Taylor Marsh – TaylorMarsh.com – News, Opinion and Weblog on Progressive Politics

Republican “Ultrarich” Elite Attack Our Blue Collar Question

Evidently, David Brooks didn't like us questioning the 30 yards
supposition of the Dick Cheney shooting. I guess blue collar hunting types just
don't have a right to question the elite ranks of the Republicans who control,
well, everything in Washington. As Steve Martin said, well excuuuuuse me,
or in this case us.

Okay, so when I saw Brooks on that
guy's NBC show, I just thought he sounded silly. But after reading my TimesSelect
today, I've decided that David Brooks and the Republicans are elitist snobs getting nervous about the people getting uppity. How dare we question
the mighty vice president? That even the biggest progressive blogs are looking
over Dick's shoulder and asking embarrassing questions too, makes the effete
Brooks even more uncomfortable. People are starting to pay attention and that's
not good for the elitist, “ultrarich” Bush bunch.

Hag O'Beirne got the eewwww, hunting talk started this week by saying,
I'm a city girl, what do I know about hunting?, when appearing on cable. (I simply don't remember what MSNBC show she was on, sorry.) Sitting
there in all her self righteous upper echelon Republican snobbery, the disdain
dripped from her words. She don't know no stinkin' hunters. That's the root of the Republican Party's we're for the average man myth. They talk
a good game, dropping their “gs” every chance they get, but when the
blue collar meets the man or woman, the elites like Rush can't even tell black
from white, except to use some stereotypical name i.d.

But first, let's talk about Brooks.

Even Tucker Carlson judged Cheney's drinking while hunting to be alarming:
You can't drink
if you shoot, period. David Brooks evidently doesn't care if someone is
drinking while hunting, doesn't have time for middle class hunter rules that
get in the way of the Republican Party's upper class ruling plans. That's so
passe for the New York Times, Joe Klein, and the Wall Street Journal crowd.
The details of Dick's shooting accident are as so yesterday's news as
the truth has been since the Republicans began controlling Congress.

But taking out after Josh Marshall? Now that's desperate.

The Republican elite don't like our blue collar questions.

“…Meanwhile over at the blogosphere, the keyboard jockeys
had a responsibility to sniff up vast conspiracies and get lost in creepy
minutiae. “The 50,000 acre Armstrong Ranch is in Kenedy County. So I
figure the Armstrongs probably have a lot of pull in county government. So,
just a question: how thorough was the investigation of what happened?”
the influential blogger Josh Marshall queried darkly. Earlier,
he veered off, as he must, into picayune and skin-crawling theorizing about
the path the pellets took through Whittington's body: “Would the weapon and ammunition Dick
Cheney shot have the force to imbed pellets near Whittington's heart at 30
yards? … These pellets would have to have pierced his clothing,
his skin and then lodged inside the body cavity, somewhere near or around
his heart. The shot came from the right and the heart is on the left so that
might add to the amount of tissue needing to be traversed.” …” – David Brooks

Josh responds.

Obviously, this humble blogger is too small for Brooks to mention or even know
about, but even though others had to undoubtedly be thinking about it, the 30
yard question was first brought to the forefront by me and my gun guy husband. That's not to my credit, because without my husband and the information
he and I gleaned from other gun experts, hunters, ReddHedd
(and her dad), including very valuable reader comments that taught us a
lot, I couldn't have written one word, at least not with any authority. I'm just a gun enthusiast, an amateur. In the
end, many higher tier gun experts, as well as medical doctors and others, came
forward to question the 30 yards canard. If Mr. Brooks saw my “shot in the heart” post he'd likely have a coronary!

But blue collar questions aren't good enough for David Brooks and the ultrarich for whom
he speaks. We're just part of the middle American and western rabble who get in the rulers
way.

As for my response to the 30 yards attack by Brooks, it's obvious he's
just another Republican flack who has chosen to just push the shooting incident
aside because he simply cannot be bothered with niggling little details like
the truth. Cheney responded, it's over, get on with it.

The elitist rapid response and reaction to Dick Cheney shooting his friend
put out by the Republican Party is nothing short of the privileged and ultrarich
gone rabid. The ruling elite, represented by David Brooks, Kate O'Beirne and
Rush Limbaugh have an abject contempt for blue collar workers and others who
dare question what they put out, even if this group is the one that put them
in power. They scoff at any dissent. They slime anyone who talks back. They
impugn the integrity of lowly government workers who challenge the Bush line. They have outright contempt for the very blue collar workers they are supposed to champion, which has finally been unmasked by the symbolism of Dick Cheney shooting his friend, evading the authorities, which no other American could have gotten away with, keeping the facts secret, even blaming the guy who got shot, until some of the ruling elite saw their power being threatened and made the vice president finally stand up. But the ruler still only faced a friendly faction, those who support their leadership through the power structure on Fox.

Republicans always complain about the Democratic Party using black
voters. Well, the Republican Party uses blue collar workers in the
worst possible way.

The Brooks-O'Beirne-Rush Republican elite attack average citizens who are asking
important questions. Middle class and blue collar families like ours who love
our guns, our God and our country enough to talk back and question scripted
stories handed out to we the people in lieu of the truth. Some of us actually
remember what the Constitution means.

