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Politics & Media
Sep 19, 2008, 05:40AM

The GOP’s “Regular” Hypocrisy

Republican-sponsored class animosity teaches poor people to disdain the very essentials of societal improvement, and turns poverty in to a buzzword that can be ignored after election cycles.

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Photo by nmfbihop.

His name was Tyler* and he lived with his mother at the end of our cul-de-sac in a pale green house the color of seasickness. They had a dog named Andy, a white German Shepherd so big you’d nearly wet yourself with fear when you saw him from a distance, but up close he was always smiling and flapping his giant tail through the air like he just might lift off and fly. He was like a guard dog with a lobotomy. That was why they’d gotten him, to guard the house, though there wasn’t much to guard aside from six rooms littered with garbage and empty beer cans, a supply of firecrackers big enough to blow the Alamo off its foundation and a liquor cabinet stocked so full you’d think they were running the Silver Bullet Bar out of their own living room.

His mother was a raging drunk with a bad attitude and a quick temper. You could hear her screaming at Tyler from four houses down in the middle of the night, liquor bottles shattering against the plaster walls. The sound was sharp and startling against the gentle hum of crickets and the occasional lost truck whipping around the dirt-paved circle, trying to get the hell out of our neighborhood as quickly as possible.

The next morning we’d see Tyler at the school bus stop, his eyes purple and swollen, his neck and shoulders bruised. He’d claim he’d gotten in a fight with the gas store clerk while trying to hold up the place. The clerk wanted to be a hero and had started something with him, but not to worry, he’d tell us, because he got away with quite a stash. Then he’d reach into his deep pockets and pull out packs of Skittles and Kit-Kat Bars and we’d get excited because, hey, it was free candy and it made us think that maybe he was telling the truth, even though we knew his mom had spent the whole night beating on him.

Some mornings he’d be there, standing out in the dewy air with us waiting for the bus. But other mornings he wasn’t and wouldn’t be for nearly a week and we’d start to worry that he had died somehow. Maybe one of those firecrackers sputtered in the wrong direction and blew a hole through the side of his head. Or maybe the drunk had hit him too hard this time and he was lying somewhere in that house, atop a pile of garbage, bleeding from his ears and slowly dying. He’d always show up a week later, though, talking about how he’d skipped town for a few days and went up to stay with some girl named Sissy in New Braunfels. Or it would end up that he had camped out next to the river for a while, sleeping in the mud and burning live frogs.

                                                           •

My family lived in Texas for seven years during my childhood, four of them in a town called Seguin. We moved there because my dad is a college professor and was offered a job at a local university. Some of the happiest and most memorable years of my life were spent in Texas, but even though I look back on that time fondly, I’ve never considered myself a Texan. Not while living there, not now looking back, not ever.

The thing about Texas is that no matter how assimilated you become, if you aren’t from Texas, you’ll always be a bit of an outsider. The major cities are different, with more people coming and going, but in the smaller towns, minor differences are magnified and it’s quite obvious who lives in Texas but isn’t Texan. For my family, it was my mother’s Italian appearance, the fact that my dad read books about philosophy and communication during halftime at our soccer games, that we had two Buddhist statues in our backyard. It was our inability to fully adopt the appropriate drawl, my brother’s refusal to play football, my sister’s short, pixie-style haircut. It was that none of us listened to country music.

There’s been a lot of talk lately about elitism: comparisons of intellectual, liberal “elites” to “regular” folk, the former demonized and the latter glorified. By Republican standards, my family was elitist. We weren’t wealthy by any means, but we approached state fairs and rodeos the way one might approach bush life: like an ethnographic study. We shook our heads at the idea of hunting, or carrying concealed handguns. To this day, we all think about life in Seguin as a valuable, but rather bizarre experience. I don’t regret that I got to spend my teenage years in coffee shops in Ann Arbor instead of hanging out in the parking lot of a McDonald’s, sitting on the hood of some guy’s car—which is what I did most nights when I went back to visit one summer in high school.

