Barack Obama: Cultural anthropologist

Crosswalk published my article regarding Barack Obama and his opinions about why Pennsylvanians turn to religion and other traditional views. Here is the lead, hit the link to read the rest...

Barack Obama has a way with words. They trip lightly from his tongue, and some onlookers have swooned during his oratory. No one doubts his speechmaking ability. When opining off-the-cuff, however, he can get into trouble. Case in point: At a recent fundraiser among wealthy donors in San Francisco, some in the audience were preparing to join the Pennsylvania campaign and wondered aloud what questions Pennsylvanians might ask them. In taped remarks, Mr. Obama rightly noted that Pennsylvania is quite diverse and dismissed racism as a barrier to his campaign. However, he offered this preparation for his volunteers:

But the truth is ... our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Posted on the Huffington Post website, these comments brought quick criticism. Seeing an opening, opponents Hillary Clinton and John McCain pounced on Mr. Obama as elitist and “out of touch” with working folk in the heartland.

To read the rest, hit the link above...