If downing shots of liquor is really the truest sign of "being a man (or woman) of the people" then I guess every dude in every frat in America is now working class. Indeed, even Matt Yglesias, certified pointy-headed elite, enjoys a celebratory shot or two every now and again. Meanwhile, a little birdie told me a lot of working class protestant church folk are teetotalers. But who am I to correct Roger Simon, who doubtless has so much working class cred that wine bottles spontaneously combust in his presence.
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Defining Populism Down
15 Apr 2008 07:29 pm
Comments (79)
Can we also talk about drinking fancy foreign likker rather than the real 'merican stuff?
Look, I read the Geoff Davis thread. I posted in the Geoff Davis thread. And I am still stunned by the stupidity of that column.
Boy was Bush a man of the people until he was in his 40s...
That's all it takes? Then I guess this pointy-headed academic just joined the ranks of the proletariat after the last few Minnesota Wild wins. If they win the Stanley Cup someone's gonna have to erect a fucking statue of me next to Tom Joad, John Henry, and Cesar Chavez
Your head really is a little pointy.
Make wine bottles spontaneously combust? Are you drunk?
And why didn't you mention your trust fund, you blue-blood Ivy League scum?
Does Hillary Clinton really want a picture of her throwing back a shot like that? I mean, really, what happens when some time in her presidency (as if), she has to admit error or something. Won't everyone on earth put that picture up and invoke the Noonan: "is it irresponsible to speculate? It's irresponsible not to."?
Yeah, isn't Crown Royal kinda pricey? Not to mention Canadian. It shoulda been a shot a Jim Beam or Heaven Hill, or at most, Jack D.
Roger Simon can't be serious. I mean that seriously. It's a joke.
Jello shots . . .
uhmm, please don't undermine this. I used to think I was an overly intellectual, lefty elitist, but if binge drinking makes me one of the people, than maybe I will make that political run...
Politically, Irish whisky is the only acceptable import to toss back.
Bat of Moon:
Real people drink Jack Daniels straight right out of the bottle. None of this shot glass stuff. That is for pointy headed, coastal elitists.
Could one of the all-knowing folks here link to some evidence of Matt's trust fund? Or are we just going on pure conjecture here?
I mean, yeah, I get annoyed with Matt's "I was cruising the NY subways while you were hanging out in Taco Bell parking lots" shtick, but really, is there ANY evidence that MY is personally loaded and/or has a trust fund?
No wonder she spent the '90s supporting NAFTA.
Strange article. To utterly stupid to be real, but too subtle to be a parody. Not sure what to make of it.
If he really means it, he's gotta be the biggest blockhead at the Politico. And that's saying something...
How do you get pointy-headed elite certification, anyway? Is there a driving test where you point out how much less CO2 you and your instructor would use on mass transit?
I love how the political pundits, who are nearly invariably products of elite academic institutions (except for Jonah Goldberg, but he's a fat, disgusting, fucking pig, who's made it where he has by being absolutely shameless and proud), and reside in NY and DC, yet have the gumption tell the nation what the "white middle america working man thinks."
And no disrespect to MY - liberal elite and all, but MY doesn't pretend to be able to speak for "the people."
What is with all this Jim and Jack and etc nonsense? Real shots are of well liquor. Stop being a bunch of panty wearing effete liberals.
@lfv 8.50pm,
I take it you didn't catch the daily show last night.
It would be one thing if she took a shot of Jim or Jack. HOWEVER, she took a frickin shot of Crown Royal.
Your head really is a little pointy.
I think it's a pretty round head.
I think it's a pretty round head.
No doubt inherited from your mother. And as Philip Roth's own mother once said when asked about her own relationship with the author of Portnoy's Complaint, "all mothers are Jewish mothers." No truer words were ever said.
Good God, the nitwits behind Politico have to be the tooliest bunch of tools that ever tooled around.
