In a desperate attempt to maintain their liberal credentials, journalists toss around outdated information. The facts, obvious to less “enlightened” folk, are too dire for them to dare contemplate…
Perhaps the simplest answer to why Catholics voted so strongly for Hilary Clinton is the race of her African American opponent, Barack Obama. This would not surprise historians. Irish Catholics’ embrace of “whiteness” — identification as white and support of white supremacy — has been a major theme in the writing of American history for more than two decades. So much so that, as one historian has said, it has become a “cliché.” This year’s political observers and participants have picked up on the theme: The Washington Post reported, for example, on the burning of green Obama signs on St. Patrick’s day in Scranton. Even Reverend Jeremiah Wright spoke darkly, if obliquely, about Irish American whiteness — “Hear that O’Malley, O’Reilly?” — in his speech at the National Press Club.
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Robert Frost once famously urged John Kennedy to be more Irish than Harvard, but Obama may not find a solution to white perceptions of his elitism in his African American heritage. If emotional and stirring, the Protestant cadences of African American speech, for example, resonate with a kind of moral uplift that seems alien to some Catholics. The moral earnestness in Martin Luther King’s talk sometimes made Bobby Kennedy cringe, for example. Not just too academic and cold, then, Obama may also be too emotional and “hot,” for Catholics who appreciate gritty ironies and earthy skepticism.
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Suspicion of elites is about economic class but not entirely; it is also about historic religious and ethnic resentments. It thus can be about policy, issues and programs, but it can also be about the way people talk, their sense of humor, even gestures…
Such anti-elitism is also not a specifically Catholic attitude, but Catholics, as noted, have long histories of battles between outside “goo-goo” reformers and inside resisting, tough guy, heroes.
And so my answer is, has America really been unfair to minorities? No it hasn’t. It was unfair to me. A white butcher’s kid, whose father had no money, but nobody gave me a break. And do I have a chip on my shoulder? You’re damn right I do. And I represent millions and millions of poor people in this country who weren’t lucky enough to be poor and black, they were unlucky enough to be poor and white, and they can’t get into Harvard. So maybe that country Barack’s fighting for, he’s got the wrong country here. He’s been just fine in this country. The rest of us need someone to defend them…
There are more “this guys” out there than you dare to imagine.
