clear lines
B.P. (before Palin) this was already a campaign with pretty clear lines: the Experienced Warrior versus the Post-Sixties Uniter, yadda yadda yadda. But those were largely politics-and-policy lines: what Palin brings to the situation is a personality and a background that highlight the cultural lines, and (I would argue) the inability of the “cosmopolitan elites” — that’s what we’re supposed to call them now, right? — even to imagine, still less understand, the values that govern the lives of people in Flyover Land. (A polity of which Alaska is an honorary member.)
Thus many commentators could only see Todd Palin’s statement about his wife’s decision to fly back to Alaska rather than have her baby in Texas — “You can’t have a fish picker from Texas” — as a frivolous throw-away line, when in fact it was a wry way of affirming a very deep commitment to place, to being rooted somewhere and wanting one’s children to be rooted there too.
This incomprehension is going to be revealed over and over again in the coming months, but I don’t have much confidence that it will be remedied. This morning Alessandra Stanley, writing in the Times about Palin’s speech last night, comments on Palin’s “disarmingly flat ‘Fargo’ voice” — which says pretty straightforwardly, “All I know about non-Californians from west of Chicago is what I’ve seen in Coen Brothers movies.” Stanley and many others now have the opportunity to learn a little more, should they choose to take it.
Not just “All I know about non-Californians from west of Chicago is what I’ve seen in Coen Brothers movies” but “All that my readers and I know about non-Californians from west of Chicago is what we’ve seen in Coen Brothers movies.”
Great post. Fully agreed.
— PEG · Sep 4, 02:00 PM · #
Stanley and many others now have the opportunity to learn a little more, should they choose to take it.
Because lord knows what’s REALLY important in this election is fast-talkin’ city folk not understanding simple country ways and wisdom.
— Chris · Sep 4, 02:25 PM · #
Mr. Jacobs, Alessandra Stanley, and some of your readers are not the only ones who can’t comprehend Palin’s “Alaskan” values and desire to return home (and I won’t get into the silliness of suppositions based on watching Hollywood movies). For the past couple decades, I’ve lived in east Idaho, which has a very similar lifestyle as the Mat-Su Valley and very similar values (e.g. hunting) in that it was homesteaded just a little over 100 years ago, but I don’t understand her values either. I’ve never known someone to be so attached to place that she’d take multiple hours to return home to deliver a special needs baby because of a desire to have it in a specific place, particularly when there are well-established medical concerns about the advisability of traveling, and surely she was advised of these or I would find the doctor quite suspect.
This is an example of Palin coming first, not her child. As a mother myself, I don’t understand it at all, and I think that may be one of the things at the root of the questioning about her baby. I suspect that if this was all we knew about Palin, there would be a lot of women from all parts of this country who would find it incomprehensible that she would be this self-centered and put a baby at risk.
— CHART · Sep 4, 02:54 PM · #
This election has become very, very painful for me, as conservative commentators and bloggers I have a lot of respect for have given themselves over entirely to partisanship and cultural warfare, while constantly assuring themselves that they are doing no such thing. The utter lack of anything resembling self-criticism or even self-consideration is so, so sad. I am legitimately in crisis here, for whatever little that is worth.
WHO is waging cultural war here, Alan? Why is it illegitimate for these phantom liberals to deride anything having to do with “Flyover Land”, but ok for you and so many others to ceaselessly attack the coastal elites? There is one side unapologetically roasting the other, and it is not the coastal elites, or whatever other insulting appelation you want to give them.I am not out of touch with their values, I’m not ignorant of their culture, I’m not confused about what they believe. I disagree with them. Stop rendering my political disagreement as cultural misunderstanding!
Alan, you are a cosmopolitan elite, and so is every single blogger on this group blog. The fact that the pretense that they are not cultural elites is so important to so many conservative commentators should say quite a bit about your ideology and its culture.
— Freddie · Sep 4, 03:12 PM · #
I’d say CHART votes democrat. Sad.
— MikeInMaine · Sep 4, 03:14 PM · #
I have been on an “agreeing with Freddie” streak ever since the Giuliani speech, and I hope to talk through all this in the next day or so. Especially about the question of cultural divides and geographic ones. But for now, I just want to agree with his characterization, and suggest that we all pick our sides, if that’s what we must do, in a more fine-grained fashion.
— Matt Frost · Sep 4, 03:19 PM · #
Freddie, I don’t think Alan was talking about your cultural misunderstanding, but about Alessandra Stanley’s. There is no need to defend yourself against attacks you are not suffering.
— Blar · Sep 4, 03:21 PM · #
Freddie is in pain because he cannot see the hypocrisy of his statements. It has been the role of the liberal media, the democrats and their minions to be the ones to “have given themselves over entirely to partisanship and cultural warfare, while constantly assuring themselves that they are doing no such thing. The utter lack of anything resembling self-criticism or even self-consideration…” I am so sad for freddie for he is truly lost. What a loser.
