Is Swiss Cheese really all that foreign?  It seemed to me to be the #2 Sandwich cheese, after American.  Chedder's good on crackers, but never really seemed to hit the sandwich arena.  If Kerry liked gouda or provelone or something, maybe foreign, but Swiss?  Really?

Chris Rock once said something to the effect of you can make fun of those higher on the food chain, but not lower, or it just comes off as mean-spirited. Elites are doing just fine, and can stand a little needling. Small towns (and more difficult parts of the city), away from power centers and media attention, deserve a little slack at least from presidential candidates who are ostensibly running to represent all the people, most of whom live in smaller communities yet see their values mocked by smug "cosmopolitans" whose outlooks are actually more provincial than those of supposedly backward Middle America.

Sorry for the run-on sentence, but if you make fun of me for it, I reserve the right to call you an intellectual pinhead grammar-lovin' elitist.

I am so tired of the anti-intellectualism that has gained so much currency in contemporary politics. Why shouldn't people who spend their working lives studying the law, public policy, international relations etc. be taken a bit more seriously than regular folks who work in retail and watch American Idol? Of the three candidates, it seems to me like Obama has many more PhDs and academics in his advisory circle, and that tells me that 1) smart people think he's a good candidate and 2) he's most likely to have the best information and ideas.

But hey, I guess there's something to being an anti-intellectual. I mean, G. Dubya is about as anti-intellectual as American presidents get, and he's doing a HECKUVA JOB!

Crock, Kerry only likes Swiss cheese because there isn't a "French cheese," and he wanted to get as geographically close as possible.

But seriously, it only makes sense to bestow on "small town" the virtues of being more American, being more down-to-earth, and cultivating people who have "good morals and good judgement" if you think that big-town Americans aren't any of these.  As has been said before, it's another (generally) Conservative form of the identity politics they disavow so forcefully.  Argh!

And doesn't it also seem silly that some people who say that communities where you grow up determine a bit how you turn out (small town=good, big city=bad) also don't see how awful schools, rampant crime, and other factors keep urban people from pulling themselves up by their bootstraps?  Didn't they also laugh at Hillary Clinton's "It takes a village" thing?

Or another point on the swiss cheese: I am a native Philadelphian, born and raised and still residing in South Philly; I have known a number of people, also natives, who enjoy swiss cheese on their cheese steaks. The only peole who seemed to be scoffing were out-of-towners anyway. For that matter, I may have been young, but I recall the cheeze whiz uprising as a product of the 80s and before that American and Provalone were the default options. Shows what the so-called media know.

Of course we are seeing this all again. while Obama appears to have suffered little from his poorly formulated, although partly true, words, the media elite seem to enjoy telling the rubes of PA that they should be steaming in theirwork boots.

I once made a comment amongst a group of the heart-of-America types that the terrorists had failed on 9/11 because they attacked New York and Washington D.C. and those places weren't really America anyway. I got a couple of hearty agreements, and no one felt moved to challenge the assertion.

I'm with shims-b

I remember as a kid growing up in Austin, Texas.  As many people can attest, it's a very nice place -- good schools, low crime, a perfect place to raise a kid.  My family then moved to rural Michigan, where I attended high school.  What a difference!  The schools were 10x worse and when the locals weren't impregnating their sisters they were usually stealing anything that wasn't bolted down.  I remember being beaten up in class, I remember being told I was going to hell, and I remember being one of the few students in my graduating class that actually got of there and into college.  

Call me a elitist, but I'll be damned if I actually believe that small town America is the source of good morals and good judgment.

Mike Stevens,

That's a little unfair - no place can compete with Austin. It's the best place on earth and an island of sanity in the midst of a sea of crazy.

Hook 'em.

CFK writes:  ". . . deserve a little slack at least from presidential candidates who are ostensibly running to represent all the people, most of whom live in smaller communities yet see their values mocked by smug "cosmopolitans" whose outlooks are actually more provincial than those of supposedly backward Middle America."

