Class in America

Sgt. Mom:

Really, what do these new aristos expect of the masses, the proletariat, the common citizenry? More and more I have the feeling that we are seen as a kind of herd animal, to be periodically sheared like sheep, relieved of whatever fleece or funds that the new aristos feel they could make better use of, to do as we are told, to not really consider our property, our children, or our earnings as our own. If the aristos decide that they require such things to be given up… well, then, fall in line the loyal peasantry. And don’t forget to smile.

We are being put back in our place, after a two-hundred plus year experiment of being responsible and independent citizens....

Ace:

I can't help but notice a lot of the "Republicans' most enamored of Obama, and most disgusted by Palin, are upper-class twits. Either by birth or by adoption of their culture.

I'm betting [nicole] wallace and [steve] schmidt are, too.

A lot of this is pure class/cultural disgust at those boisterous,
declasse blue collar types.

Hey, Palin got shit done in Alaska. But blue collar morons are good
at fixin' shit, aren't they? As David Brooks noted, Obama can easily
cite Neibhur in conversation. (However you spell his name.) That's
the important thing, you know.

The lower classes DO. The upper classes ARE.

It was one thing when George W. Bush, a patrician plainly comfortable with the blue collar sector of the country, ran for office. Sure, he adopted a lot of the tastes and assumptions of the blue collar working-stiff class (and apparently he was pretty genuine about that), but we could all rest easy knowing, by blood, he was a good solid upper-upper class Connecticut aristocrat.

Sarah Palin? Not only was she born blue collar, but, unlike Scranton Joe Biden (Obama love 'im), she disgustingly has refused to evolve past the bitter, clingy station she was born to.

For God's sake, she was a Governor. She could have gained entry to the soft (as in arriviste) upper class at any time she set her mind to it.

And yet she refused.

The hell, man? It's like she just doesn't want to become better than she is.

Paglia:

Given that Obama had served on a Chicago board with Ayers and approved funding of a leftist educational project sponsored by Ayers, one might think that the unrepentant Ayers-Dohrn couple might be of some interest to the national media. But no, reporters have been too busy playing mini-badminton with every random spitball about Sarah Palin, who has been subjected to an atrocious and at times delusional level of defamation merely because she has the temerity to hold pro-life views.

How dare Palin not embrace abortion as the ultimate civilized ideal of modern culture? How tacky that she speaks in a vivacious regional accent indistinguishable from that of Western Canada! How risible that she graduated from the State University of Idaho and not one of those plush, pampered commodes of received opinion whose graduates, in their rush to believe the worst about her, have demonstrated that, when it comes to sifting evidence, they don't know their asses from their elbows.

Liberal Democrats are going to wake up from their sadomasochistic, anti-Palin orgy with a very big hangover. The evil genie released during this sorry episode will not so easily go back into its bottle. A shocking level of irrational emotionalism and at times infantile rage was exposed at the heart of current Democratic ideology....

I like Sarah Palin, and I've heartily enjoyed her arrival on the national stage. As a career classroom teacher, I can see how smart she is -- and quite frankly, I think the people who don't see it are the stupid ones....