The Obama Gaffe

Hidden in Plain Sight
The contest between Obama and Clinton has more and more been a class conflict. It is a struggle between people who patronize blacks and people who compete with them and, often, fear them. It has become a struggle between the suburban middle class and the working class. Obama, speaking in San Francisco to a closed door audience of wealthy liberals, had the incaution to express the disdain of the middle class for the working class. While racial epithets have become forbidden to where one can be punished in almost any context for uttering them, expressions like "trailer trash" and "redneck" remain in common public usage. Only white workers may be publicly spit on. But not just before primary elections in big industrial states like Pennsylvania and Indiana. Which is what Obama's gaffe was - an elitist incautiously spoke his -- and his constituency's -- disdain for his fellow Democrats and the majority of the American people.

Admittedly I also have no great love for most of my fellow working-class Americans, but I don't run around claiming to be an egalitarian lover of my fellow workers. I consider my fellow man and woman to be largely ___holes -- I have seen them drive.

But I also don't like elitists, and I really don't like hypocritical elitists. I don't know why I am surprised every election by how much I dislike all the candidates. It has never been any different in any election I can remember.