Right.  But Obama wasn't "mocking" those values.  He was, if you like, explaining them or analyzing their negative implications -- which people may get all riled up about, but it's a world away from making fun of them.

um, I do recall that even Sherlock Holmes looked at those sleepy small towns and shuddered at the depravities and unspeakable cruelties that lay hidden behind the mulberry bushes and curtained windows...

Or, as Nietzsche might have put it, for the herd, resentment is ok, but contempt is not. I am unclear exactly what these folks think that Obama's allegedly elitism would mean in political terms in the form of what positions he takes or policies he persues.  

I don't get why we are constantly being asked to bend over backwards to grant exaggerated intellectual respect religion, faith, and other things that are allegedly hallmarks of the "common people" when none of these things have any relevant policy ramifications.  And they certainly aren't expected to respect the things I believe in or enjoy.  And I am doubly unsure what people mean by small town values, as if people in cities don't have values, doon't work, and don't have families.

I find it funny that religious folks get offended if you suggest that their beliefs stem in large part from disgust with this life being dressed up as hope for another one, yet when you tell them you are an atheist, their first incredulous remark is "How can you go through life not believing in something greater than this?   How can you have hope?"  Do they not, with such a remark, prove the point?

So what about people who live in, say, Buffalo or Raleigh or Tampa?  Do they have sorta good judgement and sorta good morals?

All generalizations are wrong.

You are guys missing the point of political correctness.

You can joke about powerful majority abut you have to be sensitive to weak minorities.

And, jaunty, for those of us who haven't read Sherlock Holmes can see the movie Hot Fuzz.  Same point, less cultured (although still good).

kagoss, if they even had a little judgement, they wouldn't live in Buffalo, Raleigh, or Tampa.  (Burn!)  They'd live Austin (where I grew up too!)  Hook 'em!

I can see the sense in the fewer people=better morals argument, only if in its extreme manifistation.  The only places where nobody does anything bad are places where there are no people at all.

There is nothing elitist about his comments.

""""""

And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

""""""

Except for religion.  You can't joke about religious beliefs even though they are held byt eh powerful majority.  Crying religion covers every looney thing that wants exaggerated respect.  Note the handwringing over the Texas FLDS raid.  If these folks weren't a religion, there would be no handwrinigng at all - they be locked up for the child molesters and creeps that they are.

Ugh...it's one thing to mock someone with tongue in cheek and quite another to deride someone. I've found that in small(er) towns than big cities folks tend to be very cordial and friendly. But you never talk about politics, religion, guns or immigrants not because you can't have a discussion on the matter, it's that sometimes, not always, they deal in topical ignorance about things "outside" of the world.

On the other hand, urban people (those that live in close proximity to or in the city proper) can have discussions about these issues and not feel personally insulted by your disagreeing with them. But these same folks are as outgoing or cordial to strangers. A fine example of this is to say hello or smile at someone on the subway in NYC or DC. You get a dirty look.

I'm tired of the anti-intellectualism of America in general. If small town USA was so great then why do college age kids bolt for the bright lights when they get the chance? Because the economic, educational and cultural opportunities in small town USA just don't exist. It used to be that way before WW2 when a majority of folks used to live in small towns but today? Drive through Topeka sometime and compare that to Lawrence, KS. Worlds apart. One literally is in the middle of BFE and the other a thriving mid-size cosmopolitan city anchored around a University. Duh!

If it weren't for the small town, bitter-pinched faces of bigotry, ignorance, greed, pettiness, crime and indecency Faulkner wouldn't have had a lot to write about. Those same "qualities" exist in cities as much as generosity, morals, ethics, spiritualness, compassion do to. The cage doesn't sing, the bird does.

I'm off to watch some Blue Velvet. Anyone seen my bottle of nitrous?

jerb  said:

"Except for religion.  You can't joke about religious beliefs even though they are held byt eh powerful majority.  :

Nowadays  you can make joke about Pope.

However, You can't denigrate  religious beliefs in general.

I have to admit that I don't have deeply held religious beliefs. But I'm wondering if a person who truly has religious beliefs would ever say "they cling to guns or religion or antipathy toward people who aren't like"

I'm wondering if Obama is faking his "religious beliefs".

