Moreover, when did intelligence become a liability with the voters?  The assumptions Gerson makes about the American people are the most condescending thing of all here.  Obama is trying something really different: he's talking to us like we're adults.

Gerson is an idiot if he thinks people paying $4.00 a gallon gas, ever higher food prices, and endless war on the horizon in Iraq, devaluing home prices, unstable job market, mediocre stock market, you know I can go on and on will say in one voice. "I don't care about any of this, where is his flag pin?" Obviously only people insulated from the real world, ie. wankers such as Gerson, will obsess over this.

After Hillary is finally put down, expect McCain to act as a kinder, gentler Hillary echoing her same themes. It will be a continuation of the never ending Democratic primary. It has a better chance with McCain since Republicans will hold their noses and vote for him, not sure if it will be enough.

"He is supposed to be the face-painted superfan at every home game; to wear red, white and blue boxers on special marital occasions; to get misty-eyed during the most obscure patriotic hymns."

Upon closer examination of Article II, this does not appear to exist anywhere within the job description.  Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy....make treaties...appoint executive and judicial offices....faithfully execute laws....nope, nothing in there about face paint and sobbing.  But hey, thanks for playing.

The weakness of Gerson's conclusion is that Obama wasn't in fact trying to act as an "arbiter of symbols" -- he was just explaining why he thought HE should no longer wear the lapel pin.  I also doubt that people continue to not get it, whether they react positively or negatively.  It's Gerson who has a taste for patriotic arbitration.

"He is supposed to be the face-painted superfan at every home game"

These guys are always drunken assholes who provoke needless violence and mayhem and inevitably ruin the experience for everyone around them.

Remind me, which president did Gerson work for ...?

(Apologies to yard, boneill and rhubarbs if you guys are face-painted superfans - obviously the exceptions to the rule!)

It has worked for a long time - George Wallace, Ed Meese, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove, Tom Delay, but they have driven it into hard ground and broken it off now - I think Americans will think better this time.

Isn't the correct answer to point out that most of the flag lapel pins on display in Washington are made in China? Perfect way to play up the all-hat, no-cattle "patriotism" of Republicans and also turn the question into one of authenticity and new politics (Obama) versus inauthenticity and old politics (GOP).

Also, dude, where's McCain's lapel pin? Do a Google image search, and you won't find a flag on McCain's lapel in the first 100 results. Plus, McCain is the candidate whose campaign graphics have gone from black, gray, and gold to blue and gold, and only in the last few weeks has he added red and white to the blue. Clearly, John McCain hates America and looks down on all us rubes who fly American flags on our houses and root for teams that wear red, white, and blue.

"Knowledge class"???  As opposed to what, the "no-knowledge class"?  Or maybe the idiot class?  What then?

I'm sick of Gerson and his evil ilk.  His "class" gave us George W. Bush.  Twice.  So how'd that work out?

Yeah, I'm bitter.  I'm a college educated, church-going white southern middle-aged male who likes NASCAR and is really bitter  Absolutely bitter at what his 'class' and their idiot know-nothing followers have done to my country.  They've put it on a path straight to collapse with a miserable future for my children.

Really, really bitter.  And proud to say it.

Woody, no worries. As far as I can tell, being a superfan of the Washington Nationals involves wearing the loudest possible Hawaiian shirt, not painting one's face. If you catch a Nats game, I won't be the drunken frat boy shouting "you suck!" at the visitors; I'm the guy who starts the rhythmic clapping at key moments. My two superhero powers are an uncanny ability to avoid stepping in yucky stuff without looking and the ability to clap extraordinarily loud. Just to test once, my wife egged me into doing the strike-out clap at a completely random moment, and sure enough within a few seconds the whole park was clapping along. Never again; with that kind of power comes great responsibility.

So if Obama showed up at the Senate dressed like that Oakland Raider guy in spiked shoulder pads and his face painted as a skull, would that make him look more "working class" and less effete.

Then I suppose we could change the National colors to silver and black and spell USA with umlauts to make everyone know "We Mean Business!"

www.supportourribbons.com/maker2_show.php

anonevent, I love it!  Reminds me of a snide comment from a cousin of mine.  He said these clowns that have the ribbons on their vehicles won't even put a real sticker on their cars that will tear up paint when removed.  He likened it as not even having any skin in the game.  His comment and that ribbon say it so well.

Right on, tnmats!  Someone needs to put an end to this whole groundless rigmarole about "knowledge workers" versus real folks.  Whether you teach Green and Roman literature, plumb buildings, design web sites, fly planes for Delta, run a farm, write for a newspaper, hang the doors on a new BMW, clean people's teeth, or number-crunch for a fast-food company, you are a knowledge worker.

Apparently politics is the only profession where you can do without any.

anonevent: precious.

tnmats: good post.

I'm still trying to figure out when it became "bad" to have brains.  I thought that and opposing thumbs is what separates us from the rest of the animals.

If this country is supposed to compete with the Chinese, Indians, Europeans, Japanese, etc., aren't we supposed to upgrade education?  Which means make the population smarter?  Which means in GOP and Hillaryland that's a bad thing, being able to think for yourself and not be sucked into stupid symbolism.

Oh Lucy, you got some 'splainin' to do....

