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Note: Entries will be from Oldest to Newest (Contra-Blog Chronology)
White Pennsylvania 2008: Bibles, Biden & Bigotry; and Hello John Murtha - 10/22/2008
Depending on which polls you look at, the gap between McCain and Obama is either closing or widening. But one thing had seemed to stabilize a few weeks ago: My home state of Pennsylvania was no longer considered a Swing State, as some pundits finally noticed that it has far more registered Democrats than Republicans. So it had exited from the Nation’s attention.
John Murtha’s remarks about Western PA racists and rednecks have apparently rekindled momentary national interest in Pennsylvania. Like almost anywhere, PA Politics are Local, and if you are not from there, or live there, you will never understand much about the state, at least the part that I’m from, if all you listen to or read comes from the national media.
I was born and raised in Lackawanna County, about 10 miles outside of Scranton, in Northeastern PA. Next door is Luzerne County, which went something like 75% or more for Hillary Clinton during the 2008 Democratic Primaries. I must say I was really glued to the television that night, when she gave her victory speech. I know that everything is tightly orchestrated—i.e., fake—but I was moved, nevertheless, as it appeared to have a bit of an emotional sincerity to it in spite of all the normal flim-flammery of politics.
During the 2004 Kerry-Bush Presidential Race, I learned that I was really from NEPA, pronounced NEEPA, and that NEPA was in a swing area of the country, so for one of the few times in their lives, the locals had real live national reporters from CNN and the like sticking microphones into their faces, and pretending to care for a millisecond about what they might think or feel.
If you haven’t noticed, I have more than a bit of “attitude”, at least when I start writing or thinking about my home. You might even say that like a decent percentage of (White) Pennsylvanians, I AM just a bit “bitter,” but bitter in a far deeper sense than Barack Obama and his New Age Groupies and Old Liberal Elite Guards would ever dare to dig into and explore.
But “clinging to our Bibles and our guns”?
Not the white ethnic grandchildren of Ellis Island immigrants that I hung around with.
Not my immediate or greater family.
Not many, I would think, if any, of the descendents of the Southern and Eastern Europeans who came to this part of the world, and are chastised about not showing the proper amount of American Genetic Guilt over New World Slavery, which their forebears had nothing to do with, or for failing to show a Cultural and Linguistic Compassion for a newer wave of Hispanics, far greater than was ever shown to their forebears, their children, or to them.
I will let Joe Biden speak for the Casey Family, Ed Rendell, and the Cream of the Irish Catholic Democrats of PA, (who always were the best at explaining life to the rest of us descendants of the teeming masses), as this was presumably the most special part of Biden’s Holy Mission to NEPA, assigned to him by our new political Messiah, the One We Have Been Waiting For, ever so calmly, at the Heavenly Gate for Chicago Arrivals.
I will let the Conservative Political Pundits deal with poor John Murtha, who should have known better.
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