We here at the Yonder aren't mind readers, so we don't know what people at the various protests, rallies and town hall meetings are thinking. Are some people racists? We have no idea. However, we have noticed that some writers don't see a problem equating rural with racism, narrow-mindedness and ignorance. Joe Klein of Time Magazine wrote Thursday that so-called "teabaggers" are "primarily working-class, largely rural and elderly white people." (We should note here that the first teabag town hall was in Austin, Texas; we saw one in St. Louis. Both are cities of note.) Klein goes on and then writes:
"Finally, I should say that the things that scare the teabaggers--the renewed sense of public purpose and government activism, the burgeoning racial diversity, urbanity and cosmopolitanism--are among the things I find most precious and exhilarating about this country. And even though the teabaggers' pinched, paranoid sensibilities are now being stoked by Boss Rush and the leaders of the Republican party, I take comfort in this: the racists and nativists have always been with us, and they have always lost."
So, all the good stuff in the country is urban and cosmopolitan while the "racists and the nativists" with their "pinched, paranoid sensibilities" are "largely rural." We learned this in a column Joe Klein wrote to warn everyone about the dangers of prejudice.