— MikeInMaine · Sep 4, 03:24 PM · #
Mike leaving aside my general status as a lame loser (and, Lord knows, I can’t disagree), if you just confine yourself to this blog for the last month or so, and this post in particular, who exactly is calling out whom? It is a little depressing that my favorite blog keeps calling me an asshole for being born in Connecticut and having a college degree.
— Freddie · Sep 4, 03:29 PM · #
Chart,
East Idaho is nothing like the Mat-Su Borough. I have family in East Idaho, wife’s family is from East Idaho. Mat-Su is much more diverse and the area is definitely more libertarian. East Idaho is nothing more than rural Utah.
— okolepuka · Sep 4, 03:36 PM · #
Freddie, don’t worry about perhaps being lumped into the “cosmopolitan elites” who couldn’t “imagine, still less understand, the values that govern the lives of people in Flyover Land.” I tried to make the point that I LIVE in Flyover Land and I’ve NEVER known anyone who demonstrated the value that Mr. Jacobs described. And how I choose to vote or have voted in the past has no bearing on this.
— CHART · Sep 4, 03:37 PM · #
Well, MikeInMaine, I think Freddie’s an interesting commentator and I don’t see any hypocrisy in his comments. But Freddie, I don’t think you’re reading my post very clearly. I didn’t accuse Stanley or anyone else of “waging cultural war,” and I don’t think I’m “ceaselessly attacking” anyone. I’m just claiming that many commentators seem flummoxed by Palin and by those who find her candidacy appealing, and I’m also claiming that that puzzlement is a function of remediable ignorance. I’m not even defending Palin, who I am almost certainly not going to vote for. Like most bloggers, I post about what’s most interesting to me at the moment, and at this moment what’s especially interesting to me is the various responses to Sarah Palin. That doesn’t feel like culture warring to me.
Also, I will try to reconcile your claim that I am a member of the “cosmopolitan elite” — you should notice, by the way, the signals of irony in my use of the phrase — with the simultaneous claim, by a number of commenters and emailers, that I am a backward fundamentalist know-nothing. Perhaps, like Walt Whitman, “I am large; I contain multitudes.”
— Alan Jacobs · Sep 4, 03:43 PM · #
Well if I’ve misconstrued your point, I apologize.
— Freddie · Sep 4, 03:59 PM · #
Well, I think you did, Freddie — and I certainly wasn’t talking about you, that much I can say firmly. But it sounds like Mr. Frost is going to be puttin’ a hurtin’ on me pretty soon, so we can revisit the issue then if necessary.
— Alan Jacobs · Sep 4, 04:03 PM · #
Freddie said: “It is a little depressing that my favorite blog keeps calling me an asshole for being born in Connecticut and having a college degree.”
I agree that it is unfair for your to be insulted for attaining a higher education level. However, the fact that you are from Conneticut does make you an asshole.
— mattc · Sep 4, 04:04 PM · #
I like you, Freddie, although knowing you are college educated and from Connecticut makes it hard.
Sarah Palin is fascinating on any number of levels, but Alessandra Staley is kind of boring.
— J Mann · Sep 4, 04:09 PM · #
Freddie, I think you’re being a little hysterical. And have developed something of an unwarranted persecution-complex. To say that Republicans have demonstrated more “partisanship” or “hate” or “viciousness” or “unfair attacks” or “culture war rhetoric” or what have you, than the Democrats, is frankly laughable. (If a Republican were to say the obverse, I’d laugh too.) I mean really, have you heard/read at all what has commonly been said by Democrats, across all media & the web, even on the more moderate sites/cable channels/editorial pages: this is a Christianist ultra-right-wing creationist homophobic redneck anti-contraception beauty-pageant queen & bad/selfish mother ignorant joke of a candidate, no?
Moreover, this is an election, and heated partisanship is par for the course (unless you know of some golden age of elections I’m unfamiliar with). For god’s sake this site is a comparative oasis! And the very statements you’re using to make these claims— i.e. that Republicans as a whole, as opposed to Democrats, are the ones demonstrating “viciousness” or “hate” or whatever, can themselves be interpreted as vicious and hateful (and overgeneralizing, etc.)
Finally, I think you’re making an interpretive mistake re the Republican rhetorical approach on this (at least that employed by Palin, and at issue here). It’s not about hatred or contempt for “west/east coast elites” (or you): it’s highlighting and hitting back at, precisely, the hatred & contempt expressed toward Red State America. E.g. in Palin’s speech, the barb was not directed at “San Francisco”, but what Barack said to the audience in San Francisco, behind people’s backs, as it were. You may find that barb unfair, but at least recognize precisely what it was targetting. The contempt is for the contempt. And if you don’t think (many) Democrats have demonstrated contempt… I don’t know what to tell you; we live on different planets.
