Pretending To Speak For An Entire Culture
By Frank Salvato
October 30, 2009
One of the things that brings me to the boiling point is when I hear elected officials tell me what "Americans want" or what "Americans think." To believe that today's federally elected politicians understand -- or care -- what their constituents want, never mind Americans on the whole, after they belittled town hall attendees and ignored the citizenry's opposition to government-run healthcare is to exist in fantasyland. No, federally elected politicians (and in many cases local politicians, as well) only invoke the wants and thoughts of "Americans" when they want to bolster their political positions and those have more to do with special interest groups and ideology than what Americans really think and want.�
How many times have you heard Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, President Obama or any number of their surrogates -- and to be fair and honest, it does happen on both sides of the aisle -- begin a sentence with, "What Americans really want..." or "The Average American thinks that..." It is an insult to the intelligence of the citizenry, no matter how dumbed-down the American populace has become.�
Another facet to this intellectual arrogance is when an elected official or public figure uses a "broad brush" to address an entire group or demographic, regardless of whether it is favorably or unfavorably.�
One example of this simplistic arrogance was illustrated on MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann, when the tired sportscaster-turned-propagandist, Olbermann, provided a platform for the marginally-talented Janeane Garofalo to say of Tea Party attendees:�
"It's not about bashing Democrats. It's not about taxes; they have no idea what the Boston Tea Party was about. They don't know their history at all. This is about hating a Black man in the White House. This is racism, straight up. That is nothing but a bunch of tea-bagging rednecks and there is no way around that."�
To Garofalo and Olbermann, anyone who attended one of the thousands of Tea Parties around the country was a "tea-bagging redneck," each and every one of them. Not one of them every studied history and every attendee was a racist. This is an example of painting an entire demographic with a "broad brush" in an unfavorable manner.�
Another event that provided examples of painting with a broad brush and speaking for entire demographics happened in September in the Phoenix-Mesa Arizona area when US Rep. Keith Ellison (P-MN) -- I designate the "P" for Progressive as all members of the Progressive Caucus are Democrats -- spoke at a fundraiser for the Arizona chapter of CAIR, the Council for American Islamic Relations.�
After announcing that he would indeed speak at the fundraiser for CAIR, three federally elected officials from Arizona -- US Sen. John Kyl (R-AZ), US Rep. John Shadegg and US Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), wrote a letter urging Congressman Ellison -- the only declared Muslim in Congress -- to reconsider associating with CAIR and to cancel his appearance. The Republican legislators cited the fact that CAIR has questionable ties to the terror group Hamas as established by evidence submitted in the recent Holy Land Foundation trial in which CAIR was named an unindicted co-conspirator. Further, there have been several high-ranking CAIR operatives who have been either indicted or convicted of having transgressed the law:�
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