[the quoted material below has been updated to include the comments from Pataki and Giuliani]
“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a community organizer, except that you have actual responsibilities.”
— Republican vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin, acceptance speech, September 3, 2008“[Barack Obama] was a community organizer. What in God’s name is a community organizer? I don’t even know if that’s a job.”
— Former Governor George Pataki“On the other hand, you have a resume from a gifted man with an Ivy League education. He worked as a community organizer. What? [Laughter]…I said, OK, OK, maybe this is the first problem on the resume.”
— Former NYC Mayor and presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani
In response to expansions on this theme from several speakers at the RNC, Christy Hardin Smith on Firedoglake:
Cleaning up a local riverbed or a walking trail with your kid’s scout troop? Republicans think you’re a loser.
Working with a job training or literacy program to help folks move from welfare to work? Republicans think your efforts deserve ridicule. Promoting a spay and neuter program at your local animal shelter? Republicans are laughing at you. Volunteer at your church pantry to help the least of these? Republicans are mocking you.
Pam’s House Blend, BitchPhd (and again), Feministing, Making Light all have responses, but John Scalzi has found the pithiest comeback is already making the rounds of the web:
“Jesus was a community organizer. Pontius Pilate was a governor.”
So much anger and hate; it’s like Mark Latham moved to Alaska.
Heh!
Um guys - the jibe was directed solely at Obama. Trust the left to get all hot under the collar about it.
Err, the right hurls “jibes”, and the left gets “hot under the collar”. What’s wrong with this contrast?
Kim I read a few of the comments at some of those links. They are all deeply offended and personally insulted, but they are too dumb to realize that SP was having a go at Obamas experience - nothing more. The left is truly expert at taking offence.
And Peter, you’re ‘too dumb’ to learn how to use apostrophes.
I am truly rully taking offence, and I am personally insulted by your inability to master the basics of English grammar.
No. 6 - Are you the spelling cop around here? Wnkr.
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No, Peter, I’m the apostrophe nazi. Get it right.
Peter, nobody - absolutely nobody - missed that this was all aimed at Obama. They just noticed that it ridiculed a very large proportion of the sort of people who actually vote in every single election as well.
You don’t get to use a whole class of citizens to “have a go” at your opponent and then get away with “oh, but I only mean that it’s worthless when Obama does it”. Guiliani’s sneer at community organisers was far worse than Palin’s, by the way - do you even know what he said?
Well…when Obama made the bitter comment, you know he was only talking about this one guy out back of Harrisburg, right?
The Right is truly expert at hate. And crocodile tears.
Press release from the Catholic Democrats:
Tigtog - I don’t recall her saying it was ‘worthless’ as you put it. Just not that big a deal on a CV for president. Then again I didn’t watch the whole speech. Still, if you and Kim want to make a mountain out of a very small molehill be my guest.
Ys Km, N. 6 s dfntly wnkr.
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I thought that was Adrians role - at least over at Surfdumb it was.
Peter, people with standard English vocabularies tend to be aware of the word “implication”, and even people who can’t spell that word know one when they hear one - but if the concept is really that hard for you try looking up “dog whistle”.
Oh tigtog can you get any more nauseating? Give it a break for chrissakes.
Tigtog said:
I had no idea that the ‘Community Organizer’ demographic was so large. Do any of them vote Repub by any chance? If they did then Sarah is in trouble with them I guess.
Gilmae at 11 - as tigtog said ‘ nobody - absolutely nobody - missed that this was all aimed at Obama.’. We all know however that Obamas comments were aimed at a much larger group than that.
Not much community organisation around Wasilla, Palin’s neck of the woods, I hear. Perhaps that why it has been called the Meth Capital of Alaska. I like this comment:
Herman = Greenfield.
He’s been booted.
I thought I detected Greenfield’s hobbyhorse hooves all over that, Kim.
So she offended community organisers. On the other side of the ledger, are:
hockey mums / soccer mums
parents of disabled children
average middle class america
small town america
women who like rugged men
parents who adore cute kids
blokes who admire the all american chick with attitude
I could go on, but guys, just stay focused on all those GAZLLIONS of community organisers out there, protesting in the streets, while the rest of America just says you go girl. They are registering to vote and donating to the RNP as we speak. The election is on, and you can just smell the fear from Obamabots. Imagine another 8 years of no Whitehouse. Imagine Palin President in 2012. hahahaha
Ah, the Ozblogosphere’s leading expert on nauseatingness. One might have known.
Check out the other thread tigtog.
[link]
The other thing with this particular theme is that “community organiser” is meant to suggest African-American in the ghettos, etc.
It could be melaleuca/munn of course, but really, same diff, isn’t it?
Yes, I think ‘hahahaha’ is the appropriate response. Closely followed by ‘Put your face down on your knees and your arms over your head, and brace your feet.’
