September 5, 2008
Small Town (John Feehery)
“I was born in a small town,” the John Cougar song goes, in one of the many songs that venerate small-town living.
Living in a small town is part of the America’s character. People like the idea of living in small towns, of knowing their neighbors, of being part of a community. Even if they live in a big city, they really want to live in a small town, so they slice their big cities into smaller neighborhoods.
Washington, D.C. is, in actuality, a pretty small town. Capitol Hill is like a college campus, the White House is its own small city, and all the departments that are sprinkled throughout the area are their own little small towns.
When Sarah Palin says that she is part of a small town, she is part of a long tradition of small-town leaders. My old boss, Denny Hastert, came from a small town in Illinois. Bill Clinton came from a small town: Hope, Ark. Even George Bush is a small-town guy. Midland, Texas is no metropolis.
Small-town politics in many ways can be more intense than big-town politics, because everybody knows what you are up to. There is no sense of anonymity in a small town. You can’t hide in a small town.
People who were born and raised in the suburbs of the big cities, like me, try to have it both ways. They want to have all the intimacy of small-town living, but all the opportunity of the big city.
And for that effort, they endure long commutes, stressed-out lives, and a sense of never really belonging to either the big city or the small town. When you live in a big city, you really live in a neighborhood (at least, that’s the way it is in Chicago). Those neighborhoods are organized by ethnicity, race or lifestyle. You live with folks who you want to be around, or with folks who you have to live with because of economic realities.
That Sarah Palin is from a small town, that she was a small-town mayor and that she was a small-state governor (in terms of population) should be venerated, not disparaged. Her sensibilities are more in tune with the struggles of everyday Americans, most of whom share that small-town outlook on life.
It is far harder to tell your neighbor that he is corrupt than it is your political opponent from the next county over. But that is what Sarah Palin did when she worked to reform the Alaskan government. She has the kind of political courage that has been largely missing from the Washington political scene.
Palin might be from a small town, but her political talent is clearly big-time.
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Sarah Palin is from a small town, and Barack Obama is from a very large world. Abandoned by THREE parents by the age of 10 and sent back to what has become a foreign country, the US, all by himself, he, as someone noted, is a sociopath who seeks the sympathy of everyone but has sympathy for nobody except his wife and children. He has no close friends because of his painful roots. The only structure he found was the sewer of the Chicago politics and the only advice he seems to heed he found there and in the writings and words of radicals like Frank Marshall Davis, Bill Ayers, and Sol Alinsky. While one maybe sympathetic towards the abandoned child, now a man, who adapted the best he could, I think it's a bit too much to sacrificed the country to help him cure his psychological problems.
Comment by Igor R. — September 5, 2008 @ 2:19 pm
Igor,
you are an idiot…pull your head out of your A%% and pay attention.
Comment by Eman — September 5, 2008 @ 5:34 pm
Sarah Palin looks out for people with money, and class status. She a Valley Girl who likes mooseburgers.
Comment by Fred from Oregon — September 6, 2008 @ 1:38 am
Eman, let me ask you a couple of questions. Do you like sex? Do you like to travel? Than f*** off!
Comment by Igor R. — September 6, 2008 @ 5:50 pm
John -
I don't think anyone is disparaging Sarah Palin's small town roots. I would humbly suggest that it is Ms. Palin herself who has spoken with self-aggrandizing condescension toward those of us who live in cities. And as someone from a small town, who left the ostracism and contempt of small town people towards the different, I have a pretty serious disagreement with the assertion that people in small towns have such marvelous values. There's a reason, after all, that many of us leave those small towns…and find great comfort in the acceptance and tolerance of people in America's great cities. Contrary to popular myth, people in cities create much that America can be proud of and that makes us as a nation strong. Ideas, many of which bubble up from the hustle and bustle of the American city, are as much a part of America's culture as corn and soybeans. Enough of this Jeffersonian mythology that the gentleman farmer makes America. We haven't been a rural nation for decades!
Furthermore, I, for one, am sick to death of pretending that it is only city people who are the snobs. Refusing to see any good from the cities of America is just another side of the snob coin that sees nothing good from small towns. Neither the cities nor the countrysides of America could exist without the other. And Sarah Palin, with her myopic view of the glories of smalltown life, could be Vice President not just of rural America. She'll be VP of America's Cities, too. A little less contempt shouldn't be too much to ask.
Comment by Maria — September 6, 2008 @ 8:33 pm
Maria, attacking the kind of community organizers that Obama used to be is not an attack on the cities. Obama was a radical ACORN lawyer not an urban saint.
Comment by Igor R. — September 7, 2008 @ 11:25 pm