QUOTE OF THE DAY….From Andrew Sullivan, noting that the media firestorm over Barack Obama’s “bitter” comment doesn’t seem to have hurt him in the polls:
I’m beginning to suspect that the only segment left in America that genuinely feels that elitism is a problem for Obama are … the elites.
OK, that was actually a quote from yesterday. So here’s David K. Shipler, writing in the LA Times today about the racial overtones of being tagged elitist:
“Elitist” is another word for “arrogant,” which is another word for “uppity,” that old calumny applied to blacks who stood up for themselves.
I’d really like to see this silliness stopped. Racism is a serious problem that deserves serious treatment, and this kind of desperate word-mongering does nothing but trivialize it. Republicans have tried to brand as “elitist” virtually every Democratic presidential candidate for the past 30 years (at least), and they’ve done it regardless of race or background. Read Nunberg. This is a conservative thing, not a racial thing.