It's the same type of mentality that had Rush Limbaugh pontificating about
Sherrod Brown being black. Did Rush even Google Mr. Brown? Rush talks about
a “racial component” to why Sherrod Brown took over the Democratic
Party Senate slot when Paul Hackett dropped out. Oliver
Willis wrote about it and has the audio. Rush insinuated that Democrats
dumped Paul Hackett, a veteran, for Sherrod Brown because he was black. Why
did Rush think Mr. Brown was black? Why was he so sure he was black? The answer is ugly. It is abjectly and positively racist.

Rush Limbaugh thought Sherrod Brown was black
because of his name.

We perform a field experiment to measure
racial discrimination in the labor market. We respond with fictitious resumes
to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perception
of race, each resume is randomly assigned either a very African American sounding
name or a very White sounding name. The results show significant discrimination
against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks
for interviews. We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume.
For White names, a higher quality resume elicits 30 percent more callbacks whereas
for African Americans, it elicits a far smaller increase. Applicants living
in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but, interestingly, this effect
does not differ by race. The amount of discrimination is uniform across occupations
and industries. Federal contractors and employers who list “Equal Opportunity
Employer” in their ad discriminate as much as other employers. We find
little evidence that our results are driven by employers inferring something
other than race, such as social class, from the names. These results suggest
that racial discrimination is still a prominent feature of the labor market.

Are
Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal?

KATRINA DISASTER FORETOLD 2004 story revealed problems long before they developed. But it didn't come from the elite mainstream press so nobody listened. Why not?

See, by their very nature, elitists like the Brooks-O'Beirne-Rush bank are
lazy. They are part of the privileged class who don't have to work quite as
hard as middle income, average middle American folks. As for the poor, the elitist Republican party believes that being poor is a path to God. That's the backbone of their economic policy. Rush gets to talk about
Sherrod Brown being black, while no one but Oliver Willis and a few others bothered
to go after him on it. Nobody among the Republican elite had the time, or better
yet, thought it was worth the time. After all, it's just misidentifying a white
guy because of his name. “Sherrod Brown” evidently sounded quintessentially
black to Rush, so he just started talking before his brain or facts were engaged.

Hell, I've made some whopper mistakes myself, but I've never misidentified
a white man for a black man simply based on the sound of his name, or because I was too lazy and self-satisfied to find out the truth. Or maybe
I'm just a middle American, blue collar babe raised in Missouri, KKK territory,
who knows how all this works. Hey, but Rush comes from Missouri too. Hmmmm…. Maybe
it really does depend on which side your political bread is buttered or if it's buttered at all.

Enter Ann Coulter. She's another member of the privileged class. Talking about
Christianity, religion, the unborn, while sipping Chardonnay with the privileged
elites of her party, hobnobbing with the mighty and powerful, while calling
Muslims “ragheads.”
Senator
Frist wouldn't even denounce the diva's comments. Another way the Republicans
signal that if you're not part of the Christian-Jewish tradition, you're simply
not American, one of them. And we wonder why we have problems in the Middle East?

But the most egregious sin lately from this crowd was their reaction to Coretta
Scott King's funeral. The plantation
owners got pissed. How dare black Americans celebrate Mrs. King's life by
honoring that for which she stood and the mantle she accepted when Dr. King
died. The nerve of those uppity blacks, the symbol of which is a donkey. RedstateRacists
was the worst.

Ah, yes, the blue blooded Bush crowd. God save us from these elitists, looking
down upon the rest of us, sexist, racist, blue collar bashing blowhards, led
by the Brooks, O'Beirne, Rush and Ann Coulter crowd, not that we've forgotten
Ken doll Sean Hannity, the king
of all the ultrarich hypocrites.

We are still questioning the script Dick Cheney is pushing on the Whittington
shooting incident, starting with the 30 yard question. It is our right, whether
the Republican ruling elite like it or not. Brooks called Josh's post
“picayune and skin-crawling,” but since it was our question
to begin with, we would like to know why can't we ask this logical question
without being denigrated? Does Mr. Brooks even have
a gun? Did he do any research? We
did and Cheney's message smells.

We're not sorry if our blue collar questions
are making Master Brooks and the O'Beirne-Rush-Coulter-Hannity elite uncomfortable.

Frankly, when I told my husband that Josh and other bigger blogs were helping
us get the question out he was thrilled.

Nope, we're simply not sorry, David, if my gas technician, hunter,
gun guy challenged your delicate elitist sensibilities.

See, we out here in the west, we blue collar folk, still think the truth matters.
And as a girl born in Missouri, I take my marching orders from give 'em hell,
Harry, not some elitist snot sitting in New York City holding forth from the
New York Times or those among the ultrarich, portfolio pontificating Wall Street Journal crowd. I certainly don't care what Kate
I'm a city girl what do I know about gun facts O'Beirne thinks. As for Coutler,
she's a silly snot. But Rush, well, that hits us where we live and breathe.

See, while my husband works as a blue collar gas technician, working overtime
and then some, I continue to try to get back on the air, which is still uphill
all the way. So when I hear the lazy, haphazard way
Rush Limbaugh disseminates facts to over 20 million Americans, I take that personally.
Hey, but what do they care? I'm just a blue collar gal trying to help my husband
keep a roof over our heads. That's sooo blue collar. I'm sure the ultrarich,
elite Brooks-O'Beirne-Rush-Coulter crowd just couldn't care less.