Watch next week as John McCain shotguns a bottle of Mad Dog 20/20 to prove he's even real-peoplier than Hillary! Hillary will respond by snorting a line of blow on camera! The battle for phony working class cred is on!
The Roundheads were actually pointy-headed elitists.
Wait until the convention, when the battle for the nomination comes down to who can chug a 40 of Beast Ice the fastest!
What a lush! Someone must have told her that Crown Royal puts hair on your chest. Did she even buy a round for the bar? Anyone know the details of who paid? Hillary is proving she's working class by demonstrating that she knows how to sponge off the locals.
James Taranto, for all of his bluster, at least admits he attended a "third-tier state school," CSUN.
I think it's a pretty round head.
Well, it is your head, so far be it for me to judge it, but from where I sit it definitely looks fatter at the bottom than at the top.
Somebody found a Bill Clinton statement from 1991 very similar to Obama's "bitter" statement.
Compare the two statements.
Bill Clinton Flashback: "All These Economically Insecure White People...Are Scared To Death"
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/04/13/bill-clinton-flashback-al_n_96433.html
Drinking shots -- i.e. trying hard not to taste liquor by propelling it towards your gullet -- just defines someone as an American.
(And here I am with a bottle of Weller Antique 107, which is good stuff and $16 a bottle. Canadian whiskey never really appealed to me, but neither does the whole prolier-than-thou thing.)
I'd prefer Hillary show her solidarity with the rural working class by picking up a meth addiction. It would give her ample farm cred, as well as sparing the Democratic party any more of the destructive vanities of one of the most loathsome politicians of a generation.
What nobody has addressed in this whole insult to the blue-collar americans is all the insults to us "elitists." Don't we have feelings too? How come its not considered some kind of "ism" to insult us constantly in the media and by politicians (and why isn't the irony of politicians and journalists being critical of "elitists" being pointed out either, since both of these groups are by definition "elitist?")? There's ageism, there's racism, there's sexism, there's homophobia (can we turn this one into an ism?), there's elitism. What do you call prejudice against people who value education and intelligence?
And can I just say, I'd rather have an elitist in the presidency any day than some guy or gal I wanna have a beer with. And its disgusting to see Hillary so patently pandering to the stereotypes of what people want in a president. People like guns, so do what the Republicans do: tell them your gun stories as a direct and blatant counter to the "elitism" of your opponent. Less than 24 hours later, have a photo op showing you chugging down a shot and a draft. Who's the one who's assuming that blue collar workers are idiots here? I see this as equally insulting as their implied racism pre-SC. It's so obviously pandering in such a cliched way. If she values the intelligence of blue collar workers, why is she assuming they're stupid enough to fall for this ploy? Why hasn't anybody the media asked this question? Because they're too busy finger wagging at Obama.
The media tells us we shouldn't like Barack because he's an "elitist" just like they told us we should Bush because supposedly he wasn't one. And looks what they conned us into voting for?
Client #11,
you just won this thread.
(although, what you said, is very elitist)
James Taranto, for all of his bluster, at least admits he attended a "third-tier state school," CSUN.
I graduated there, picking up a a BA Poly Sci during a phase when I needed a break from calculus and FORTRAN.
Using all these words and sentences is elitist.
So, when Hillary gets that 3AM phone call, should we be worried that she'll be too busy out clubbing to take it? Just curious.
So, when Hillary gets a 3AM phone call, should we be worried that she'll be too busy out clubbing to take it? Just curious.
"but really, is there ANY evidence that MY is personally loaded and/or has a trust fund?"
I doubt he has an actual trust fund, which is more of an old-money thing, but considering that Matt's father is a successful novelist and screenwriter, and that he grew up in Manhattan and went to an expensive prep school (the public schools in NYC were too diverse for him, apparently), it's safe to assume Matt's family has some money. Not that there's anything wrong with that. Matt's Dad may not have worked in a mill, but he didn't have a part-time gig at Fortress Investments either (BTW, if anyone who works at Fortress is reading this, f**k you very much for sending out the world's messiest K-1 -- and waiting until April to do that).
