“They fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration…”
What Senator Obama said about the lack of jobs leading to bitterness has been repeated ad nauseum. I won’t reprint the quote here, but you can read and listen to the speech for yourself. Besides, if we insist on confusing pull quotes for actual insight, I think the one above is much better.
The hay day the media and Obama’s opponents have had with the quote is really just an exercise in making bricks without straw.
It doesn’t take a Harvard education to infer a connection between the collapsing economy and any number of societal ills. But in a bumper sticker nation, people feel a couple of words or a couple of sentences lifted from a speech tell them all they need to know about a person. The causes for this national malady are many, but the immediate prognosis is grim. As long as one relies on mainstream media to interpret events, context will be sacrificed for controversy. For a more considered article about Senator Obama’s comments read Karen Dalton-Beninato’s A Small Town Response To Obama’s Talking “Off The Bus”.
On a more positive note, Senator Clinton has cemented her position as head of the soon to be created Ministry of Reproachment for Mischosen Words. She can keep her husband busy parsing the meaning of smaller, monosyllabic words like “is”. The fact that Clinton spends so much time explaining why Obama should not be the nominee is one of her strongest tells. Her continual reinterpretations of Obama’s speeches in the most negative way possible prove she has ran out of plausible reasons why she should be the Democratic candidate for President. I think we’re seeing a glimpse of how a Clinton vs. Gore campaign would have looked.