comment #1

iamanerd says ...

Nah, you don't let that stuff go. I teach college Composition, so I deal with students (adults) on a daily basis making just ridiculous arguments. You beat them over the head with fact and rationality.

If it costs Obama votes/the Presidency, then that is too bad. And I'm not saying that because I don't think McCain has a chance without small minded thinking or whatever. However, there are bigger things at stake here. We have a country with all this access to knowledge, rational and objective knowledge, but that technology and 24 hours news has not helped us from having terribly uneducated people. I think it really came to a head during the 2000 election, and it has snowballed since. Remember the smear campaign against McCain by Bush's crew leading up to the 2000 election? Think of what it was fairly easy to convince people of them. Now we have Obama, who is already different, and it's just multiplied.

comment #2

iamanerd says ...

Or all the people who would swear on their lives that Iraq was responsible for 9/11. Yikes! Do we have to plop President Bush in front of all of them and have him tell them, "Iraq didn't invade us on 9/11. There were no Weapons of Mass Destruction. And yes, WMDs were why we went in." I don't know that these things would get through. A talking head put "truth" in their heads, and it's stuck there.

comment #3

Mark says ...

My favorite smear linked to an Obama excerpt where he detailed his intention to reduce both our nuclear arsenal and wasteful military spending.

The email ended "This is absolutely shocking & reprehensible. He plans to unilaterally disarm our nation.The question is... for what? And more specifically, for whom ?!!!!!!!!"

McCain soon came out that he likewise advocates the scraping of a majority of U.S. nuclear arsenal and canceling the development of bunker-busting bombs.

comment #4

dukedog says ...

I am orginally from Arkansas, but live in LA now so I grew up with people like that. I agree that they deserve respect, we all do, but what they don't deserve is to have this sense of entitlement that they can be purposefully ignorant. They have a responsibility to learn the truth and open their ears and listen. Being Southern or small town does not excuse you from learning and being informed. I did it. Lots and lots of people have done it. I know I'm asking for way too much, but a girl can dream.

comment #5

gruver1 says ...

Wells to dukedog: Hats off. A good post. You have my respect.

comment #6

Jason says ...

What irony. This guy is going to vote for McCain. Who was tortured by his Communist captors. Like the Manchurian Candidate.

comment #7

iamanerd says ...

Jason:
Nice pointing out of the irony!
Dukedog:
It's not just a Southern thing, but damn if I haven't heard some crazy comments lately. I'm in Georgia with family in Alabama. People are stupid everywhere and will be ignorant anywhere.

comment #8

dukedog says ...

To Mr. Wells: Thank you for the compliment.

To gruver1: Is that Gruver from "Fandango"? Only one of my most favorite movies!

To iamanerd: I know it isn't only Southern, but I think our accent gives it more attention. I have in-laws up North, and oh yes, there will be ignorance!

comment #9

Walter Sobchak says ...

I read this post and it's as if Jeffrey has a bag of feed and he's sprinkling handfuls on the ground bleating "here chick-chick-chick-chickies, here chick chickies!" ("I need some hits, dammit!)

comment #10

iamanerd says ...

I need a bumper sticker that says, "There will be ignorance." Good one. Yeah, I have cringed more than once a day in public at the backwoods comments my friends, family, and neighbors have made about Obama. Wow.

comment #11

Marty Melville says ...

"... they're deeply invested in the foxholes ...",

Shouldn't that be "Foxholes"?

comment #12

Todd says ...

Clinton in 2012

comment #13

craigfinn says ...

Oddly enough, the way you talk about the uninformed rural rubes is the same way I feel about the "educated" people who are also 9/11 Truthers.

comment #14

MickTravis says ...

Jeff, I'd be curious to know how much time you've actually spent in the Appalachian mountains. Time spent watching movies set in them don't count.

There are morons everywhere.

They generalize, they're bigoted and they talk about stuff they don't know anything about.

Rather than calling out an actual location that stretches across multiple states, why not just say "dumbass rednecks"?

comment #15

Indeed says ...

Mick, because rednecks arent the only dumbasses. The title extends to Obama voters just as easily.

comment #16

CinemaPhreek says ...

