Enemies of 'elite' Barack Obama show contempt for education

New York Daily News ^ | May 12th 2008 | Stanley Crouch

[fweingart]

Nothing has been quite as exciting and as disappointing or even disgusting as the grand drama of this Democratic contest for the nomination.

We have seen Barack Obama rise and, with a new tone, make biracial identity a public fact of American life. We have also seen Americans reinvigorated, surging with a refreshing patriotism that is fully aware of the country's shortcomings.

We have seen America's history of struggling toward fairness become, perhaps for the first time, a common heritage that crossed lines of color, class, religion, region and sexual identity.

In Obama's world, every American can lay claim to the Constitution, to the Abolition movement, to the destruction of the slavery system by the Civil War, to women getting the vote, to organized labor, to the defeat of fascism and to the victories of the Civil Rights movement. Those were not the struggles and the victories of special interest groups.

As Patrick Buchanan predicted, the only hope for Obama's foes was to knock him off of his pedestal and into the mud-wrestling we have seen define our politics. But the Rev. Jeremiah Wright was the big bomb that didn't quite go off.

Wright's ethnic Gong Show - and the vast right-wing conspiracy that Hillary Clinton joined when she helped to give it credence - may have allowed Clinton to greasily slip through the door of victory in Indiana, but it raised issues that should make us stop on a dime.

Columbia- and Harvard-educated, bad-bowling Obama is an elite, the conservatives - and the Clintons - claim. He is out of touch with the working class, they say.

It has become commonplace for the predictable millionaire puppets of Fox News and their conservative talk radio counterparts to present themselves as the voices of the working class in combat with an educated elite from places like Harvard.

But beneath those cliches fester ideas that are deeply anti-democratic.

They are anti-democratic because they scoff at this basic truth: Education is the key to social mobility in our country. The stereotyped working class has no innate limits. It has produced the majority of doctors, engineers, architects, educators and others who realized the dreams of their families by studying hard and moving into careers quite different from those of their parents and their neighbors.

Education has always been viewed as suspect by everyone from slave owners to totalitarians. Wherever in the world you find them, they share one hostility: They hate books.

The presidency is not an Academy Award for Best Performance as a bowler, a fast food gobbler, a whisky and beer guzzler, a hard-hat-wearer or a hunter. We ought to know how far leadership capabilities are from surfaces, slogans and costumes.

And we should be ever suspicious of anyone or any group that scorns education, that pretends to believe that only the simple and the uncomplicated can express the national ethos.

That is absolutely ridiculous in a country from which so much technological and scientific innovation has come. Tell that to Thomas Edison, the Wright Brothers or Bill Gates, none of whom were from the upper class. Or are we to believe they were just simple men looking for a loud bar and a cold beer?

The precious opportunity that our democracy provides is the chance to stop, look, listen and think through all that history has taught us about the bottom and about the top.

Real leadership is something internal, not superficial, and should be judged by substance, policy and solutions that are empathetic but realistic, inventive, fiscally responsible and feasible. No one knows the taste of pie in the sky, but we have all felt and smelled the putrid humidity of hot air.

[Sgt_Schultze]

I’d likely agree with you, but it is a Buckley quote - I just wanted to be accurate.

[norton]

I started to get into this but quit after about - far too many - lines.

Obama does represent an elite, an elite by its own definition that believes that only its members can assign proper roles for the rest of us.
Obama's elite knows who should go to school, who should pay taxes, and who is too ignorant to understand the blessings of an all knowing government - assuming that 'they' control it.

(Side note, reading on pre WW2 socialist/communist conflicts; it's interesting to see Hillary assigned to the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.)

[EnigmaticAnomaly]

"More like a COSMIC MEGA-BARF, HURL’EN from the souls of my feet alert.."

Yeah! And maybe even from the SOLES of your feet, too...:-)

[Tzimisce]

When they say “change”, they don’t mean for themselves. :D

[roaddog727]

Dude.

MY feet have Souls. I’m Series!

[Luke21]

They need to look in the mirror. The liberals are the status quo. We are the outsiders. The entire infrastructure, corporations, education, media, politicians, lawyers, insurance companies, buraeucracy.. are run by these people. They aren't about change. They are about socialism and political correctness. Hillary is the same thing in a pantsuit.

[Aquinasfan]

this basic truth: Education is the key to social mobility in our country.

SCHOOLING is the key to social mobility in this country, not education. BIG difference. Schooling = paper credentials. Education = knowledge. But even paper credentials can only carry a person so far. Is it a coincidence that Dell, Jobs and Gates never finished college?

Ultimately, a person who is well educated will be happier and lead a richer and fuller life than someone who is merely schooled. And there's more to "success" in life than simply earning money.

[The Electrician]

It has become commonplace for the predictable millionaire puppets of Fox News and their conservative talk radio counterparts to present themselves as the voices of the working class in combat with an educated elite from places like Harvard.

