Remember Mayhill Fowler, the citizen journalist whose tape recorder sparked the infamous Pennsylvania "Bittergate" scandal that came close to derailing Barack Obama's drive to the White House, highlighting the disconnect between a Harvard Law grad and the rank-and-file Democratic voters he said "were clinging to guns and religion" as a response to economic and political upheaval?
Today, Fowler is back with the long -- and I mean looooong (seriously, it could lose about 2,000 words...citizen journalism is great, but some people need editors) -- story behind the story. She provides some interesting evidence that Obama's remark was inspired by a published interview with a notorious barfly from the blue-collar Bucks Coutny suburb, a man that Obama himself was supposed to meet but never did.
As is clear from Obama's remarks at the San Francisco fundraiser, he had that same Sunday, on the flight to San Francisco, been reading in the New York Times Sunday magazine Michael Sokolove's engrossing essay on returning to Levittown, where Sokolove had grown up, and finding the old working class community not particularly disposed to Obama. According to Mullane, after the town hall meeting in Levittown Obama had planned to stop by Gleason's Bar, where Sokolove had conversed with the locals. "Eight men sat around the bar, and not one of them supported Obama," Sokolove had written. Mullane said that in setting up the Gleason's stop the campaign staff had told the bar staff that Obama really wanted to talk to Steve Woods, the Gleason's habitué whose negativity had been particularly colorful. "Rapid fire, he told me the issues he cared about," Sokolove wrote. "'No. 1, gas prices. It's killing everybody. No. 2, immigrants. They should go back to Mexico. Three, guns. Everybody should have the right to bear arms. In fact, everyone should have a gun in this day and age,'" Woods had said. But, as is often the case with campaign schedules, Obama was running very late that Wednesday and never got the chance to swing by Gleason's Bar and meet Steve Woods.
Read -- or better yet, skim -- the whole thing. The backstory of Steve Woods has a twist that you may not see coming. As for Obama, I think much of his agenda -- especially a robust universal healthcare program -- could do more to help working-class folks in a place like Levittown than any president since FDR, but even Roosevelt, patrician that he was, knew how to speak the language of the people he was helping. Obama still has more work to do on that front.
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Yeah, robust. Like Medicare and Social Security are robust. The former you need a private supplemental insurance just to get decent coverage, and the latter you need a 401k in order to buy food.— jmc- Comment removed.
"...a robust universal healthcare program.." Does robust have a different meaning in the kooky lib community?— A Friend- I need a stimulus package - cant' work enough hours to pay my bills, or go to school long enough to get close to graduation. What's a gal to do? I need money...— Naturallady822
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- Amazing that the issue of cost only ever comes into play when the spending is meant for useful programs that might actually benefit society and help protect against corporate greed getting it's payday from what should be a basic human right for a citizen of the purported "greatest country in the world." Where's all the outrage over the trillions upon trillions of dollars that are spent waging wars half a world away and buying obscene amounts of war material to send to those wars? Wake up people. You've been brainwashed to defend gigantic corporations over your own self interests, all the while remaining oblivious to the wool over your eyes.— kami
- I just read the entire, well almost the entire, Fowler piece. It is absolutely interminable and about a long-ago Obama gaffe on the campaign trail. Does anyone edit her stuff? Good grief, she's apparently never written a sentence or a paragraph she didn't like. And who cares what motivated BO's gaffe? Anyone paying attention to him and his campaign quickly figured out he was an elitist. Fowler reaches the same conclusion after thousands of words and over a year after the gaffe. What a waste of bandwidth.— pj katauskas
- "Robust" is liberal-speak for "taxpayer-funded."— pj katauskas
- "what should be a basic human right" Insurance is a basic human right???— legatus
- VERY funny, SBVFT. You must be a capitalist.— pj katauskas
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"Insurance is a basic human right???" No life is.— Hamlet- "No life is." Exactly, insurance is not a basic human right...and luckily we already have laws against the taking of human life.— legatus
Will Bunch, a senior writer at the Philadelphia Daily News, blogs about his obsessions, including national and local politics and world affairs, the media, pop music, the Philadelphia Phillies, soccer and other sports, not necessarily in that order.
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