[Marxism] (fwd) Obama v Palin: A Story Of Two Americas

[Les Schaffer]

[forwarded for Einde]



Jscotlive at aol.com wrote:
>
<snip>

> Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable.
> Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you’re well 
> grounded. If you spend 3 years as a community organizer, become the 
> first black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter 
> registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years 
> as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator 
> representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of 
> the state Senate’s Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years 
> in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people 
> while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, 
> Environment and Public Works and Veteran’s Affairs committees, you 
> don’t have any real leadership experience.
> If your total resume is: local weather girl, 4 years on the city 
> council and 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 
> people, 20 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, 
> then you’re qualified to become the country’s second highest ranking 
> executive. 

<snip>

> If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a 
> prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city 
> community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family’s values 
> don’t represent America’
> s.
> If your husband is nicknamed “First Dude”, with at least one DWI 
> conviction and no college education, who didn’t register to vote until 
> age 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession 
> of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.
>
For the last few days I've been troubled by this message - I don't know 
it it originates from the poster or is an unattributed article from 
elsewhere. While I see what the message is meant to be - contrasting the 
way the Black man is treated by the media in contrast to the White woman 
- I find it a bit troubling because there is an inherent elitism in teh 
piece:

The Black guy is better becuause he belongs to the social elite even if 
he is Black. While I realise that Palin is by no stretch of the 
imagination working class, the message theat comes through to me loud 
and clear is that Palin didn't got to Harvard, isn't a member of the 
social elite and therefore doesn't belong anywhere near the White House.

This may not be the intention of the poster, but I feel that an analysis 
like this has nothing to do with Marxism and a lot to do with 
unconscious class prejudice - the idea that only the elite (into which 
Obama has been coopted despite his colour) are fit to rule, although I 
would have thought that the antics of George W. - a card-carrying member 
of the upper bourgeoisie even if he likes to pretend otherwise - would 
have been enough to show otherwise.

The thing is that for socialists the choice on offer really is between 
Tweedledum and Tweedledee, whereby tweedledum has somewhat better 
manners than Tweedledee, but regardless of which or them wins they 
intend to shit on the rest of us from a great height in order to make 
sure that the working class and the middle Classes pay for the crisis of 
their system.

Einde O'callaghan