Obama's "Bitter" Remarks Are Hereby Null And Void | The New Republic

Obama's "Bitter" Remarks Are Hereby Null And Void

 

There's Obama's veiled, theoretical elitism, and then there's bloviating like Louis XVIII:

Lawmaker stuns Colo. House by calling farmworkers 'illiterate peasants.'

(Video here.) And this on the floor of the State House, rather than at a semi-private fundraiser--intentionally, according to the assistant majority leader: "It was premeditated bigotry. Doug Bruce is not a stupid man. He thinks about what he's going to say." Nor did Republican Representative Bruce say that he had misspoken, as Obama did:

"I looked up 'illiterate' in the dictionary and it means somebody who is lacking in formal education or is unable to read and write. I don't think these people who are planning to come over here and pick potatoes or peaches are likely to have much of a formal education. I looked up the word 'peasant.' The word 'peasant' means a person who works in agricultural fields.

If there's ever a peasant uprising in the U.S., I know a state legislator (who I assume from his speeches lives on some kind of vast feudal estate) that might want to want to pull up the drawbridge to his castle.

Update: The Onion has a good piece highlighting some of the class differences at issue.

--Barron YoungSmith