This rhetoric about elitists versus regular people really troubles me, though. Not because I feel offended that people might consider me elitist, but because the language is too general and thus dangerous. Too many people can fit beneath the umbrella of a term like regular and get lost in the crowd. When Republicans say regular people, they mean people who live in towns like Seguin. But while Seguin had residents like Tyler and families that lived without working plumbing, children who were sent home from school with lice, smart kids that gave up studying and joined local gangs, it was also home to people like Mr. S*, the founder of a steel business who lived three doors down from my house. His property was marked by a bamboo wall. He passed out rolls of coins instead of candy on Halloween. Once, when a tornado sent a huge tree crashing down across the only road that led to our neighborhood, he made one phone call and the tree was gone in less than an hour.

When you clump all these people together under one title, it’s the men and women who are more like Mr. S than like Tyler that come to represent “regular.” The word becomes a synonym for all small town folk with “real” American values. The image grows increasingly desirable and the full reality of life in places like Seguin is lost. If you hold up “regular” people as a shining beacon of light against the dark, selfish world of intellectual elitism, what happens to the Tylers of our nation? What is the incentive to fight against the kind of poverty that remains mostly hidden from our everyday lives? If intellectualism and academia are increasingly viewed as negative pursuits, we diminish the importance of reforming this country’s education system and move further away from achieving equal access to quality education for all of our nation’s citizens.

Being elitist is by no means desirable, but education and self-betterment are worthwhile pursuits. The academics and community organizers whose accomplishments and hard work Republicans are so willing to belittle are the very people working to improve the lives of those Republicans claim to support. You know, “regular” people, like Tyler. The kind of people Republicans will glorify during a campaign to secure votes, but later, after the election is won, will ignore entirely, content to just let them sleep in the mud, burning live frogs.


*Names have been changed.

Discussion
  • Wow. The reason we need elites is to “save” the Tylers of this world? Yes, we need an”elite” but we need an elite that recognizes that “the regular people”--and that includes the Tylers--contribute a hell of a lot to society as well> Tyler very well may be in Afganistan today doing the dirtywork for ALL OF US.

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  • I think that this article speaks more to the backlash against intellectualism than it does promote elitism. Shouldn’t we be relying on intellectuals, educated professionals and experts to make important policy decisions? By criticizing these people as being out of touch with the common man and glorifying “regular people” don’t we cheapen the education system and ignore a lot of the problems that “regular people” face? I personally find the anti-intellectualism wave in this country disturbing--especially considering that the best indicators of a country’s economic health relate to literacy, math and science competency and concentrations of skilled college graduates.

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  • Oh my gosh, you mean to tell me that all of those people in flyover land aren’t all exactly alike? So you never quite fit in because you were different. Tell me - were people rude to you? Did they heap scorn upon you because of your differences, or just look on you a bit bemused and puzzled, kinda like you did with the state fair and rodeo. Compare and contrast the treatment you received to the hatred and venom that has been unleashed upon Sarah Palin by your ilk. Who are the “intolerant” ones again??? Howard Dean says that non-wealthy people should forget about abortion, guns, gay marriage, etc., and just focus on economic issues. Gee thanks Howie - at what income level do I entitled to hold an opinion on the culture that I live in and that my children and grandchildren will inherit? 75K? 100K? Nice of you decide all those “complicated” issues for me. That’s what we mean by ELITISM. P.S. do you really think that anti-intellectualism is what is holding up education reform? Any chance that the teachers unions might have anything to do with it?