"Drinking shots -- i.e. trying hard not to taste liquor by propelling it towards your gullet -- just defines someone as an American."
Typical condescending lefty stuff from Pseudomonas -- equating a juvenile form of drinking with being American -- but he is half right. People who actually enjoy and drink good liquor would never shoot it. In my expense account days, we (Americans, all) never knocked back shots; instead, it was usually Macal1an 25 or Johnny Walker Blue, neat, in a rocks glass. Only an oaf would shoot stuff like that. BTW, Jack Daniels also makes something worth sipping -- I think it's their green label stuff. A friend usually has one on hand when he hosts parties.
It's funny how it regularly becomes fashionable to talk about elitism and faux populism and stuff yet there really isn't much social science done any more on the actual upper classes in this country.
Yeah, isn't Crown Royal kinda pricey? Not to mention Canadian. It shoulda been a shot a Jim Beam or Heaven Hill, or at most, Jack D.
El Cid: "It's funny how it regularly becomes fashionable to talk about elitism and faux populism and stuff yet there really isn't much social science done any more on the actual upper classes in this country."
Actually, some of us, such Somerby in detail, and Petey in 'angry' comments have been doing exactly that. Not "science", but blog posts that expose the upper-classs hackdom of Josh Marshall and Matthew.
Nice how 6 weeks later Greg's "Horse's Mouth" on TPM is still having tech isuues....I know, its been merged. To a nice cozy place that doesn't go after Olberman and Mattews.
Heckuva job Josh.
Bitter much, Matt?
LOWER CASE LETTERS ARE ELITIST!
SUCK ON IT, PRINCESS!
"It's funny how it regularly becomes fashionable to talk about elitism and faux populism and stuff yet there really isn't much social science done any more on the actual upper classes in this country."
There isn't much being done or you're just not aware of it? I'm sure those who run family offices have commissioned some social science on the mega-wealthy, and there are also nonfiction books written for lay audiences about the mega wealthy and plain old wealthy.
Andruw: If you seriously mean your comment, you simply didn't understand what I said, nor do you understand the concept of the actual upper classes of this country.
The billionaires and generational centi-millionaires who actually shape policy through identifiable means with identifiable social patterns and organizations and relations would probably find adorable, though, silly attempts to link 2nd generation upper-middle class status and a Harvard experience as "upper class".
Second, I don't need to hear any lectures about class from those whose best insight is to robotically repeat "trust fund scumbag" about the son of an author in defense of the candidate who in 1993 attempted to hand all of U.S. health care in a plan actually designed by U.S. upper class directors of the 5 largest insurers & HMOs, at an upper-class retreat (Jackson Hole) to those same companies, a plan which was then opposed by other upper-class directors of the slightly smaller insurers & HMO's not included in HRC's super-ultra upper class original approach.
Taking mescaline microdot spiked with strychnine and eating jimson weed seeds out the vacant lot and tripping for 16 hours and putting your pants on inside out and rubbing your head in gravel (a la Dragnet) is true working class cred.
Drinking snooty whisky that comes in a purple velvet sock ...
not so much.
One would think with them having made $100 million in the last few years she could have at least sprung for the Crown Royal Special Reserve.
equating a juvenile form of drinking with being American
Next up, associating 'hey, let's get a keg!' with American booze culture is condescension, as opposed to observation. And can the Scranton Kegger For Hillary really be that far off?
(Macallan 25 is v. nice, though not worth the premium if you're paying for it yourself. Back in the day, Oddbins sold an own-label Speyside from 1970s casks at a fraction of the price: if it wasn't Macallan, it was putting on a very good act.)
1) "Politically, Irish whisky is the only acceptable import to toss back."
Indeed. I was gonna say - if proletarian cred requires giving up my Jameson, then fuck it, I'm an elitist. (Actually, all this bullshit illustrates the uselessness of bourgeois social science, culturalist definitions of class. Relations of production, people, relations of production!)
