Tomah Journal - Printable Version

Story originally printed in the Tomah Journal or online at www.tomahjournal.com

Published - Sunday, May 04, 2008

Editorial: WE are better than THEM: It's another form of elitism

Elitist. Condescending. Divisive.

Barack Obama? No, Chad Fradette and John Gard.

Fradette is a Green Bay Republican running for the 30th state Senate District. Gard is a Republican running for Congress in the 8th District. Both used their announcements to attack other groups of people as inferior.

Take Fradette. He not only attacked his opponent, incumbent David Hansen, on issues ranging from immigration to health care (fair enough), he also asked: “Are these your values? Are these common sense, Northeast Wisconsin values? They are not. They are values of Madison liberals.”

Translation. WE are better than THEM.

Gard’s statement was milder than Fradette’s, but it was elitist nonetheless.

“Our voice in the House of Representatives is no different than the voices being heard from places like San Francisco and New York City. Our East and West coast friends are certainly entitled to their point of view. But, their perspective is very different from the common sense, kitchen table values that characterize our part of America ... If there is one thing that separates our corner of the state n and of the country for that matter n it’s our values.”

Translation: WE are better than THEM.

Contrast Gard’s sentiment to what Obama said at the 2004 Democratic convention: “There’s not a liberal America and a conservative America; there’s the United States of America. There’s not a black America and white America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.”

Obama, of course, undermined his eloquent convention speech with the sloppy generalization that economically stressed small-town voters “cling” to religion and guns to cope with their difficult situations. The main difference between the elitism practiced by Gard and Fradette and that of Obama is that the first two were politically astute to limit their insults to voters who couldn’t retaliate at the polls. But all three candidates -- Obama through condescension and Gard and Fradette through contempt -- segmented the electorate. Obama offered a much better vision in his convention speech, when he emphasized the things that bring groups and regions together, not the things that drive us apart.

Elitism is a very simple concept. It’s the belief that Person A is better than Person B, or that Group A is better than Group B, and it can just as easily come from a big city, a small town, an ivory tower or an assembly line. It can even even come from Northeast Wisconsin.