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  • Most Americans aren’t elitist. And the pandering to “regular people” by politicians and the media (who, by and large, are elitists) is a staple of both the Republican and Democratic parties. Did anyone really swallow Hillary Clinton’s having a shot and a beer in rural Pennsylvania during the primaries, while also talking up hunting? Likewise, McCain’s a man of privilege, from his upbringing in a decorated Naval family to his current wealth, via his wife. I agree with dtdowntown that the backlash against intellectualism is disturbing, as if the encouragement of ideas, reading and math skills is a bad thing. A president’s cabinet is almost always filled with intellectuals and professional experts, however, and a lot of them just aren’t suited to government life. You couldn’t be more of an intellectual than Paul Wolfowitz, for example, but he got chewed up working for Bush. Likewise, JFK’s cabinets was filled with experts, etc. and they weren’t all successful. If you read the late Arthur Schlesinger Jr.‘s memoirs, for example, you find a brilliant man who looked down upon “regular” men and women. And yes, I agree with Buzz that the teachers’ union is way too powerful, protecting teachers that have no business in a classroom.

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  • All politics aside (and thank you for not mentioning the name Sarah Palin), that Tyler sounds like a very interesting person, if given a bad break with an alcoholic mother. Have you any idea what he’s doing now, Ms. Taylor? Could be he’s a successful professional who happens to be a Republican. Or a successful Democrat. Millions of, as you write, “regular” people battle obstacles growing up to become responsible citizens.

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  • The fact that “liberal” and “intellectual” carry negative connotations in our society is just horrible. The American mind right now is so screwed up that we disdain intelligence and celebrate racism and xenophobia.

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  • The Daily Show’s segment at the RNC posted on Splice a few weeks ago was pretty englightning on the state of the Republican Party: a group of homophobic, racist, tyrannical scumbags that celebrate obsolete and offensive “values”, i.e., you can be gay as long as you marry a woman. What the fuck, honestly? People just need to grow up and get out of a stone age mentality and accept others for who they are. I really sincerely hope that Obama is elected and the GOP becomes splintered and damaged as a result. The GOP are ruining our country now and I don’t want them to do anymore damage.

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  • Pumpkin Time: Can you come up with any comment that’s more asinine? You’ve just proved a point that the author--if you bothered to read the article--was trying to negate. National conventions are rewards for delegates who did the scut work for the campaigns; you’re looking at televised parties, and in your case compounded by The Daily Show. I sincerely doubt that Claire Taylor, although quite obviously in favor of Obama, would agree with your blanket condemnation of the Republican Part as a WHOLE being “homophobic, racist, tyrannical scumbags.” Jesus, I hope you never become a professor.

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  • By and large the Republican Party ARE a bunch of value-sick scumbags. Sarah Palin, and to a lesser extent John McCain, are the embodiment of this discriminatory sickness. The time for reform is now and the last thing we need is a geriatric flip flopper “maverick” and an Alaskan idiot who shoots caribou but doesn’t know what the Bush Doctrine is.

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  • I wonder if Obama, asked by a hostile interviewer, such as Charlie Gibson was to Ms. Palin, could summarize the Taft-Hartley act in 20 seconds or give the date when Alaska became a state. Some Republicans are scumbags, as are some Democrats. SpongeLuke seems fixated on Palin. Maybe he’s afraid of assertive women.

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  • Interesting early life experience, Claire.However, I would challenge your premise that “intellectualism and academia are viewed as negative pursuits by regular people”. Rather, I believe the problem a lot of “regular” people (Dem,Rep, or Ind) see with many academics, Hollywood celebrities, or Far Left Leaners at-large is ATTITUDINAL. Their smugness about their book-learned form of intelectualism, their palpable condescension toward all others who don’t possess or revere this quality and their certitude that ONLY they have the compassion and knowledge for how to save the underclass from their various struggles - that’s the rub. It is this definition of elitism - a sense of superiority and holier-than-thou - that is SO Grating to regular people (including those like Tyler). Regular folks recognize and appreciate hard work and accomplishment - that’s hardly the problem. Of course none of this would make sense in Ann Arbor.....oh, is that where the University of Michigan is?

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  • Oh God, Carreraman hit the nail on the head. I hate it when I meet people who went to Harvard and say when you ask them what college they went to, “Oh, a school near Boston.” That’s elitism for you. I’m not very political, don’t have time or that much interest, silly me, but I don’t like snobs, pure and simple.