2) I can't believe Roger Simon is serious, given the "jello shots" reference, but it also doesn't seem like a genuine parody. I think it's in that third category, "tongue in cheek", whereby one writes something that is neither insightful nor ironic, but just makes everyone uncomfortable, perhaps because one is expressing sentiments that one believes but cannot defend and therefore must try halfheartedly to disavow.
"Macallan 25 is v. nice, though not worth the premium if you're paying for it yourself"
And we enter the twilight zone where I finally agree with something you wrote. If it's my money, I'd be happy with something like Oban (particularly if I can get it duty free on the way back from a vacation somewhere).
Matthew, you shouldn't try to discuss working-class protestants since you obviously don't know anything about them.
For the record: No, they are not tee-totalers.
For cripes sake, please distinguish between southern evangelicals and working-class protestants.
Roger Simon is right, and as so often, Matt, you are wrong. It's not about what it is, it's about how it's perceived. Has everyone forgotten that George Bush, son of a former president, an aristocrat, was sold as a man of the people because he's a fuckwit? Obama needs to develop a taste for cheese wiz really fucking fast.
Doug Watts Taking mescaline microdot spiked with strychnine and eating jimson weed seeds
I remember that the reason orange sunshine was supposed to be so good was that it also had a little hit of strychnine in there to add some buzz to the rush. But what is this jimson weed? I'm way too old to go try it now, but I'd like to know what I misse dout on in my rather stupid youth.
See, this is one reason why I'm a Transhumanist: I don't drink.
I never drank.
I was on a Shell oil tanker in a bay in Vietnam (liaison radio operator to the pump station on shore) in 1968, and was offered a bottle of Danish beer (the ship was out of Amsterdam, whereas others were out of Liverpool). One taste, and it was exactly like that old alcohol-based Vicks Cough Syrup your mother gave you when you had a cold as a kid. I couldn't stand it.
After getting out of the Army, I visited the late naturalist, Ivan Sanderson, and over dinner he offered me some red wine.
Tasted exactly the same as that Danish beer to me.
So I've never done shots, or been drunk, or gotten in bed with an ugly broad, or crashed my car into somebody else's killing their six kids, as a result.
OTOH, I adore Andrea Corr, and she has been known to drink enough to need help out of the pub. And I'm sure it's Irish liquor she's drinking.
Both Andrea and Sharon Corr challenged the Gallagher brothers of Oasis that they could drink them under the table.
If it's my money, I'd be happy with something like Oban (particularly if I can get it duty free on the way back from a vacation somewhere).
Twilight zone indeed. Oban is a gem: the snobs will tsk at the whole UDV 'Classic Malts' branding, but better for the big owners' groups to promote distilleries than throw their output into cheap blends. (Jura also.) And yes, one place you feel the weak dollar is good Scotch. My stash is being eked out and not replenished until I'm getting paid regularly in sterling.
The whole point of the 'shot' thing is that it's a pain to have to hide good malt (or bourbon) for fear that guests will throw it down if left unsupervised. When I worked behind a bar, serving Americans on vacation, I'd refuse to pour them the good stuff if they were in a let's-have-shots mood. This isn't even about snobbery: the US has enough good distillers producing good booze at good prices to treat their products with respect.
But what is this jimson weed?
Ah, you'll get that in the run-up to the NC primary.
Jimson weed (Datura sp.) grows wild in most of the U.S. Often in vacant lots. It's known amongst glue sniffers and ether huffers as a free and extremely powerful hallucinogen. The stuff can kill you. Basically, it puts you into a hallucinogenic state that you do not remember when you come out of it, 10-12 hours later. You are totally awake and aware (talking etc.) but you make no sense. You see people that are not there, talk to entire groups of people who are not there, eat bars of soap, put your pants on inside out, etc. Very bad shit. I don't recommend it.
