Last night, I heard once again Cindy McCain's sniping at Michelle Obama for Obama's comment some time ago that for the first time, she was "proud of [her] country." McCain said, for those of you who didn't hear it, that she had no idea what Obama was talking about, because she's "always been proud of [her] country."
I started thinking about all the reactions to Obama's comment, and I realized something I'd not noticed before. All the people who sniped at her were members of what traditionally have been the "Have" elements of our society. No one from a background that traditionally called a "Have Not" has complained about what Obama said, at least, not that I've heard. OK, I've heard a few lower economic stratus whites spew about it, but let's face it: they're bigots, as their overall behavior demonstrates.
True, the Obamas are wealthy--much more so than I, for instance--but by white folks' standards, their means are still relatively modest, and since it takes wealth to participate in national politics, they've come a long way, baby (largely by dint of their own efforts). And I can understand perfectly well what Michelle Obama meant: a black man, of mixed race ancestry, is for the first time being taken really seriously at the highest levels of national American politics. [No, I am not discounting Jesse Jackson and others who've run before--without them blazing the trail, Obama would not have been able to get to where he is--but I don't think anyone except naive idealists gave Jackson's try for the presidency any serious chances of success. Obama has a more than serious chance at success. He's actually well ahead of McCain in several very significant national polls.--Ed.] This is a cause for celebration, as it means that significant portions of the American body politic have gotten past the prejudices of the past.
But it's also perfectly clear why people like Cindy McCain and Rush Limbaugh snipe at Obama's comment. Their vast monetary resources have insulated them from the daily realities many of us face. It's easy to be a patriot when you're on the receiving end of the country's largesse, and not the ones being squeezed. You can afford to lobby to put the country's financial burdens on people other than you: those the least able to afford it. McCain inherited her money--and the profit she stands to make from the potential sale of Anheuser Busch to a foreign company is not only obscene, it strikes me as being un-American. How can you take Budweiser and sell it into overseas control? You can if your fundamental loyalty is to making money and not to your country's well-being and self-image. Yes, Limbaugh "earned" his money by spewing hatred at anyone not of the Radical Right, but he's obviously forgotten his roots. He started out wanting to be a rock n' roll DJ, but he failed at that--and ever since, he's taken out his revenge against those who rejected him as a DJ by slamming those of us who, in his perception, share the values of the people who rejected him.
In some ways, they are no different from the people who make money off their profession of their Christian faith. Not just the televangelists (who are all charlatans and con men and women), but people like Thomas Kincade, the self-styled "Painter of Light." Not only did he not invent the painting technique he claims to have invented (Impressionists were doing it 100 years ago, people), he seems to think he's justified in charging hundreds of dollars for a single lithograph--that's a print, not an original--of his paintings because gullible people will pay that much for them: people who are moved by his "sincere" Christianity and his thankfulness for all of God's blessings that have rained down upon him (apparently because of his artistic talent and because he's such a good and faithful believer).
I'd like to see just how much of a good Christian he'd be if his lovely home in Carmel-By-The-Sea, California, and his family, and his bank accounts, and everything else were taken away from him. It's easy to preach the Protestant version of the Gospel, which I call the Gospel of Prosperity, when one is more than financially comfortable. That doesn't have a lot to do with Jesus, frankly. I think the Jesuits are much closer to the Truth when they say that the reason Jesus came to Earth was to "comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable." At least that's more consistent with what I read in the Bible than what the rich folk read--and don't--in theirs.
Lest you think I've gone completely off topic, my point is that all this demonstrates that people who have never known want, or the feeling of being a second-class citizen--or who have known it, but who've escaped it and deliberately forgotten it--seem totally unable to get outside their own heads and even try to understand what people who aren't "just like them" are saying. And why.
Someone wrote an op-ed column about this recently (I think it may have been Leonard Pitts, Jr., but I cannot remember--my apologies) in terms of race relations. Surveys show that white people, by and large, look at the past 40-50 years and see how much better things are now: no more legislative bans on interracial marriage, no more sitting in the back of the bus, and so on. They thus think that the civil rights problems of the past have been solved. As a result, many are amenable to the idea of ending affirmative action and other programs (that were the only reasons any of these situations have improved in the first place).
Blacks, on the other hand, mostly see how far they still have to go: most are still stuck in the mire of economic segregation, with poorer neighborhoods, lesser quality schools, fewer opportunities to break out of such straits, and (worst of all) the intractable attitudes of those who couldn't care less. The difference is as stark as night and day. The problem is that there's no level playing field on which to start. I'm not exactly enamored of affirmative action--I would prefer that Supreme Court Justice John Marshall Harlan's famous dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson be true, that "our Constitution [be] color blind," but until everybody starts by being able to attend the same high quality schools and living in decent housing, I don't see any way to get rid of it. It's not perfect, but it's the best alternative we have to make up for even some of the inequities and injustices of the past.
But back to the root of the problem: people are talking past each other instead of to each other. There's no true communication when that happens. Each side has presuppositions that inform its point of view. The side with less power knows what the other side's presuppositions are--it has to, in order to survive. The side with more power, however, doesn't know and doesn't care about the other side's presuppositions. It doesn't need to know or care; it already has more power, so it feels free to ignore anything challenging its world view. But remember: might does NOT make right.
If we want to make the reality of America better reflect the ideals of America (you know, to form a "more perfect union"), however, we need to get those with the social, economic, and political power to stop sniping at those with whom they disagree and start examining--and trying to understand--why others disagree with them. Oh, and to make Cindy McCain stop plagiarizing cookie recipes.
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