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  • Carreraman: I don’t think that this article is saying that Regular people are outspoken anti-intellectualists, or that they don’t value various accomplishments, but that there seems to be a concerted anti-intellectualism attack on the part of the right that equates elitism to being college educated, and assumes an inability to relate to the common man, thereby devaluing educational pursuits and achievements. Having read other articles by Claire Taylor, she makes no secret of going to the University of Michigan--see seems like a proud alumna, but that has nothing to do with having “spent my teenage years in coffee shops in Ann Arbor.” Unless she’s a super-genius, she clearly spent some time growing up there as well. Rather than thinking about the point of this article--analyzing the negative effects across the spectrum of language used in this campaign, both you and Alison broadly assume that she is elitist by coyly masking her educational background, even though that doesn’t seem to be the case and had no relevance to the story.

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  • I disdain snobs with every fiber of my being, and I’m gonna have to agree with Carreraman. I live in Boston, and the smug, coiffed-hair Harvard elites piss me off to no end. I can’t stand people who think they’re smarter than others, especially those folks who look down on people in the South with the most arrogant and moist condescension in the world. The GOP may be full of hypocrites, but the Democrats certainly aren’t blameless. Al Gore’s mansion, anyone?

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  • Well put, Carreraman. Education, knowledge, and an agile mind are all good things. Condescension...not so much. Add to that a sense of omniscience and it really starts getting ugly. I’m the daughter of a professor myself (appeal to authority warning here!) and currently attending a large school in the University of California system. I cannot believe the smugness and lack of diversity of thought present at my school. The opposition to any progressive (aka “left”) position is not merely “wrong,” heavens no, it is “ignorant,” “greedy,” and “unkind.” What young person is learning anything at my school when the opposition is framed that way? This is the smugness--they are not just right, they are better people. They are the people that care about Tyler. We let him sleep in the mud. Now that you boil the argument down to its essential elements, I guess I have to say I appreciate what the “academics” and “community organizers” have to teach us--somehow you’ve predigested all the complexities of poverty into something I can believe in--I want to believe in a better world for Tyler. Thanks for making it so easy for me.

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  • Pumpkinhead, if you’re relying on The Daily Show for an unbiased, level-headed approach to news, you’re a complete tool. Jon Stewart has a serious left-handed axe to grind. Nothing about his show is evenhanded. It’s like asking the McCoys to give an honest assessment of the Hatfields. And as for Spongeluke square-britches, does all of your political commentary consist of empty name-calling utterly devoid of substance? I”m guess that both of you little boys (or little girls) are wet-behind the ears 20somethings, am I correct?

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  • The condescension in this tripe is palpable, you can almost see it dripping off of the words! My two favorite sentences: “...we approached state fairs and rodeos the way one might approach bush life: like an ethnographic study. We shook our heads at the idea of hunting, or carrying concealed handguns. To this day, we all think about life in Seguin as a valuable, but rather bizarre experience.” Spoken like a true latte-sipping Manhattanite, with the latest issues of New Yorker magazine and NYT clutched to her withered harpy-like claws---I mean fingers, on her way to the latest in performance art.

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  • dtdowntown, I just read your comment. .. so Ms. Claire lived in Ann Arbor, eh? That explains a lot...

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  • Hmm...seems as though you could have picked that up by *gasp* reading the article.

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  • I didn’t see the “ethnographic study” comment as elitist at all, rather just another example of what Claire is saying throughout the article. She treated traditions that were foreign to her as an educational pursuit, not a means of condescension. By attacking her for that, you’re just supporting what she claims at the end of the article.

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  • Hemipristis is on the mark re The Daily Show. What was once a mildly diversion from the horrendous “serious” cable shows, has become shrill, self-satisfied and not worth watching.

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  • True, the Daily Show is no place to get your political news. But I suspect from “Pumpkintime’s” venemous tone that he/she actually had a strong opinion before that Daily Show segment. And don’t be thrown off by Pumpkin’s contempt for fellow American’s - it’s the nasty Republicans who are “full of hate”, ya know.

