Why is it that you assume that everyone involved in the True Love Waits culture is subscribing to some sort of delusional middle class ideal? You write that the idealized virgin "represents a set of characteristics that are, frankly, aspirational by normative standards." What is aspirational, in class terms, about believing that God wants you to remain chaste until marriage, or that "waiting" will make the act of sex more meaningful? I'm the first person to say that abstinence-only education is nonsense and that the majority of young people (not just women, by the way) who aspire to chastity will end up breaking their vows, sexual desire being what it is. But I just feel like you're not giving the people involved in this culture enough credit for making their own choices and having their own beliefs. Is it impossible that poor young women might embrace the idea of postponing intercourse as a matter of personal conviction, regardless of race or class? Deriding people for for conforming to bourgeois notions of sexuality seems to disregard the fact that religious feeling itself is at least as strong a determinant as class status, and that people (male and female) might actually make their own choices.

Obama is very smart to have avoided getting tangled up in a sideshow issue like this.

For my part, I think McCain could make up that 10 point deficit if he had to. But I certainly do hope you're right.

All that said, I wonder about the efficacy of GOTV in an area like this, where there are a fair number of Obama supporters but most of them seem fairly informed about the voting process and able to get to the polls. Getting the vote in Durham, in particular, might be a better target of our efforts, since there are more diverse, low-income citizens there.

I too felt like it was overly conventional, but then I realized that Obama plays it safe because of his foreignness; he has to drape himself in hokey patriotic imagery in order to normalize himself for a wary audience. A white male candidate might be more able to think outside of the box in terms of art and design, and do something a bit more visually striking. It's also inspiring to me see what else he was normalizing -- you have the UAW guy, phonebanking for his union, slipped in with amber waves and flags and so on. I thought it was special that they included this imagery in the American tableaux, because the corporate media have always aggressively excluded the labor movement from public consciousness.

It's also nice to note that I spoke with an elderly relative last night, who is openly racist and fearful of black people, who watched the program and actually changed her mind about the guy. If you knew this woman, you'd be really amazed by the change.

Being in NYC, I'm sure you see the ass-backwards class assumptions go every which way, from the latte-sipper down to the bum on the street, all of whom think people have to be a certain way based on how they dress or what job they do and so on.

In the same way, Sarah Palin reflects the Republicans' idea of what normal people are like. In other words, they think we're morons.