I’m a serious white guy. English and German heritage. I grew up in white-bread towns (Westfield, NJ and Wilton, CT) and began life with white-bread tastes, attitudes and core beliefs. And yet now, looking at all those defensive-looking white people cheering on John McCain at his rallies, I feel pity and alienation. I shake my head and ask myself, “Who are these jerks?” To be an over-40 white middle-classer these days is, by the standard of the political polls I’ve been reading, to be a little bit sad and scared. Half of them, I mean, or a bit more than half. Culturally reactionary, behind-the-curve, hanging on to the past.