My pet theory about Bush's popularity that I've held for 8 years now is that those folks who Chris Rock so rightfully identified as "proudly ignorant" voted for him to be the president vicariously.

Their thinking was "Hey, if he can be the president, so can I and therefore I'm not as out-of-touch with the world as listening to the news makes me feel."

Bush and the GOP contingent like him was the last gasp of certain segment of the population that knows they are about to be left behind just as surely as those who clung to 19th Century ways 100 years ago (those folks who kept riding the horse to town and refusing to buy appliances.

comment #17

bb says ...

Norm's is Jeff's Appalachians.

comment #18

D.Z. says ...

Phreek: I doubt Dubya was ever really that popular, or he would have won by a landslide both times. His whole Presidency seems more like a desperate attempt to flip off Clinton for the way he made a joke of the GOP during the impeachment proceeding. The 30% of Americans left in that party were clearly hoping to resurrect another Reagan and, in the process, try to steal back the glory which they believed belonged to them.

It might have actually worked out, too, if they actually understood what made Reagan so popular in the first place. Unlike Bush, The Gipper was occasionally flexible and personable; he didn't try to make other people feel bad to get ahead; and he worked for his money. But winning at all costs was more important to those neo-cons than winning successfully. So they picked the guy who'd butt the most heads, rather than the guy who'd appeal to a new generation of voters; and the only result was that their party was viewed in a more negative light than before it supported Bush.

So I don't think those losers are hanging on to antiquated ways as much as tattered memories of their last successful conquest.

comment #19

ketut says ...

Well, up here in Minnesota we have our uninformed too. I have heard people ( who I consider intelligent ) say, "Did you know Obama is a Muslim?" . I ask where they get their information of lies and inevidently it is a trusted source that sent them an email from a third party.

Do they bother to check? No, it's from a friend or family member they trust. SO, you know its true. I think people are just too lazy to form their own opinions. Just like the extreme right hiding behind the good book says, "I don't have to think."

And I also think a lot of people voted for Bush ( not once but twice) because they bought the lie that the GOP wouldn't raise taxes. The ones I know (only a few) who voted GOP seem to tell me that, " not only am too lazy to think for myself, I am gullible and cheap."

comment #20

supertaster says ...

the left-wing Hillary crowd did a pretty good job of smearing Obama...if the media would actually pick up on some of Obama's guffaws and misstatements we'd see he's be doing a pretty good job of smearing himself...

...so yeah, let's get the truth out...get all of the terrorist, sub-saharan africa scare shit outta here, but let's also get some objective criticism of a man who mispeaks just as often as John McCain...

Does anyone know if Olbermann talked about Jim Johnson on last night's countdown?? I missed it...Olbermann creamed his pants for two weeks straight over McCain's "adviser problem," and given that Obamites tend to forgive or rationalize anything the man says or does, I'm curious to see how this was spun (or mentioned at all)...

I'll still probably vote for Obama, but his supporters are starting to chafe worse than Red Sox fans...

comment #21

Midwest Doug says ...

If I sent this site to my mother-in-law, it wouldn't change her mind -- just like the guy Matthews talks to. But send it I shall, because lies suck.

At this point it's all about mobilization. Most of the people who willingly believe this about Obama won't vote for him anyway. They like McCain because he's conservative, anti-tax, with military experience, etc. So 'educating' the person about Obama won't make them switch allegiances. But it MAY cause them not to bother voting for McCain at all, or at least not tell their friends to vote for McCain.

comment #22

D.Z. says ...

taster: "if the media would actually pick up on some of Obama's guffaws and misstatements we'd see he's be doing a pretty good job of smearing himself..."

The difference is Obama knows how to rebound out of his missteps.

comment #23

craigfinn says ...

"The difference is Obama knows how to rebound out of his missteps. "

Yeah, he just blames them on his staff.

comment #24

dangovich says ...

I'll still probably vote for Obama, but his supporters are starting to chafe worse than Red Sox fans...

Hopefully, he will finish as well as the Red Sox did last year.

comment #25

SaveFarris says ...

his supporters are starting to chafe worse than Patriots fans...

fixed!

comment #26

D.Z. says ...

craig: "Yeah, he just blames them on his staff."

Better than blaming them on people with opposing viewpoints like Republicans do...

comment #27

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