu!" Subtract ten working-class credibility points.) Not so long ago in America, it was practically unthinkable that a black man running for president would be making the rounds in the mostly-white bowling alleys and sports bars of Pennsyltucky. So he's wearing a suit and seems a little out of place at times. Well, duh! The "elitist" rhetoric as used on Obama strikes me as a socially acceptable way of papering over a more complex historical reality. It's way of saying "that slick urban guy doesn't fit in with you country folk" without explicitly calling attention to race. Hillary could have risen above this stuff, stuck to policy, said "my health care plan is better for the working class." She had plenty of cred right there -- but instead she went for the cheap shot.The Utz cheese balls in the first panel were taken directly from Maureen Dowd's woefully bad column, "Eggheads and Cheese Balls," about Obama's so-called elitism. Yes, the fact that he did not look natural purchasing a bag of cheese balls was cited as an example. While a valid point can be made about America's anti-intellectual streak, the column did not not stake out a proper distance from that rather silly bias. Rather, it pandered right to it. Links to this post:ARCHIVES 01/01/2004 - 02/01/2004 02/01/2004 - 03/01/2004 03/01/2004 - 04/01/2004 04/01/2004 - 05/01/2004 05/01/2004 - 06/01/2004 06/01/2004 - 07/01/2004 07/01/2004 - 08/01/2004 08/01/2004 - 09/01/2004 09/01/2004 - 10/01/2004 10/01/2004 - 11/01/2004 11/01/2004 - 12/01/2004 12/01/2004 - 01/01/2005 01/01/2005 - 02/01/2005 02/01/2005 - 03/01/2005 03/01/2005 - 04/01/2005 04/01/2005 - 05/01/2005 05/01/2005 - 06/01/2005 06/01/2005 - 07/01/2005 07/01/2005 - 08/01/2005 08/01/2005 - 09/01/2005 09/01/2005 - 10/01/2005 10/01/2005 - 11/01/2005 11/01/2005 - 12/01/2005 12/01/2005 - 01/01/2006 01/01/2006 - 02/01/2006 02/01/2006 - 03/01/2006 03/01/2006 - 04/01/2006 04/01/2006 - 05/01/2006 05/01/2006 - 06/01/2006 06/01/2006 - 07/01/2006 07/01/2006 - 08/01/2006 08/01/2006 - 09/01/2006 09/01/2006 - 10/01/2006 10/01/2006 - 11/01/2006 11/01/2006 - 12/01/2006 12/01/2006 - 01/01/2007 01/01/2007 - 02/01/2007 02/01/2007 - 03/01/2007 03/01/2007 - 04/01/2007 04/01/2007 - 05/01/2007 05/01/2007 - 06/01/2007 06/01/2007 - 07/01/2007 07/01/2007 - 08/01/2007 08/01/2007 - 09/01/2007 09/01/2007 - 10/01/2007 10/01/2007 - 11/01/2007 11/01/2007 - 12/01/2007 12/01/2007 - 01/01/2008 01/01/2008 - 02/01/2008 02/01/2008 - 03/01/2008 03/01/2008 - 04/01/2008 04/01/2008 - 05/01/2008 |




