Speak Your Piece: Get a Mirror and Get Real about Rural

editor — Fri, 9 May 2008 16:36:31 -0700

Jon Cardinal and Drew Crawford, seniors at St. Lawrence University in Canton, New York, hike in the Adirondacks during the college's Peak Weekend, 2005
Photo: Courtesy of Jon Cardinal

In the past few weeks, Senator Barack Obama has faced harsh criticism from Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain and Democratic rival Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton for comments he made to a group of wealthy San Francisco donors.

“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," said Obama. "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.”

Although I believe Senator Obama’s comments have been misconstrued for political reasons, I do think that this controversy provides our country with an opportunity to evaluate the all too common occurrence of elites on both the right and left looking down their noses at the “rural rubes” of America. Hardworking rural people are frequently stereotyped in the mainstream media as simple-minded bigots.

By Jon Cardinal

Speak Your Piece: Get a Mirror and Get Real about Rural