An Elitist Snob's Take on Wal-Mart Shoppers

Attention Wal-Mart Shoppers: Here's what the educated elite really think about you. Coastal liberal and long-time Wal-Mart hater Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic magazine wrote the following description of how he saw folks at a Wal-Mart in Martinsburg, WV back on June 23, 2008:

But about those down-and-out customers: If you want to see the underside of the unregulated capitalist economy, the people who can't find the non-existent escape ladder from poverty and its pathologies, visit the Martinsburg, West Virginia Wal-Mart. Morbid obesity; spontaneous, public bouts of corporal punishment directed against dirty children; ten-year girls dressed as whores; tattoos running up necks and down legs; smoking like you only see these days in Baku; it's all here. I considered myself a socialist until I was about 23 (that was when I fled my kibbutz for the final time) but a visit to the Martinsburg Wal-Mart reawakens my distaste for steroidal capitalism.

Goldberg later refers to Wal-Mart workers as "hopeless and toothless." What a collection of stereotypes of working class Americans, straight out of Marx's Grim Fairy Tales of the Lumpenproletariat.

Now, as you can imagine, this column set off quite an uproar in Martinsburg. Rather than apologize, Goldberg states:

It's interesting to me how many people conflate an attack on Wal-Mart with an attack on their community. I suppose this just how the malevolent merchants from Bentonville, Ark., would have it.

Yeah. Wal-Mart made Goldberg an arrogant and self-righteous asshole. Who knows though? Maybe Goldberg is a double agent for Wal-Mart; his overbearing pretentiousness discrediting other Wal-Mart haters. But let's face it. "Ten-year girls dressed as whores?" It WAS a vicious attack on the Martinsburg community, and more generally an attack on all the people who shop at Wal-Mart.

And that ultimately is what the war on Wal-Mart is all about. It's rank class hatred, bigotry and pure snobbery from wealthy elitists towards the people they claim to be "protecting" from Wal-Mart.

But I for one am glad for Goldberg's hateful rant. Next time you read in the Daily News about "$45,000 traffic studies" and "wreaking havoc on small towns," you'll know what those code words really mean.

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Pass The Class Hatred, Comrade

Speaking of anti-bourgeoisie manifestos, did anyone catch some of the Pullman League of Women Voter's ballyhooed "non-partisanship" on display in Lenna Harding's colmnn in the Moscow-Pullman Daily News today?

What kind of people can be happy with failure to address some of our country's most basic problems? It is this smug head-in-the-sand satisfaction with the status quo that the author of that message shares with our current leadership that has got us deeper into the morass that I have described. Things are just peachy with them. They have their flashy gas-guzzling SUVs or sports cars along with speedy boats and ATVs that tear up our pristine wilderness. They have enough money to buy corn-fed beef and the latest electronic gadget when it hits the market.

These same head-in-the-sand types often are the same folks who equate pledging allegiance, flag-waving, wearing flag lapel pins with patriotism, and who decry those who don't follow protocol or criticize our leaders as unpatriotic. Like the flowers that bloom in the spring - tra la - these have nothing to do with the case.

Aren't you glad that so-called "progressives" are not bigoted, don't question others patriotism, don't play to stereotypes, don't practice the politics of division, and don't encourage class warfare?

Let me skewer the myth of the wealthy, selfish conservative one more time. A recent study by Arthur C. Brooks, an economist at Syracuse University, found that on average, liberal families annually earn 6 percent more than conservative families. Furthermore, conservative households give 30 percent more money to charity than liberal households.

Leave the F#$%ing Stilts at Home

Matt Taibbi, a contributing editor to Rolling Stone, has written what I consider to be the most insightful (and damning) indictment of modern American liberalism I have yet seen. THIS IS A MUST-READ TO UNDERSTAND THE POLITICAL DYNAMICS IN PULLMAN AND MOSCOW!

When you read this, think of the wealthy Ph.D's of "grassroots" PARD and No SuperWalMart reliving their Berkeley-esque tie-dye glory days and lecturing us about the plight of the working class. Think of Mayor Chaney and her "sustainable" Mexican fishing village. Think of white professor David Leonard yammering on about Hurricane Katrina and African-American "genocide." Think of the recent freakshow that was the "Northwest Progressive Conference" at WSU. Think of John Streamas comparing the WSU College Republicans to Nazis. Think of Alex McDonald, the Young Democrats, and other middle-class WSU students complaining about "racism" and "oppression" on campus. Think of the monotonously politically correct and left-wing orthodox editorialists of the Daily Evergreen writing about "getting involved," "where's the outrage?" and "youth apathy." Taibbi makes the same point I have made before: Liberals ARE the establishment now. How can they rebel against themselves? That is why I contend that conservatism is becoming the new counterculture, and hence, much more fun.