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  • Claire, enjoyed the article but it did not go far enough. Buzz and donnasbiz prove that. This government needs to change from a republic to a meritocracy. This way, only the educated, land owners and those who have performed public service for years would have the right to vote. People who are as simple-minded as Buzz and Donna would be exempt from voting. Donnasbiz, what the hell do you mean that he maybe “DOING THE DIRTY WORK FOR ALL OF US” First, I certainly didn’t ask him to join the army and NEVER thought the war in Iraq, which has no known or defined enemy by the way, was a worthy pursuit. Too suggest he is doing my or anyone else’s “dirty work” is the sort of blind patriotic crap that got the US in trouble to start with. Buzz, what is your problem? Your anger and hatred are apparant in your comments. As a Texan who was not born here, Claire’s observations, not judgements as you have blindingly accused her of, are spot on. There is a silly pride here that serves as a microcosm to the U.S. citizenships own blind pride. The purpose of free press is to allow the citizens to observe and question the governments actions without fear of reprisal. Unfortunately, the conventional press has instead decided to gear their work towards the idiotic masses for the purpose of profit not truth. This leads to the further dumbing down of America of which you sir or madam, are a prime example. Call us elitists or call us educated, the fact is that we do have the capacity to understand the complexities of government and society, a task that neither you nor Donnasbiz are capable of.

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  • Too much, @Landlord’s comments. He would bar commenters such as Donnasbiz and Buzz from voting because he believes that they’re not smart enough (in other words, don’t agree with him). Landlord, would you require a literacy test, or, more to the point, an ideology test, before a person could vote? I doubt Claire would agree with your assertion that the “masses” are “idiotic.”

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  • One more thing, Landlord. How do you know that Donnasbiz and Buzz aren’t your intellectual equal?

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  • OK, Landlord, let me revise: maybe the “Tylers” are out there policing your streets, driving an ambulance, putting out the fires (would it be “blind patriotic crap” to mention the NYFD?) and otherwise contributing mightily to the society in which you and the “idiotic masses” live.

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  • tablemountain, A) My argument has nothing to do with ideology. Just facts. B) Yes, there should be some form of literacy test. Those who can’t read ought not be allowed to vote. If you can’t agree with that, go live in a third world nation where literacy rates are low. Too suggest that the illiterate should be able too vote proves that you are unworthy! Donnasbiz, what if tyler is a cop? It is a job. He contributes no more than any other productive member of society. There is no moral superiority to being a cop or a NYFF. Have you ever heard about the cops who beat Rodney King? What about the cops who take bribes? Are they morally superior and therefore as equipped as an educated individual too vote? Read my entire previous entry before wasting my and others time. Pay attention to the qualifiers for the meritocracy. If you don’t understand, have a literate person explain it too you. P.S. TableMountain, their entries prove that they are not my intellectual equal.

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  • Sounds like SOMEBODY saw “Starship Troopers” and missed the joke!

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  • Well, judging by spelling errors in this comment, Landlord, I don’t think you’d be eligible to vote!

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  • asamsky, it was an amusing movie, however, the similarities end at meritocracy. TableMountain, you sound just like McCain/Palin. Justify your lack of a logical counter-point with attacks on irrelevant issues such as spelling. If you find it relevant, then you did not pass the literacy test No vote for you.

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  • A) i LOVE Ann Arbor! B) I would trade-in “regularism” for intellectualism anyday. You’re right: it IS a dangerous logic, but apparently one that works for the average American. I know this is somewhat unrelated, but if you look back to mid-nineteenth century American landscape painters approaches to depicting the California Gold Rush, there was the idea of the “East Coast as Elitist” and the “Western as uneducated, dumb.” It’s remarkable to me that that rhetoric STILL works.

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  • “The fact that “liberal” and “intellectual” carry negative connotations in our society is just horrible. The American mind right now is so screwed up that we disdain intelligence and celebrate racism and xenophobia.” I couldnt agree MORE.

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