I have had a number of thoughts about this past ridiculous week of campaigning, but frankly have not been able to get any of them all the way written out for just being so angry about it. Here we have Iraq spiraling and the world economy disintegrating before our eyes, among other major developments that are posing serious threats to our way of life and the stability of the world. Yet our presidential campaign has become yet another opportunity for various millionaire urbanites in New York and Washington to pretend they are just folks for the benefit of the rubes out in flyover land. Possibly because they themselves really are so very ignorant, and proudly so, of anything that does not appear in their products (and much that does), the mainstream media’s devotion to the pose of belligerent, self-satisified regular joe is truly boundless. Then they turn around and project that same abstraction on the rest of the country, and convince each other they are really talking to and about the Average American. As though they would talk to a such person in they unlikely event they encountered them at a social event.

The question would not be whether Bill Kristol or Maureen Dowd or Charlie Gibson or the Monster of the Middle Way herself are really “in touch” with the perspective of church-going small town working people but rather whether they have any connection to or personal knowledge of it whatsoever. Through his Kansas roots and generally less wealthy background, Barack Obama has a little bit more, though probably only a little bit. His now-infamous “bitter” comment arose from something few of his national media critics or opponents would ever bother with, an attempt to actually understand the perspective of other people in other socioeconomic strata in a specific way, even when it does not necessarily lead to a preferred conclusion and involves admitting that even Average Americans can have negative feelings that depart from MSM stereotypes.

The best analysis of I have seen of what substance of any this recent tiff has was by Sam Stein in the Huffington Post. It is quite even handed despite the source.

To me the overreaction of the entire media and most of the political structure to the “bitter” comment shows that Obama must have been on to something. The only thing that cannot be allowed is any sort of genuine alternative to the current conventionalities about culture and economics. Obama opines that there might be one — a sentiment perfectly cognizant with Christian practice as many of us understand it, and with the longstanding missionary practice of providing food and other economic assistance to groups they were trying to convert.

Those who have convinced themselves that Hillary’s mastery of policy somehow makes her more progressive are kidding themselves. Her whole rationale at this point is that you have to be a Republican to beat the Republicans, something that has never been true but only seemed like it was after she and her husband screwed up their first administration so badly and lost control of Congress. It is however a point that the Republicans and many other enemies of good, responsive government, want to make sure that the media and the voter accepts completely.