Famous Trader

What I wrote about Palin

Yesterday, I wrote a post complaining about Palin's speech. Reviewing what I wrote, I'm not very proud of the tone I adopted.  Palin's speech did make me angry, and one of things which made me angry was her snarky, dismissive tone.  So what did I do? I wrote a blog post with a snarky dismisive tone.

Honestly, I don't think what I write matters to anyone.  I got about 150 hits to blog yesterday. That's not many, but it's about 10x more than my average.  Still, I feel like it's not good to add anymore beligerence to the atmosphere, even if my contribution is just a drop in the ocean.

During the primary campaign, I wrote sort of bitterly about Hilary Clinton as well.  I also regret my tone in those posts.  Let me be clear, I'm not telling anybody else how they should write about politics, or anything else for that matter.  Really, this is just a personal thing.  I went to bed last night feeling vaguely unseasy about what I had written.  I woke up this morning and understood why.  I don't want to write that way anymore.

I'm not retracting the central point of yesterday's post.  I think that Palin's speech was divisive. I think that given the tone and content of Palin's speech, in the context of this Republican campaign, it absolutely did convey a message that small town people are somehow superior, and more authentically American than city people.  It is offensive to me.

Do I think Palin hates cities?  No, not really.  I don't think she cares about cities one way or another.  I don't think we learned much about her views on anything in her speech.  I don't belive she wrote it.  I believe she read it, and did her best to deliver it in the manner her party intended.  That doesn't excuse her.  The Republican party, for decades, has had a strategy of trying to swing demographic blocks by telling them that they are the salt of the earth, and the other types are not real Americans.  Sarah Palin went along with that strategy enthusiastically.

Also, and here I may be showing my urban elitism, I believe Sarah Palin needs to demonstrate that her worldview is not too narrow.  Imagine if Rudy Giuliani were the on the ticket.  It would be incumbant on him to show that he gets the needs and desires of small town America.  Cities are, by definition, diverse and dynamic. But even poeple in Cities can have a narrow world view (go ahead, try to convince my mom there's a world north of 14th street, I dare you).  I believe it is a nessecary qualification of any candidate, from any party, to demonstrate that he or she understands the interests of the whole country, and not just a narrow subset.  Sarah Palin did the opposite. 

What was in her speech about small town people being the ones who fight America's was a really cheap shot. I don't know the statistics, but I suspect it may even be true a larger percentage of rural populations serve in the armed forces than the percentage of urban populations, and it may be trye that the armed forces on the whole may be composed more of rural than urban members (not the same statistic).  But, a lot of soldiers who serve and die come from my City, and other cities around the country.  I don't remember the precise wording of Palin's speech.  If she had said, people in small towns serve proudly, that would be fine.  But I believe she said something like, we are the ones who serve proudly.  The distinction is quite clear.  If I do something, you can do it to.  If I'm the one who does something, you are not.  Whoever wrote Sarah Palin's speech certainly understood the difference.

I believe Peggy Noonen wrote that we are a nation of Wasillas, not of Chicagos.  I wonder if this is really true.  New York City's population is growing everyday.  I understand that all across the country, Cities are booming.  If you look at a county level voting map of the last presidential election, you can immediately see that our divide isn't so much red state vs blue state, but rather red rural vs blue urban. 

I believe the electoral college short changes states with a larger urban populations.  Compare my home state of New York, to Montana.  New York has about 20x the polulation of Montana, but only about 10x the number of electoral college votes.  I don't believe we really are a nation of Wasillas.  I believe we may well be a nation of Chicagos which has been gerrymandered to look like a nation of Wasillas.

Palin to City: Drop Dead

In defense of Both Sarah Palin and Gerald ford, neither one explicitly said "drop dead".  But last night, Sarah Palin's sentiment, like Ford's 33 years ago, couldn't have been any clearer.  Sarah Palin is small town with a lower case 's' . If you're from a big City, she doesn't get you, she doesn't want to get you, she thinks you're less of an American than she is, and she doesn't have your interests at heart.

It's nice that Sarah Palin is a hockey mom. I like hockey moms.  I live in New York City, with a population of a little over 1000 Wasillas, and we have more hockey moms than Wasilla.  We also have baseball, football and basketball moms.  We also have doctor, lawyer, physicist, and college professor moms.  We also have construction worker, subway train conductor, and house painter moms.

We have all kinds of people in my City, and in all the other great Cities of America.  We even have small town farmers, fishermen, and oil field workers, because they move here too. American Cities are where Americans come together to do great things.  With all due respect to the populations of Wasilla, and the state of Alaska as a whole (I understand they number 9K and 960K respectively), we number in the MILLIONS, and our achievements are amazing, and part of what makes America great.

I don't begrudge Sarah Palin's fondness for, and pride in small town Alaska.  But the implications of her speech are clear.  When she spoke about how hard working her small town folk are, she meant that we don't work hard.  When she spoke about how small town folk serve and fight for their country, she meant that we don't.

Sarah Palin embodies a small minded, anti-urban bias which is offensive.  According to her backwards reasoning, if your work doesn't involve a tractor or a pick up truck, it isn't hard work.  You might think you work hard if you get up every morning, push into a crowded subway, so you can put food on the table for your family.  But you weld the steel girders of skyscraper, or you spend 80 hours a week in an office, or spend 48 hours on call in a hospital, or risk your life pulling people from burning buildings, or do anything which isn't rural and/or small in scope. So your work doesn't really count. (Maybe it's only real work if you can drop the 'g' from the verb. Farmin', fishin', these are jobs that sound right. Investment Bankin'... not so much).

What offends me most is the notion that City people do not fight for their country.  It's a slap in the face to the parents of soldiers from the 5 boroughs of New York.  It's a slap in face to the parents of soldiers from all the great Cities of America. It's saying that their sacrifices don't count, because their children grew up in the projects, or the row houses, or the high rises, or the brownstones, or the tenements.  It only counts if they grew up in the corn fields, or the tundra.

Did she intend to dis all of Urban America? (yeah...I said "dis"....there are millions of us, and that's how we roll.)  I'll tell you one thing, she certainly didn't try to avoid it.  She's running to be vice president of the entire USA, but she didn't say one word that makes me feel like she even cares about my American experience.  She's from a small town, and if you're from a small town, she's like you.  But if you're not from a small town, she has nothing to say to you.  You are not her constituents.  If you live in New York, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, D.C., Los Angeles, San Francisco, Pittsburg, Baltimore, Atlanta, Dallas, St. Louis, Las Vegas, Miami, Detroit, Newark, or any of this country's other thriving, vital, dynamic, creative, wealth producing, urban centers, Sarah Palin doesn't get you, and doesn't think of you, and isn't interested in what you care about.