Post by midcan5 on Apr 18, 2008 20:15:33 GMT -5
It's the Wal-Marts, Stupid by Jordan Stancil
My town's sad spiral shows why rural Americans might be "bitter".
"Barack Obama's clumsy remarks on the links between culture and economics in small-town America have unleashed the predictable charges of "elitism" from his opponents. In a typical example, William Kristol wrote in his New York Times column that Senator Obama was "disdainful of small-town America--one might say, of bourgeois America."
The problem is that small-town America can no longer be characterized as "bourgeois." Bourgeois people are supposed to own things. But over the past few decades, rural Americans have seen their ownership of their communities hollowed out by relentless consolidation in the retail and financial sectors--to say nothing of agriculture. While Obama is right to emphasize the fact that rural areas are hurting financially, the problem is not just cyclical changes in the economy but a deeper crisis of ownership."
www.tnr.com/politics/story.html?id=aafd91f9-3162-4ece-892c-be78f45d1b1a
