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...This article contains a table. Please see hardcopy of magazine or PDF.] ROUND 1 2 3 4 ISSUE Endorsements Money Gaffes Coattails ACTION Colin Powell dramatically unveiled his cross-party support for Barack Obama on Meet the Press--complete with indictments of John McCain's campaign tactics, Sarah Palin's qualifications and George W. Bush's Supreme Court nominees. But it was the former Secretary of State and four-star general's testimony on Obama's readiness to be Commander in Chief that gave this endorsement its unusual megawattage and influence. If, as the saying goes, money is the mother...
Today my core beliefs are pretty much the same as then. (Well, the Bob Seger ... only in moderation.) But now I am unreal because I work in the media and live in Brooklyn, which is presumably not among Sarah Palin's "pro-American" parts of America. This is what campaign coverage tells me. If a candidate appeals to my kind, it is a liability. My artificiality will stain him with a mark that can be washed off only by a shot, a beer and a pilgrimage to Scranton...
...image of America shaped by outdated iconography and the self-consciousness and class guilt of journalists, especially male ones. (What do we, with our soft, girlie hands, know about real life?) Palin, in this picture, is real because she eats moose. Obama is not real, because he eats arugula. Yet arugula is served at strip-mall chains like the Olive Garden and Panera. Rachael Ray--not exactly a food snob's idol--makes pasta and beef tenderloin with it. I have looked in vain for her mooseburger recipe. Why are you so out of touch with yourself, America...
Which is not to say that Palin is any less real than Obama either. But she represents a kind of life--well-paid blue collar folks living close to the land--that has become rare and far removed from the American median. An élite, if you will...
Ironically, the very appeal of Palin's candidacy, and Obama's, is how they give the lie to "regular" Americanness, to the assumptions about what a female or a black candidate must be like. They remind us by their presence that "average" is anything but, that no one has a monopoly on reality. Our pundits should keep that in mind too. It would be--dare I say it?--the pro-American thing...