Haven't you been paying attention, jacob? Mindless, mouth-frothing, over-the-top attacks on Obama don't work. You should really think about knocking it off.

Some of the popular and academic research over the last few years points to us spending more time with like-minded folks than used to be the case.  As a college degree has become much more common than 40 years ago, it's also led to a bigger split in American society between those who have a college education and those who don't.  So you leave to go to college, while the place you left becomes more defined by the people who didn't leave, and whose choices begin perhaps to reflect that fact alone.

The tribal clustering takes place on all sides, of course, and the Trader Joes+Seattle Coffe+art shop+Java Juice+gay bar+microbrew pub crowd tend to hang out with others like them in their ideological echo-chamber, just the same as the guys in the ex-steeltown bonding over hunting (or hey, as far as I'm concerned, their internet porn links).  What bothers me a bit, though, is the the "egghead" implication.  This is often portrayed as simply a normal and indeed healthy suspicion of academics or theorists whose solutions to problems remain abstract and unconvincing -- which would be ok.  In fact, it's often a morbid hostility to any kind of original thinking or any type of solution to a political problem that doesn't involve law enforcement or the military.

I grew up in a small town, then spent college and graduate school in Manhattan.

I now live in a sophisticated southern city but teach fifty miles away in a university which has the misfortune to be located in a small town of little intrinsic interest in the Baptist Bible belt.

I can say with absolute certainty that:

a) the equation of "elites" with "urban" and "poor rubes" with "small towns" is false on several levels.  Moreover, most Americans live in large urban concentrations of one sort or another, not small towns, and have for almost a century, as the US census demonstrates.  City dwellers are the majority, not a mocked minority.

b) Some people in cities understand small town life, both the positive and the negative, and some people in small towns know the reality of urban life, both the plus and the minus.  Some people in both places, however, are utterly clueless and contemptuous of their opposite numbers.

c) This may come as news to Mr. Chotiner, but it is perfectly acceptable to make fun of small town America, particularly small town southern America.  I see it in stand up routines on cable all the time: "Whatcha mean 'deformed'?  I need that third arm to hold my sister down!"  And so on.  The myth of rural virtue vs. big city corruption is as old as ancient Rome, and people have been pointing out just how fallacious that is for just as long.  Ever heard of Peyton Place?

d) Life in small towns is just as socially stratified as that in major cities. In fact, even more so in some cases, since in small communities there is less anonymity.

e) Contrary to some of the remarks above, it is perfectly acceptable in America to criticize religion.  It is just unacceptable for *politicians* to criticize religion.  The reasons for that should be obvious.

f) Just how good or bad life is--the degree to which people are bitter, if you like--comes from exactly the same source in both small towns and major cities: economics.  Poor is poor, and it sucks.

But, woody, then we would lose our dear jacob as a commenter altogether.  

stgla: all generalizations are wrong. Brilliant line.

By and large I like small town and rural folks. They are, generally speaking(with all of its collective inadequacies), less cluttered. I mean this in a flattering way. Not to suggest naivete' or without guile but more of a priority on a kind of native intelligence which has less difficulty seeing something for what it is at its most basic.

Now surely as it is entirely possible to over-intellectualize so too can the same be oversimplified. The elite tag is a code word for lacking common sense. The idea that quotas and PC inventions can do anything but atomize the melting pot is one predominant but unarticulated concern. Another issue is God and Patriotism. As surely as the blue sky and nobody is breathing down my neck with their agenda...... offers all I need. I will support that arrangement with my life and loyalty.

Now the elites will have fun at the expense of the rube preacher or man of cause that will fight the Darwin battles. That comical denigration doesn't sit well. Especially when the driest interpretation and an insistence that science is somehow the ambassador of the fullest truths without the slightest regard to the ever shifting sands of semantics. So goes suspicion about the real wisdoms academia and its profiteers might be able to impart upon their simple souls.

Of course these are generalizations. As has been said, such things are woefully inadequate.

I just spent 3 years in a small town, or, if you like, teen pregancy/meth lab hellhole, and I don't get the moral superiority argument. Oh - wait! There were no black people in it. Is that what this is?