The Wednesday night gang of thugs at the RNC kept sarcastically referring to Barack Obama’s service as a community organizer12. I puzzled over what was the implied meaning of the phrase in twitter discussions3, but I think billmon has teased out what the Rethuglicans meant:
It kept popping up in all the speeches tonight — Romney’s, Guiliani’s and of course Alaska Barbie’s:
I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities.
On the face of it, it’s a pretty weird repetitive theme. Obama’s done lots of stuff — teaching, state legislature, writing books, etc. — but “community organizer” seems like an odd one to fixate on. The words themselves have generally positive connotations, particularly that first one: everybody is in favor of “community” (as long as its their community).
Which is exactly the point, I think. Used the way the GOP speakers used the words tonight (i.e. with a sneer), community = ghetto and organizer = activist.
It essentially was a coded way of pointing out Obama’s work in, with and for the black community (see? even I’m doing it) on the South Side of Chicago. Also the fact that his work involved helping low-income people stand up for their legal rights, as opposed to a GOP-sanctioned “real” job like business owner or career military officer (or moose hunter.) They were trying to put Obama back on the same level as Jesse Jackson — i.e., the black protest candidate — and mocking him for it.
To cut right to the nasty, they were using “community organizer” as a euphemism for “poverty pimp.”
And, as a special bonus, to a GOP audience (country club division, at least) organizer = union. What could be worse than a black, radical activist union organizer from the South Side of the Chicago?
[Click to read more Daily Kos: billmon – Why the repeated attacks on “community organizers”?]
[re-defeat bush]
No word spoken at the RNC wasn’t approved by John McCain, don’t forget.
Footnotes:- as Atrios points out, a key component to George Herbert Walker Bush’s Thousand Points of Life Inaugural Address speech in 1989 [↩]
- Said 41: I have spoken of a thousand points of light, of all the community organizations that are spread like stars throughout the Nation, doing good. We will work hand in hand, encouraging, sometimes leading, sometimes being led, rewarding. We will work on this in the White House, in the Cabinet agencies. I will go to the people and the programs that are the brighter points of light, and I will ask every member of my government to become involved. The old ideas are new again because they are not old, they are timeless: duty, sacrifice, commitment, and a patriotism that finds its expression in taking part and pitching in. [↩]
- join in, its fun! [↩]