Hockey Mum Redneck Bigot

I'm tempted to blog with some smart-arse comments about the stupidity of the American Right.

How vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin seriously wants creationism taught as a respectable alternative to evolution in school science lessons. Or how in office as Major of Wasilla Alaska she tried to ban books with ‘offensive language’ from public libraries. Or more generally how depressing it is that small-town America sees the descriptions ‘clever’ or ‘intellectual’ as terms of abuse.

But I won’t. It’s too easy. And it doesn’t help. Right wingers everywhere are stupid and ignorant – we’ll just have to get over that. The real problem is that only the vacuum on the Left makes it possible for these dumb fucks to get an echo.

For the sake of America and the world. I desperately hope that Obama wins and keeps the Republicans out. But let’s not get sucked in by the liberal love-fest that sees him as the saviour of change. The Obama project is nothing more than the New Labour project with a different accent. It is sophisticated and clever (and those aren’t dirty words) but it also comes from a political caste, just like Blair’s Islington circle, that has precious little to do with the majority - the working class.

McCain and Palin are making capital from this – but the problem is that it rings a bit hollow coming from Republicans. They may adopt a down home voice, but like Reagan, Bush Snr and Bush Jnr the carefully contrived folksy image is a mask for wealthy patrician backgrounds and the interests of Big Business.

Similarly Sarah Palin and her hockey-mum image: Until she launched her political career, Alaskan politics had previously been run much like a PTA or a parish council then Palin introduced national issues with the standard platform of the Religious Right – Pro Life and Anti-Gun Control. (This comes from fellow conservatives in Alaska – check out this piece in Time Magazine).

What those on the Left should be thinking about now is not a quick chuckle at dumbass right-wingers but the desperate need for a radical blue collar alternative voice. That goes for the US and the UK.