Clinton is in a fever to persuade the gullible media that something  that the Bill component of the incarnation Clinton has said on multiple occasions, in effect, remarking on the relationship between people’s circumstance and their attitudes, as in  “white people scared to death”  is   condescending. 

         A statement to that effect, maybe using the term “elitist”,  has become a staple of the Hillary component’s stump speech.

         What Obama’s remarks seem to amount to, drained of   local emotional content,  is pointing out that  people are especially  conservative in  economically hard times.

Isn’t that what he said? Or isn’t it a specific instantiation of that general thought?  Gods and guns standing for conservatism.  “Bitter” standing for pissed off. Or have I missed something?

         It was a remark of the general class of  “there are no atheists in “foxholes” which was first advanced as an argument for God,  i.e. in a foxhole you will be close to the elemental and know the eternal verities, and then advanced by atheists as a statement against God. Either way it was a statement that points that that there is, in fact,  a relationship between your circumstances and your thoughts of and attitude about God. (Would I get nailed for being  irreligious I wonder?  Better check my St. Augestine or  St. Paul or ho all the way to jesus.)

         In taking that line,  the Clintons are like are two people whose balloon arrived in Oz a few day before yours, and who are  pointing out that you can’t talk “that way” about Munchkins.  (Or if put in the true spirit of this brouhaha  that “happen to be” Munchkins, or, in full  Clinton speak,  “the wonderful upbeat, patriotic and hardworking people who, through no fault of their own,  happen to be Munchkins.”) If you talk about the Munchkins the wrong way, they will let you know, you will be judged  elitist. You don’t say that the size of thing “dwarfs”  another for example.  You certainly don’t accuse anyone of being  “small minded.”

         Now I would certainly admit that what Obama said was “indelicate” . Maybe even insensitive. Certainly ill considered given this is a political campaign.

But condescending? I  thought the word   “condescend”  means “to behave toward other people as though less important or less intelligent than you are.”  (The Microsoft definition, which knows a thing or two about condescending.)

Given that, I would think it is not Obama but the Clinton who have been condescending.

         Try an keep the idea of “behave toward other people as though they are less intelligent”  in mind as we wander through this building here just inside the gates of Clintonia.

First of all, I assert the very claim that Obama was condescending, is condescending.  They assume you are not smart enough to figure out what it means.

         Let’s pause now at the  tableau just inside the entrance of this first building. There she is, in effigy, the 30 year liberal (not counting her  college days when she was conservative) depicted talking about her duck hunting idylls in the Scranton uplands.  And her love of guns.  (Good Munchkins, you know, all like guns.) It is only by the sheerest mischance that she hasn’t joined the NRA. Or gone out to the blinds with Dick Cheney.

In the next one she is drinking beer in a bar for the TV crew. Watching her you think maybe she even has a Munchkin dress being saving for the grand finale, which will prove she REALLY gets what being 3 foot six  is like.

You don’t find that  condescending ? If not, what do you find that. Maybe we ought to startwondering about the word “phoney” insteas of “elitist.”

And as though the Munchkin had no other properties.

The problem with Obama was he was being Obama and speaking of them as peers. The condescension  was not in the words themselves but in the views of the commentators who thought a certain delicacy was required..

         And no-one, well almost no-one, was struck by the incongruity.

With her affluent childhood, and her full tuition stint at Wellsley, and her post-college bee-line  for the board room,  and her line of chatter about all the important people she knows, there she is,  standing  at the deck of the A deck of the cruise ship, with her Tiffany jewels, her alligator checkbook,  and her Munchkin phrase book (do not use the word ‘dwarf”)  looking at the quaint natives across the lagoon  (Munchkins if you don’t want to mix metaphors) talking about how she learned to harpoon herself as a girl and pointing out someone born on that island and who  returned to that island by choice, whose constituency has always been that island,  is an “elitist.”

I figure she must Obama’s background so she must assume that her audience doesn’t. Or the media is too cowed by  assertions of double standard to react

The building of course, whose wonders we have barely scratched,  is  the Bill and Hillary Museum to Condescension. I can tell you one thing. If I were a Munchkin on the beach I would be pretty bitter, harpooning being the way its been lately.