I hope these people are aware that all this nattering about proletarian authenticity is darkly reminiscent of the more hypocritical and cruel policies of the Warsaw Pact states.
"I love how the political pundits, who are nearly invariably products of elite academic institutions (except for Jonah Goldberg, but he's a fat, disgusting, fucking pig, who's made it where he has by being absolutely shameless and proud), and reside in NY and DC, yet have the gumption tell the nation what the "white middle america working man thinks."
And no disrespect to MY - liberal elite and all, but MY doesn't pretend to be able to speak for "the people."
Posted by nattyb | April 15, 2008 8:50 PM"
Very true. Even one of the most influential TV talking heads, Chris Matthews, gets less than 1 million viewers on an amazing night for him. A bunch of these guys strutting their working class background (Matthews, Russert, O'Reilly, etc.) have become so ingrained for so long in the elite media world that they mistake what they care about for what the average person cares about. I used to live in Texas when my parents were barely scraping by on a middle class income to raise us, but I would be lying out of my ass if I used that to speak for the red states' middle class. In addition, so many media elites are either the children of other media elites (Chris Wallace), the children of members of political machinery (Cokie Roberts), are the Ivy-educated children of political movement activists (Bill Kristol) or went to an Ivy League school.
Calling someone an "elitist" is a way to dismiss their concerns without engaging the argument. However, by the same token, such elites shouldn't be confused as the voice of the middle and working class. It's one thing to go and do actual reporting to find out what middle class whites in Red and Purple states actually think, but it's just foolishness for a media elite to confuse their own views for what "Real Americans" think. FoxNews, which tries to market itself as the voice of "Real Americans," gets ratings that pale in comparison to what middle and working class people actually watch in their free time (CSI, American Idol, etc.) and is instead watched by 60+ year-old political junkies.
Crown Royal is what one of my dad's upper-middle class Republican friends give him when they visit if they don't leave it in the back of their BMW's and forget it. The fact that Clinton doesn't know to just order a bottle of Jack or Jim Bean is a bit odd. If she really wanted to pander, she could have just ordered a can of Coors or the Beast. It would have made a lot more sense than Crown Royal. How does no one on her staff know this stuff?
"What nobody has addressed in this whole insult to the blue-collar americans is all the insults to us "elitists." Don't we have feelings too? How come its not considered some kind of "ism" to insult us constantly in the media and by politicians (and why isn't the irony of politicians and journalists being critical of "elitists" being pointed out either, since both of these groups are by definition "elitist?")? There's ageism, there's racism, there's sexism, there's homophobia (can we turn this one into an ism?), there's elitism. What do you call prejudice against people who value education and intelligence?
And can I just say, I'd rather have an elitist in the presidency any day than some guy or gal I wanna have a beer with. And its disgusting to see Hillary so patently pandering to the stereotypes of what people want in a president. People like guns, so do what the Republicans do: tell them your gun stories as a direct and blatant counter to the "elitism" of your opponent. Less than 24 hours later, have a photo op showing you chugging down a shot and a draft. Who's the one who's assuming that blue collar workers are idiots here? I see this as equally insulting as their implied racism pre-SC. It's so obviously pandering in such a cliched way. If she values the intelligence of blue collar workers, why is she assuming they're stupid enough to fall for this ploy? Why hasn't anybody the media asked this question? Because they're too busy finger wagging at Obama.
The media tells us we shouldn't like Barack because he's an "elitist" just like they told us we should Bush because supposedly he wasn't one. And looks what they conned us into voting for?
