That’s a pretty big inference. I could just as validly say that courage or patriotism means serving your country in uniform.
I’d argue that the reaction of the audience is important, though. When a band or artist proclaims this gig is the best one they’ve done, the audience is great, tip the waitress etc., as you point out you’re not expecting them to mean it. When Belinda Carlisle calls Pittsburgh the greatest audience, it isn’t on the expectation that the audience are going to take that to heart, and that newspaper articles will be written the next day talking about how her audience preferences have now been made known for all time. She knows it’s crap, the audience (generally) knows its crap, but it’s said anyway because it’s a nice deception.
To the contrary, I think it would not be unfair to suggest that the comments made in this case were not being made as a polite fiction, but to appeal to those people who genuinely believe in such sentiments. That the sentiments may indeed be as false as those espoused by Carlisle, but the expection is that the audience will take up those views, assume them to be true, and be greatly impressed or flattered. I think that’s a pretty significant difference; it’s not just whether the person concerned means it or not, but whether the audience believes them or not, and the person’s view on the audience’s credularity.
I disagree. “Loving one’s country” is frequently and convincingly reduced to wearing flag-pin lapels, supporting questionable legislation, enduring the TSA, and being uncomfortable with Muslims in prominent national offices. You “love your country” if your political preferences are consistent with a set of rules handed down by the self-proclaimed arbiters of such things. We all know who they are.
I think the analogy between Palin’s comments and Wall St/Main St is false. Because an individual can be in both Streets; Maeglin may spend his days doing the bidding of Wall Street; but he goes home at night (presumably) and becomes a member of Main Street.
But an individual can’t be included in both pro-America small town, and anti-America big city. It was an inherently divisive comment.
They weren’t meant to be equivalent.
That aside, my main street is Wall Street. Finance delivers one quarter of the payroll in this city. When people get laid off and bonuses stop getting paid, my town finds itself billions of dollars in the hole. Everyone from the shoeshine guy to my coffee stand guy to local restaurants go out of business. Matters are so serious that our mayor is challenging term limits laws so he can stay in the game for another term. This isn’t just a corporate implosion: this is having a material affect on the place where I live.
The phrasing “…these wonderful little pockets of what I call the real America…” rules out any attempt to benignly interpret the phrase as mere puffery. It explicitly declares that the “pockets” of “real America” are islands surrounded by a sea of fake un-America.
Yeah, back then, “we [were] all New Yorkers” for about a month there, until the Yankees made the Series. 
So call this kind of rhetoric all the names it deserves, but as far as I’m concerned - having been born in the city and raised in the suburbs before I moved back here - taking it really seriously, getting outraged, calling it treason… that isn’t necessary. Sarah Vowell was right on, but I think New Yorkers are accustomed to dismissing this kind of provincial palaver.
So it’s only fitting that this is part of the reason they’re going to lose.
The differences are that Obama said that only once, in a semi-private setting, his supporters all distances themselves from that remark, and he wasn’t demonizing them but arguing that they are misdirecting their resentments (towards gun-grabbers and secularists).
But the irony here is that what Sarah Palin et al are in effect saying is that people who don’t cling to guns and religion are not Real Americans.
Meanwhile, Palin has apologized for the remarks, saying she didn’t mean to suggest anyone was unpatriotic without saying what she actually meant, which is a classic feature of the non-apology apology.
This is an especially apt analysis when the McCain also explicitly using campaign rhetoric that talks about anti-Americans, liberals and terrorists all in the same breath.
McCain said today that Western Pennsylvania is “the most patriotic, most God-loving, most patriotic part of America [sic].”
And tomorrow he’ll say that southern Indiana (or wherever) is.
Maybe. But he won’t ever say it in Miami, or Cleveland, or Philadelphia.
There is a line between meaningless praise of the place you are—“We love you Cleveland!”—and intentionally divisive rhetoric intended to paint parts of the country, other Americans, as unpatriotic, evil, fake Americans.
I think McCain/Palin have clearly crossed that line. Partly, as others have suggested, by the mere context of their remarks (the context of their wider culture war narrative and the political context generally). And partly by their content. Perhaps not in any particular comment, but in the sum total of this rhetorical strategy they’ve employed and only employ when they are in particular regions.
False divisions are harmful. They engender hate. We could use a lot less hate. .
Not to mention San Francisco.
This is exactly why I don’t treat these comments as “just playing the crowd”. They really are selective, implying that the speaker actually believes the statement to some extent.
And while I might not care whether or not Palin/McCain/whoever thinks my city is the greatest one around, I certainly do care if they think I’m actually less american than some other american.
I seem to recall a rather large stink being made over Obama’s comments. I have seen nowhere near the groundswell of outrage against Palin over her comments as there was for Obama.
So more appropriately:
IOKIARDI, as ever.
Are you kidding? He did say it once in a small gathering of wealthy CA donors, as your linked FOX piece suggests.
You might want read the cite.
A campaign stop isn’t a small gathering of donors, Indiana isn’t California, and two is a different number than one.
Apart from that…
Regards,
Shodan
And at the campaign stop in Indiana, he did not say what he said to the CA donors.
Apart from that, you’re still wrong.
bolding mine.
That right there is a HUGE indication, imo, of the root of this problem. I grew up in Great Falls Montana. Palin would probably feel right at home there. Then I moved to Sacramento, and all the “big-city folks” wondered where my country accent was (I didn’t have one. Never have.)
Then I moved back to Montana, to a smaller town called Choteau, where Palin would probably be crowned Homecoming queen, Mayor and Queen for life on the day of her arrival.
So I’ve seen both sides. And yes, there is a difference between urban larger city life, and the lifestyle of rural America. That can’t be denied.
But the problem is up there, in bold print.
This may come as a surprise, but most small town folk don’t feel inadequate at all. They are just folk, same as someone from LA, or Chicago. Small town people are aware of the differences, sure, but they don’t feel inadequate. To think that they automatically would or do feeds into the Palin-esque thought process from the other side.
Nobody (at least on this board) would be said to feel inadequate for not knowing how to strip and clean a rifle, or field dress a deer. Or knowing by heart when Deer Season opens in their county. But folks from Choteau would, and do.
I’m not sure what it is I’m trying to say here, other than to point out that it’s easy to get indignant, but that the thought process of the “Two America’s” is so ingrained that it’s easy to miss if you are to close to it.
Ok, off to get coffee, and see if that made sense.