Some relevant quotes:

Thus, the people who are the public voice of American liberalism rarely have any real connection to the ordinary working people whose interests they putatively champion. They tend instead to be well-off, college-educated yuppies from California or the East Coast, and hard as they try to worry about food stamps or veterans’ rights or securing federal assistance for heating oil bills, they invariably gravitate instead to things that actually matter to them – like the slick Al Gore documentary on global warming, or the “All Things Considered” interview on NPR with the British author of Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook. They haven’t yet come up with something to replace the synergy of patrician and middle-class interests that the New Deal represented.

[...]


“Perhaps what the real issue is that the left is not really a grassroots movement,” he says. “You have this donor/elite class, and then you have the public . . . You have these zillionaires who are supposedly funding the progressive movement. At some point that gets to be a problem.”

[...]

This is another dirty little secret of the left – the fact that, at least when it comes to per-capita income, those interminable right-wing criticisms about liberals being “elitists” are actually true. According to a 2004 Pew report, Americans who self-identify as liberals have an average annual income of $71,000 – the highest-grossing political category in America. They’re also the best-educated class, with over one in four being post-graduates.

[...]

But having rich college grads acting as the political representatives of the working class isn’t just bad politics. It’s also silly. And there’s probably no political movement in history that’s been sillier than the modern American left.

What makes the American left silly? Things that in a vacuum should be logical impossibilities are frighteningly common in lefty political scenes. The word “oppression” escaping, for any reason, the mouths of kids whose parents are paying 20 grand for them to go to private colleges. Academics in Priuses using the word “Amerika.” Ebonics, Fanetiks, and other such insane institutional manifestations of white guilt. Combat berets. Combat berets in conjunction with designer coffees. Combat berets in conjunction with designer coffees consumed at leisure in between conversational comparisons of America to Nazi Germany.

We all know where this stuff comes from. Anyone who’s ever been to a lefty political meeting knows the deal – the problem is the “spirit of inclusiveness” stretched to the limits of absurdity. The post-sixties dogma that everyone’s viewpoint is legitimate, everyone‘s choice about anything (lifestyle, gender, ethnicity, even class) is valid, that’s now so totally ingrained that at every single meeting, every time some yutz gets up and starts rambling about anything, no matter how ridiculous, no one ever tells him to shut the fuck up. Next thing you know, you’ve got guys on stilts [like the No SuperWalMart doofus pictured above - tf] wearing mime makeup and Cat-in-the-Hat striped top-hats leading a half-million people at an anti-war rally. Why is that guy there? Because no one told him that war is a matter of life and death and that he should leave his fucking stilts at home.

Then there’s the tone problem. A hell of a lot of what the left does these days is tediously lecture middle America about how wrong it is, loudly snorting at a stubbornly unchanging litany of Republican villains. There’s a weirdly indulgent tone to all of this Bush-bashing that goes on in lefty media, a tone that’s not only annoyingly predictable in its pervasiveness, but a turnoff to people who might have tuned in to that channel in search of something else.

[...]

But to me the biggest problem with American liberalism is that it hasn’t found a new legend for itself, one to replace the old one, which is more and more often no longer relevant. I’ve got no problem with long hair and weed and kids playing “Imagine” on acoustic guitars at peace marches. But we often make the mistake of thinking that the “revolution” of the sixties is something that rightly should continue on to today.

While it’s true that we’re still fighting against unjust wars and that there’s unfinished business on the fronts of women’s rights, civil rights, and environmental preservation, there’s no generational battle left for America’s rich kids to fight. In the sixties, college kids had to fight for their right to refuse to become bankers, soldiers, plastics executives or whatever other types of dreary establishment lifestyles their parents were demanding for them. And because they had to fight that fight, the interests of white college kids were briefly and felicitously aligned with the blacks and the migrant farm workers and the South Vietnamese, who were also victims of the same dug-in, inflexible political establishment. Long hair, tie-dye and the raised black fist all had the same general message – screw the establishment. It was a sort of Marxian perfect storm where even the children of the bourgeoisie could semi-realistically imagine themselves engaged in a class struggle.

But American college types don’t have to fight for shit anymore. Remember the Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill album? Remember that song “Fight for Your Right to Party”? Well, people, that song was a joke. So was “We’re Not Gonna Take It” and “And the Cradle Will Rock.” The only thing American college kids have left to fight for are the royalties for their myriad appearances in Girls Gone Wild videos. Which is why they look ridiculous parading around at peace protests in the guise of hapless victims and subjects of the Amerikan neo-Reich. Rich liberals protesting the establishment is absurd because they are the establishment; they’re just too embarrassed to admit it.