— tralala · Sep 4, 04:12 PM · #
The Obama gambit in this election is that fast-growing new economy states like Virginia, Colorado and Nevada are made up of people who share more in common with the coastal states (which were the Virginias, Colorados and Nevadas of decades past) than the agricultural South or the resource-dependent West. The quirkiness of Alaska doesn’t need to be laughed it, but it’s important to make the point that what’s good for Alaska (high energy prices and exploitation of natural resources) is bad for the country. The Bush-Cheney years have been very good for Alaska, Wyoming and other states, and bad for everyone else.
So Sarah Palin isn’t just out of touch with New York and San Francisco. She’s also out of touch with Denver, Las Vegas, Northern Virginia and other capitals of the new economy. Some of those people might be compelled by the Palin story, and in fact many of them might have grown up in small towns that have been in decline for a hundred years. But, my guess would be that someone who works at an office job is a health service organization isn’t going to vote for McCain because of Palin.
The bigger problem is that the media is much more centralized than the economy as a whole. It’s crazy that the Washington Post isn’t competing with the New York Times as a national newspaper, and even crazier that the L.A. Times or the Chicago Tribune doesn’t try to establish a regional base of readers. As a result, the media misrepresents the country, and conservatives use that to criticize the media. But, it doesn’t follow that conservative critics of the media represent “fly-over” country.
— Martin Johnson · Sep 4, 04:21 PM · #
Martin: those are very interesting and helpful points. (and I don’t say that just because my pastor and friend is also named Martin Johnson)
— Alan Jacobs · Sep 4, 05:03 PM · #
Martin, do you really think exploitation of natural resources is objectively bad for the country? Come to think of it, isn’t there an environmentalist argument in favor of high (carbon) energy prices, as it will discourage carbon-based pollution and spur development of alternative energy?
I would be careful throwing those prima facie propositions around.
— Blar · Sep 4, 05:38 PM · #
Living in NoVA, I don’t think Palin is really out of touch with people here, and not just because, as government contractors and beltway bandits, our money comes from sucking at the federal teat, just like Alaska (just kidding, sort of). The DC exurbs in Prince William and Loudon counties contain a lot of people who seem like they would fit in in Wasilla and McLean Bible Church in Fairfax county sounds a lot like the non-denominational church Palin attends. I bet she also fires up people in places like Aurora, CO (along with Colorado Springs) and the exurbs of Minneapolis.
— Zak · Sep 4, 07:07 PM · #
Sure, high energy prices are good for those who prefer, like I do, to not drive and live in places where that’s possible, if not easy. But, under our current energy/transit policy, or lack thereof, the high price of oil and gas hurts many more people than it helps.
There’s also the exploitation piece, which depends in part on your perspective on federal land. I live in Wyoming, where I was the editor of a weekly newspaper, for a year and a half and learned a little bit about the Western small-town perspective on these issues. From the view of an Alaskan, the land all around them is overregulated and unfairly controlled by a federal government that is dominated by people who will never spend time there. Like Palin’s husband (and I suspect, Palin herself), they would rather Alaska be independent, or at least have more control over what they see as their land. They see non-Alaskans’s insistence on telling them where to fish, drill or ride their snowmobiles as offensive.
Of course, the federal government, which owns 65 percent of the land in Alaska and between 30 and 50 percent of the land in many Western states, sees this land differently. They see it as a resource which can be used in a variety of ways: development (for timber, oil, gas, etc.), recreation or left as wilderness. People who don’t live there see drilling, which requires the construction of roads and pipelines that damage the environment, and, to some extent, recreation as activities that unnecessarily harm what they imagine to be a pristine environment. This view is fed by the Nature Channel, National Geographic and environmental organizations that attract viewers, readers and members in part by selling the myth of the unspoiled West.
So, the choice seems simple: do the 680,000 people in Alaska decide what to do with their land, or do the 300 million taxpayers who own most of the land decide? I would bet that most Americans would be in favor of limiting the exploitation of these resources, and almost all Alaskans want to drill as much as possible (as they get part of the proceeds) and to be able to use the land as much as they want. In the end, I think the interest of Alaskans often contradicts the views of most Americans. They don’t represent the views of the heartland, but instead of a minority group of people that is more dependent on federal government policy than any other state.
— Martin Johnson · Sep 4, 07:27 PM · #
“They don’t represent the views of the heartland, but instead of a minority group of people that is more dependent on federal government policy than any other state.”
There’s not a simple policy solution to use of federal lands in the West & AK, but it’s certainly worth emphasizing, as you do here, that the dependency of that minority of 680,000 was not entirely of their choosing. And the fact that those 680,000 actually live there instead of watching the aforementioned nature specials, or even visit for a once-in-a-lifetime two week trip to Denali.
— James Woodham · Sep 5, 08:00 PM · #