by Molly Ivors
Fair enough. I hear in Maher and Olbermann pretty obvious and deep echoes of the same rhetoric I heard all spring, and I think the obsession with not only beating Palin but digging her up, again and again, to kick her one more time is uncalled for, even if she's willing, even eager, to be exhumed. Certainly they're not doing it to McCain.
But it could be a matter of class, certainly. Or the rural/urban nexus particularly played up by Republicans in this election: something I think the whole "Country First" thing was designed to whip up.
Look, I'm a small-town person, not a dazzling urbanite like Thers, or simels, or flory, or many of the rest of you guys. Aside from a decade or so in grad school, I've lived in the same small town all my life, watched it dying while fighting to keep it alive. I've worked crap jobs to stay here, because crap jobs were all there were. I don't mind; I love my home and my family, and in my line of work, living in your hometown is almost unheard of.
Maybe the issue here is how to heal the rural/urban divide. Right now, most Americans live in or near cities. But the food sources, the energy sources--they come from the country. As Al Gore noted in his Times op-ed the other day, one solution to both our energy and economic woes is "we should begin the planning and construction of a unified national smart grid for the transport of renewable electricity from the rural places where it is mostly generated to the cities where it is mostly used." While part of me looks at the history of colonialism and is uncomfortable with the metropolitan areas of the country becoming the metropole for colonized rural areas, I also understand that some of that give and take is both desirable and necessary.
But.
I do think there's been a lot of sneering from both Republicans and Dems since the election about hicks and hillbillies, probably mostly from people who either have never lived in small towns or saw them as someplace to get the hell out of as quickly as possible. The Villagers have no patience with actual villages.
And like it or not, that's a problem. The Palins are symptomatic of this divide, but the obsession with their clothes and their g's and their manners is symptomatic, too. Examining our prejudices isn't much fun, but sneering at anyone, even if you think they started it or deserve it, is spectacularly unproductive and, yes, divisive. And haven't we had enough of that?
PS. We feminists will take all your well-meaning advice about what is and isn't worth our time with a grain of salt, m'kay?
PPS. Rednecks for Obama!