Sorry, I meant "Greek and Roman" not "Green and Roman."  Although a mix of Rachel Carson and Horace's Odes might well be an interesting class.

Brains -- it became bad to have brains once there was a connection established between brains and voting patterns.

Frankly, Americans tend to know a great deal about sports and entertainment but not too much about politics and economics.

"Knowledge workers" are, for the most part, people who don't produce anything; they are the products of a "New Economy" which can only "survive" through running massive balance of trade deficits and praying that the air will not go out of an overly-inflated dollar.

Do you mean that as a serious point, or are you parodying Gerson?  To suggest that "a New Economy" is only valid in quotes is to argue, at least implicitly, that any notion that the economy has changed radically over the last 20 years is either propaganda or fantasy.

Ever more significant amounts of value are being created in the economy that don't have physical embodiment as a product you can hold or touch.

It's also a crock, because so-called manual or blue-collar workers also deal in knowledge, just as much as the person handling informational product.

That's nice Jason. Did you by any chance call registered Dems in Pennsylvania for the Obama campaign? I did. It was sobering. I only hope these people are outnumbered. They definitely exist. I talked to them. I was polite, don't worry. But - ouch!

The president is supposed to be a "face-painted superfan"?

I recently spent a few weeks in Vienna, Tokyo and Shangai. Have we ever had a president so disrespected, so widely viewed as irrelevant, as a buffoon?

Gerson and his ilk are proudly oblivious what the world thinks of our president.

The world - both friends and enemies - thinking our president is a "face-painted superfan"...this is a good thing?

When I see pictures of Obama and his wife and their two girls--a rare nuclear family--it tugs at my heart. It's an emotional response. Wouldn't it be wonderful or ideal to have a man like that as president? The flag lapel is the same thing: it's an emotional response. The president is commander in chief and, at minimum, should be cheerleader in chief for the country too. Obama must know that.  I understand all the "intellectual" arguments and explanations. They have their place and help form decisions. But  I'm glad I still have these silly ol' emotional responses, too, even if they sometimes defy logic.

He's idiotic to think that the opinions of most hard working people--to busy making a living to keep up with the silly pedantry of Russert and Fineman--are autonomously formed. It's not like they saw Obama's blazer on television and noticed for themselves that Obama doesn't wear a lapel pin and got suspicious about his patriotism. Rather, Fox News and the Washington Post pointed it out to them, with the implication that this signified a substandard love of the fatherland on Obama's part. A lot of people certainly do have silly views about politics, but the blame belongs with the elites like Gerson who cater to and feed this mindlessness, not hard-working Americans who suspect, rightly, that most political news is glorified gossip with no effect on their lives.

" The arrogance of the aristocrat is nothing compared to the arrogance of the academic."

Dubious.

Irony, I put "New Economy" in quotes because it is not entirely "new" (we had a shift away from manufacturing during the 1920s and we all know how that turned out) nor is it necessarily an "economy," especially if one thinks about the economy in physical rather than monetary terms. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to create an economic "boom" by creating more print and digital currency without corresponding increases in tangible production; but that "boom" quickly becomes dot.com bubbles, or real estate bubbles, or outright inflation. That's not a real economy as I see it. As for "knowledge workers," yeah, that's a lot of hype and, it is a delusion that is a product of a delusion. The delusion it is a product of is the "New Economy."

Jason Zengerle, glib, arrogant, pedantic...i.e. an academic.  His reposte proves Gerson's point.

I think the best thing about an Obama presidency is that the words "intellectual," "intelligent," and "educated," will no longer be derogatory. Our much-lamented educational system cannot improve until education and knowledge  become a cultural value. By appealing to and glorifying the most ignorant aspects of our society we have de-valued the very qualities that are needed to bring our country into the twenty first century. When are people going to accept that manufacturing, blue-collar jobs are no longer the backbone of our economy and instead train those workers and their children to value the education that they need to fill the kinds of jobs that are needed in the twenty first century? Instead of pandering to the resentments of "hard-working, white Americans" by railing against Nafta and promising the impossible, somebody needs to tell them the truth: these jobs are not going to come back, BUT we will give you vocational training for industries that are growing. And the educational system has to be modified accordingly. NCLB is NOT working: high school dropout rates have increased rather decreased under its mandates.

I've been reading Gerson pretty regularly.  His reasoning is almost always enormously labored and inorganic.  He's so resolutely coming from what he already believes that his "logic" is simply a maze he creates in order to wend his way to the pre-existing conclusion that he always knew stood just outside the maze's exit.  Strange, to start an argument knowing its beginning and its end and then struggle to retrofit everything in the middle to link up to those two points.  You can always see the work that goes into it.

matthawk, I get that you disagree with my post, but I'm still not sure what you mean.  I wasn't talking about real estate bubbles, as I think you know perfectly well.  Are you really saying that the only economic value is a concretely existing product?  That knowledge (leaving aside the legitimacy of the phrase "knowledge economy" for the moment) has no value?  That the knowledge that enables a value creating communication to take place (e.g. a new theory of aerodynamics that enables more efficient aircraft wing design to happen that in turn creates more efficient aircraft that fly faster and with more fuel economy) has no share in that value?

Could you clarify, please?  Because it seems to me you're setting up a straw man (dot.com bubble or the like) to shoot down, when that's not what's at issue.