Who me, bitter?

I guess I'm just bitter.

The media whirls around like a tornado, touching down on the offensive comments of political candidates, then taking off again into the sky. The problem is, they leave some of us in the mess they've made.

My point being, I'm not over it. I am not over what Senator Barack Obama said about people like me, when he thought nobody was recording him. In case you live in a cave in Antarctica and missed it, let me just quote:

"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. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

I don't actually own a gun, but comments like that make me want to go out and buy one, mostly for spite. Now, the inaccuracies are one thing...it is true that some small towns have lost jobs, but almost all of the towns in my region are growing at a nice pace...that is, quickly enough to keep jobs but slowly enough to keep them small towns. Knowing all the challenges my community faces, I was so glad to come back here when I did, and so glad to get out of a community we might call "the San Francisco of the South," which was full of a lot of people who frequently said the same sort of things Obama said.

But, as you might guess, to have someone who has no idea what my life is like speak so patronizingly about how I "cling to..religion," out of my "bitterness..." Wow. Or how my neighbors and students and parishioners who hunt do so because they're clinging to their guns out of bitterness that is better directed at politics...that is so..well, as one of John McCain's advisors said it, demonstrates very clearly, "an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking...It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans."

That pretty much sums it up. I wasn't bitter before he said those things, but I'm feeling a bit bitter now. And the media can whirl on to whatever they want to cover next, but apparently the people of Pennsylvania didn't forget those comments. And I know that the people of Missouri won't.

Kat