Personally, I like a nice cold beer with my arugula salads. How about you?
Newsweek has on its cover "Obama's Bubba Gap," dramatized graphically by a picture of arugula (Obama) and beer (the rest of us). The title of the piece inside the magazine is "Only in America: Barack Obama is a Niebuhr-reading ESPN watcher. The origins of his troubles with the 'other' tag."
Let's not go line-by-line through the whole piece. If we did, we could look at the lead, where McCain's anonymously quoted advisers, once worried, now say they can't wait to face Obama -- and then we could watch the reporters try to dance around the fact that Obama still leads McCain in national polling. We could point out that the only person quoted defending Obama is his adviser, as opposed to voters quoted saying Obama is "prejudiced against white people," "more radical than I want to go," and worried that Obama will make good on his joke to tear out the White House bowling alley ("That freaked me out because no matter if he bowls or not, it's a historic thing that should never be changed"); Hillary Clinton saying Obama is "elitist, out of touch and frankly patronizing;" the "illustrative" example of David Brooks' downward-trending columns on Obama; and a Maureen Dowd quote for good measure. We could note the fact that McCain's decidedly elite fortune is never mentioned.
We could also note this paragraph, the 18th, which by the way blows up the entire premise of the story:
It is also worth noting, the Obama-ites say, that in a recent Gallup poll, when asked if each presidential candidate "looks down upon the average American" or "respects the average American," only 26 percent responded that Obama "looks down." That was 4 points more than McCain but 6 points less than Hillary. (In the NEWSWEEK Poll, Obama did better than both McCain and Clinton: 25 percent said Obama "looks down on people like you," versus 26 percent for McCain and 32 percent for Clinton.) In Pennsylvania exit polling, on the critical question of which candidate is "in touch with people like you," 67 percent said Clinton was, versus 66 percent for Obama -- a virtual tie.
By "Obama-ites," they mean what exactly? People who look at polls?
[From Media Matters - Slip-slidin' away ... ]
BTW, I'd tear out the stupid bowling alley too, and put a basketball court instead. But that's just me. Remodeling the White House is one of the many privileges of winning the election, no?