Posted by maria | April 15, 2008 10:05 PM"
Cuz we liberal elites (I guess these days it's supposed to mean well-educated and not scared of brown and gay people even if you don't have any power) are supposed to be perpetually ashamed of having been able to go to college, reading Jhumpa Lahiri and Zadie Smith and having gay friends instead of working on a Ford assembly line for some reason. Media elites self-hatred is just really odd. A lot of them just seem to have a problem accepting who they are and are constantly in search of some sort of faux populist authenticity (my favorite example of this is TNR's neocon Lawrence Kaplan moving to WV to eat chicken-fried steak like a "Real American"). It explains David Brooks's entire career of praising working-class whites while painting them as basically Southerners who watch NASCAR, shop on QVC and have never read a book since high school. novakant's comment upthread is spot on. Communists talked a good game about caring about the working class, but never really knew anything about them as people. Our media elites act like the average American is a crypto-fascist racist homophobe who must be coddled and never called anything mean because they are too sensitive and effete to handle criticism.
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Actually, some of us, such Somerby in detail, and Petey in 'angry' comments have been doing exactly that. Not "science", but blog posts that expose the upper-classs hackdom of Josh Marshall and Matthew.
Newsflash: Clinton supporters on blogs are the stupidest people on the face of the planet.
Only one man can save us now with true working class street cred, the ability to fire a gun and down an entire bottle as if it were a mere shot - we need the corpse of Boris Yeltsin, 2008.
You're all elitists if you're not drinking straight from your still located right next to your duck blind while shooting "banded ducks".
Jon Stewart was brilliant on this whole thing. His points:
Point 1: Do we really want a president who gives in to peer pressure? "bomb iran, bomb iran, bomb iran!" "Well, okay, if you want me to."
Point 2: What's wrong with being elite. Isn't that a good thing? I want my president to be smarter than me. We went with the other kind and look what it got us.
"every dude in every frat"
You elitist a-hole! What about sororities?!?
/snark
Wasn't there an editorial someone wrote 4 years ago saying that Budweiser was going to lose a lot of business because the Busch family gave Kerry some hefty donations and "real American beer drinkers" would never forgive them for being liberals?
Crown Royal is the shot of choice for "every(wo)man"? Sounds pretty elitist to me.
Obama needs to develop a taste for cheese wiz really fucking fast.
Bullshit. He's kicking ass and taking names in good part precisely because he doesn't pretend to be anybody other than who he is.
What nobody has addressed in this whole insult to the blue-collar americans is all the insults to us "elitists."
Damn, I couldn't agree more. My wife and I both came from small-town, blue collar backgrounds and we've worked damn hard to become high income, over-educated "elitists".
Hell yeah, I like me some arugula and I like Chilean sea bass. I like a grande latte at $5.00 a pop. I like it so much I'd buy it at $10.00 a cup. When I go to the Mecca of "elitism", San Francisco, I like to stay on the damn top of Nob Hill. Take me to Napa and I go straight for Franciscan or Mondavi. And I've earned every damn dime I spend.
I have no problem with the church goin', gun-totin'. whiskey-shootin' country folks. That's where I came from, but from is the key word there. When I see effete pinheads like Roger Simon or George Will (who I like by the way) bleating about the common man, it makes me want to puke. They know shit about the common man.
I've been common and I've been elitist and I'll take elitist any day.
nattyb, yes, what i said was elitist. If I were serious--well, first of all, I'd never write in the subjunctive (sooooo elitist)...and I'd tell Hill to ditch whom; she needs to get an authentic American dialect (like that thing you do in the black churches where y'all speak true patois redneck/negro-ese ("I don't feel no ways tired!"), aww shucks ma'am that's gettin' real (not like dat colored feller who done jive talks himself past dem foolhardy city slickers))--I'd suggest Hillary should go to a ho down at a biker bar where she can do edward-forty-hands with a mikey's one one hand and an olde english on the other (appealing to the college demographic), then finish it off by downing a mad dog 20/20 (appealing binge drinkers, downtrodden urbanites, and the likudniks), while wearing a dale earnhardt (Sr.!) nascar jersey, and to keep on reenforcing conservative framing of the issues, especially race baiting, which she, sadly, has de-emphasized to toxic levels from the "making lee atwater's corpse blush in shame" tactics she used earlier.