When they start embracing their position of privilege and taking responsibility for the power they already have – striving to be the leaders of society they actually are, instead of playing at being aggrieved subjects – they’ll come across as wise and patriotic citizens, not like the terminally adolescent buffoons trapped in a corny sixties daydream they often seem to be now. They’ll stop bringing puppets to marches and, more importantly, they’ll start doing more than march.

This is why I don't sweat PARD. No one will ever take them seriously. Those self-important poseurs would have been finished a year ago if not for the Pullman City Code that threw their appeal into the glacially-paced justice system.

And I don't fear the Democrats, because as many missteps as the GOP has made over the war, immigration, etc., the average American does not consider the looney moonbats of Pelosi, Reid and Company to be a viable alternative. Once the Republicans find a leader who can connect with the common people again, as Ronald Reagan did, the ship will be righted and the left will be put out of our misery for good.

HT: Dale Courtney

Wal-Mart Hating Snobs: Racism, Classism, and Super-Snobbery

Speaking of snobbery, there was great exchange on Fox News The Cost of Freedom between Neal Cavuto, Ben Stein, Charles Payne, Jerry Bowyer, Laura Schwartz, and Pat Powell:

Head to Head: Wal-Mart-Hating Snobs?

Neil Cavuto: People who block Wal-Marts from coming to big cities like New York are just snobs who hurt Middle Class Americans. That's what Ben Stein thinks. It's time to go "Head to Head." What do you mean, Ben?

Ben Stein: Well, I mean that Wal-Mart is an incredible benefit to any community. It makes all the people around it richer because their paycheck can go further and they can buy more. It's essentially like getting a raise. But, upper middle class, snobby upper class, people who watch movies with subtitles… and I watch them, too…are saying Wal-Mart isn't good enough for us. But something else is happening. It's racism. I know people who say, "We don't want Wal-Mart in our community because it draws in the African Americans, it draws in the Hispanics, and it draws in people whose faces are not the same color as ours. We don't want them in our neighborhood." Racism has a lot to do with the dislike of Wal-Mart. I hate to say it because it's a very strong accusation, but I've heard it over and over again.

Charles Payne: I think the snobbery does play a role. It's really interesting, particularly in Manhattan, because the average apartment costs $1 million, and certainly Wal-Mart doesn't bring up the property value, it probably brings it down in part to the racism thing Ben was talking about. Certainly there's a serious problem between snobbery and the unions in these large cities. In New York, you can't build a bird cage without union approval. I think it's a combination of both. Certainly the image of Wal-Mart does not fit the image of classy, urban areas like Park Avenue or Fifth Avenue or anywhere in Manhattan for that matter. Ben is on to something there. I think it goes beyond race and onto elitism.

Ben Stein: It's racism and classism, and super-snobbery is the main heading.

Charles Payne: Let me just say one thing. The real sad thing about it, particularly with the liberals, is that whenever they have a chance to help people, they don't. You know, they wouldn't mind a Wal-Mart in New York, as long as it's in the Bronx; it can't be in Manhattan.

Jerry Bowyer: I think Ben and Charles are both right. I think it's kind of a class-snobbishness. I don't know about the race side of it. It's plausible. But, it's also bad for the middle class in terms of employment opportunities. It's not just a consumer thing. We have friends of the family who work at Wal-Mart. Sometimes people without a college degree or professional certification can come into a Wal-Mart at an entry level and work their way up. I think that Wal-Mart ought to be allowed any place where people are willing to work at it and buy the products.

Ben Stein: Nobody's forced to work at Wal-Mart. People do it freely.

Laura Schwartz: I know snobs who shop at Wal-Mart. They may go there at 2:00 in the morning, but they do. Everybody likes a good deal. That's what Wal-Mart gives.

Charles Payne: But they don't want it in their neighborhood.

Laura Schwartz: But, you know what? You have to look at the fact that this is not snobbery-driven. This is politically-driven. It's the unions. When it comes to New York and LA, huge union towns, there's no way. But in Chicago, where I come from, Mayor Daley worked it out. Wal-Mart is now on the south side. The area has a higher percentage of lower income folks, but it's allowing them to get access to goods and services they can afford.

Pat Powell: I think she's on to something. I think it's politics and not snobbery. I think it's a politics of deflection. If you have a health care crisis in this country, it can't be your fault. It's gotta be Wal-Mart's fault. If you don't have high paying jobs, it's gotta be Wal-Mart's fault. There's somebody to blame, and who are you going to blame, but the great American success story?

What some of those commentators failed to realize is that it's both: It's union politics AND crass snobbery and racism; the unholy alliance of fringe lunatics and drawbridgers that I have written of so often. The unions have very few sympathizers. The majority of Wal-Mart hate is just pure classism and racism. PARDners like Deirdre Rogers play to that with code words like "Wal-Mart will lead to the the intrusion of undesirable social classes"

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