There's a lot of rubbish in this article, but I will highlight just one piece of it. Notice the dishonesty by Crouch here. He uses "millionaire" as an epithet to characterize his stereotyped view of Fox News and talk radio commentators. Yet I don't see him using the same epithet to taint his saint Obama, the millionaire.

Education has always been viewed as suspect by everyone from slave owners to totalitarians. Wherever in the world you find them, they share one hostility: They hate books.

Actually it is other peoples' wealth that has always been viewed as suspect by everyone from slave owners to totalitarians to every flavor of leftist (such as Crouch). Wherever in the world you find them, they share one hostility: They hate the wealthy. (except for themselves, that is)

Crouch clearly reveals his totalitarian nature in this article.

[Philo-Junius]

Stanley Crouch seems to be casting Obama as the erudite Adlai Stevenson running against the boorish Eisenhower.

Well, America made the right choice last time.

[nicola_tesla]

I’m with you all the way.

When Hertz Rent-A-Car needs college graduates to man its counters to fill out a simple form and run a credit card, then I know my MS way overqualifies me for any job these simpletons can hold.

True story - years ago I lived overseas for a year of school. I was ashamed to find out that as good as I thought my education was, my history education was so deficient I felt illiterate. I spent years reading up on history so I have intelligent perspectives on current events.

[nicola_tesla]

It’s worse than that. They believe no one other than them (the elites) has enough intelligence to determine what’s good for the individual.

The day someone tries to tell me to my face that they know better than I do what is good for me is the day that person retires from the elitist mindset with a shattered ego.

[HighlyOpinionated]

On the barfometer, this is definitely a B..A..R..F!

Elitists are like the "can you hear me now" man . . . they see all the "little folks" or in ObamaSlama "white folks" standing around merely to serve them in their endeavor to prove they are worthy of their own praise.

BARF indeed. The writer is from the planet Barf, it's on the other side of the moon.

Barack Hussein Obama is the epitome Race Card. He uses it deftly. He allows everyone's racial bias to determine his lineage as African (Negro), when it is Kenya ARAB. He wrote lies in his books to cover himself. He could and should have decided as a teenager to accept his ARAB lineage rather than have all the emotional trauma of trying to become a "black" man. He is not black. He is ARAB and there is no "color" to ARAB. His father when working for Jomo Kenyatta is described as ARAB. Not a color, just ARAB.

And I think that is why he is so angry and bitter. He knows he is living a lie. He knows that somewhere, sometime, someone is going to publicly document his true lineage. And then he will have to admit the truth. Let's just hope this happens BEFORE November.

Barack Jr and Sr.

Barack Hussein Obama and his ARAB-Kenyan Family.

[Beckwith]

I wonder if Stanley Crouch would like an in-depth examination of his shortcomings?

[fweingart]

He is no doubt a very shallow man who writes to hear the sound of his voice reading back what he has written.

He always writes with a dictionary and a thesaurus at hand as he can't spell worth a damn and doesn't know how to use the 'spell check' feature on his computer.

[aruanan]

Enemies of 'elite' Barack Obama show contempt for education

Stanley Crouch is either a moron or is being sneaky. He's doing a variety of the undistributed middle fallacy: A is middle. B is middle; therefore A is B. Or a cat is a quadruped. A dog is a quadruped. Therefore a dog is a cat. Or in his argument: These bad, bad guys such as slaveholders and totalitarians hate education (actually totalitarians love education; they just want to be the ones totally in charge of the curriculum). You hate Barack Obamaa because he's educated; therefore, you are one of the bad guys like slaveholders and totalitarians.

[MrB]

the day that person retires from the elitist mindset with a shattered ego

shattered ego? what part of the body is that?

Seriously, though, leftist elitists know that people will resist their superior wisdom, that's why they get the backing of the gov't with its exclusive monopoly on the legal use of lethal force to force you to comply. It's for your own good, you know.

[metesky]

Stanley, stick with music criticism. Musicians have better weed than Obama.

[nicola_tesla]

ego - what elitists use in place of critical reasoning/factual analysis facilities

shatter - break into pieces

ergo, bash their brains out

;)

I think elitist leftists use gov’t force not just to force you to obey their edicts, but to force all but themselves TO THE SAME LEVEL. It’s an envy thing. You know, all are equal but some (the elitists) are more equal than others.

[MrB]

Have you read Sowell’s “Conflict of Visions”?

He goes over the mindset of the left that some (and each leftist thinks he’s one of the “some”) are more enlightened than others and have the right and obligation to make decisions for the unenlightened. Due to this obligation and enlightenment, they should not be held to the same restrictions that they would hold everyone else to.

See the left’s reaction to Gore’s “carbon footprint” for a good example.

[Centurion2000]

Sounds like Plato’s philosopher-kings of his Republic.