But i'm not a carpetbagging us senator worth over $100 million, ineptly using a combination of nepotism and bamboozlery to sell myself as a capable presidential candidate, so i'm hopelessly out of touch.
My mother would quote the truism (from The Depression era, I guess), "There's nothing bad about being poor. It's just inconvenient." She and my father and all their peers fled their working class neighborhoods at the first opportunity. Of which there were plenty following WW2. What's embittering is how few opportunities to flee your working class neighborhood there are these days.
If Crown Royal makes you 'regular folk,' than brie and scones must make you poor and working class. If HRC was really trying to score 'everyday people' points, she'd be knocking back a beer like most Americans do.
...not that the whole thing isn't silly beyond words.
I'm wondering if Clinton hasn't watched the Mickey Rourke parts of Sin City too much and in her faux populist mind confused his character, cuz he's huge and stupid, with the average American. Real Americans throw up in the gutter outside the bar. Then in the cab. Then outside their home. Until we see Facebook pics of Clinton puking outside of the local neighborhood Irish pub, she's not a Real American.
"please distinguish between southern evangelicals and working-class protestants."
Um. Are you under the impression that evangelicals are Catholics? Or perhaps Greek Orthodox?
"please distinguish between southern evangelicals and working-class protestants."
Um. Are you under the impression that evangelicals are Catholics? Or perhaps Greek Orthodox?
"Evangelical" is not another term for "Protestant". Nor is "Pentecostal". (I had a girlfriend 40 years ago who attended a Catholic Pentecostal church.) The point is that beliefs are pretty varied and their adherents have developed accurate terms to distinguish among them. (It may look like a Jackson Pollock random mess, but it's not.) There's no reason that a Catholic cannot espouse Evangelical thought -- an Evangelical believes in Biblical innerrancy. Historically, the liberalization of Catholic scripture studies is recent and may not be of long duration. The current Pope (and JP II towards the end of his reign) gives signs of a pretty narrow mind.)
Reality Man,
"Very true. Even one of the most influential TV talking heads, Chris Matthews, gets less than 1 million viewers on an amazing night for him. A bunch of these guys strutting their working class background (Matthews, Russert, O'Reilly, etc.) have become so ingrained for so long in the elite media world that they mistake what they care about for what the average person cares about."
Russert's father was a big salt-of-the-earth blue collar-type, according to Russert, but O'Reilly probably has more experience outside of the media-politics bubble than Russert or Matthews. O'Reilly grew up in a working class town on Long Island, went to Marist College undergrad and worked as a school teacher before getting into TV journalism (he did collect an Ivy League degree later, from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government).
Incidentally, Chris Matthews got himself featured on the front page of the NY Times Magazine, as I mentioned Saturday, despite having an audience about a fifth as large as Bill O'Reilly's.
Let me point out that Republicans want to run against Hillary, and then they want McCain to win.
"Russert's father was a big salt-of-the-earth blue collar-type, according to Russert, but O'Reilly probably has more experience outside of the media-politics bubble than Russert or Matthews. O'Reilly grew up in a working class town on Long Island, went to Marist College undergrad and worked as a school teacher before getting into TV journalism (he did collect an Ivy League degree later, from Harvard's Kennedy School of Government).
Incidentally, Chris Matthews got himself featured on the front page of the NY Times Magazine, as I mentioned Saturday, despite having an audience about a fifth as large as Bill O'Reilly's.
Posted by Fred | April 16, 2008 6:51 PM"
And since then they've been pretty entrenched in the media elite while still deluding themselves that they're just regular ol' guys. It kind of reminds me of the elder Bush making a big deal over going to Yale instead of Dukakis going to Harvard like that was going to mean something populist to most people.
Comments closed April 29, 2008.
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Heads in the Sand
Was the Roger Simon piece supposed to be a parody? It's a sincere question. I can't tell.
Posted by MikeS | April 15, 2008 7:39 PM