Tigtog said:
Tigtog - the implication is all in your mind and the minds of left wing bloggers who seem to have nothing better to do than gripe about what is at ‘worst’ a very small fau pax by ms Palin. Considering the enormous pressure she was under I think she did outstandingly well and the more I see the absolutely petty comments made all over the left blogosphere the more I ( and I assure you, many others) like her.
pete m #21,
Being a soccer/hockey mum doesn’t involve any community organising? Who runs the team/club fundraising drives, Pete M? In small towns and “average middle class America” all over the nation?
Don’t you lot get yet that community organising is something straight out of those Norman Rockwell paintings that the GOP loves so much?
I don’t think that getting things is quite their area of expertise.
Here’s just one mums’ forum where they’re not very impressed at how she slashed the funding for Special Needs in the Alaskan budget either, by the way.
I wonder how many more of the mum-forums see that as pretty disgusting in light of her claims now. She had to have a SN child of her own before she realised how important helping the parents of SN kids is? Where was her compassion before her own self-interest was at stake?
Gilmae @ 11:
You obviously don’t read the comments at many left wing blogs. I have rarely seen so much hate directed at an individual as I have seen directed at Sarah Palin over the last week. Not just dislike, but profound hate of her and what she stands for.
Thankfully not here though.
She was a professional sportscaster - of course she performed well. I hate her politics, but I can admire her personal strengths, and performing slickly with a microphone is one of them. It’s the biggest crowd she’s ever performed to and she revelled in it.
Too bad that she didn’t see any problems with a script that clearly implied that every parent who joins the PTA has no “actual responsibilities” as part of that community organising work.
Tigtog said:
Um - I think you have lost the plot here a bit tigtog and clearly clutching at straws. I have never heard a member of the PTA or football club fundraiser call themselves a ‘Community Organizer’.
The Dems shouldn’t have made the ’small-town mayor’ cheapshot; then they wouldn’t have worn this one in response. Definitely a disagreement between two well-used kitchen appliances.
I have rarely seen so much hate directed at an individual as I have seen directed at Sarah Palin over the last week.
Oceania has always been at war with Alaska.
You are kidding I hope. A substantial portion of the populace (including msm) is after her blood and would have been absolutely delighted had she slipped up. She pulled it off admirably.
If the worst the Left can make of her speech is this feigned insult then it was a superb speech.
Does anyone seriously think this was anything other than some Democratic analysts saying ” hey we can twist his around to being an insult on everyday volunteers - get it out there quick.” Yes the GOP do this stuff too but lets not get all hysterical about a very small mole hill.
Back to the drawing board people.
Oh woe is me, Peter who was always going to vote for the social conservative ticket anyway is going to like Palin even! more! if lefties keep pointing out that her politics suck.
Even when I compliment one aspect of her candidacy, Peter gets offended. Wotta maroon.
I think the other issue is does the local say soccer coach call him/herself a “community organiser” in the States. I maybe wrong but I saw that term as more akin to what we would call an “activist” which is almost always for a left leaning cause. This is a long, long bow.
#30 I do, actually. They’re loud but really bad at it because they have this tendency to waffle and get lost in conspiracy. It is so easy to dismiss them as silly because of it. The Right don’t bother with that kind of fluff; they just hate. Media, the Left, Washington, Americans, themselves.
Great. She can read an auto-prompter, smile and make snide jokes about “liberals” at the same time. And she LOVES guns. Clearly vice-presidential material. Spare me.
Sorry, I don’t think I get the point of this post. Sure, the sentence could have been phrased a bit better, but is really worth getting that irate about?
Hardly.
A couple of paragraphs above that quote she even mentions her time in the PTA and as a ‘hockey mom’.
Kingsley, if you’d read the link upthread (#12) from the Catholic Democrats, you’d have found out that your impression is dead wrong (although it is of course the impression that the GOP wants you to have).
Community organiser is a job description, that’s all. He was employed on a nominal wage by the Catholic Campaign for Human Development to aid in poverty alleviation programs for three years after he left college and before law school, at a time when he could have got a good corporate job anywhere.
You’ve also got the wrong end of the stick on “activist”. Activism is certainly not confined to the left-wing, or else a whole bunch of Young Liberals are DOIN IT RONG.
Sigh Tigtog:
Firstly cut the snark will you? I’m not that easily offended.
Secondly - this post was ‘not’ about her politics. Unless you are completely stupid you know the petty comments I was referring to are like this post, the posts in the links, whether or not she should run because she has 5 kids, etc.
Still if it makes you feel better to have a whinge, go for it.
That Jesus / pontius pilate thing is very pithy, however:
* Jesus was a hippie, not an organiser. Sandles, beard, wandering around to wedding parties. Plus, like totally sticking it to the man, dude.
* Pontius Pilate wasn’t a gun-toting Christian. He was go-along to get along type.
Peter and Paul were the tireless organisers who led the Nazareth Fishing Club to global prominence.
Hey Pete! The main person who seems to be having a whinge on this thread appears to be yourself, so you are obviously following your own advice. If only you were just a tiny bit consistent in this area.
Jacques, the Jesus of the New Testament is very definitely a community organising figure. Look to Matthew 4:18-26 and Mark 2:15-17.
Mobilising people, check, providing social welfare services, check, disseminating information, check, all that and a religious message.
But you’re right about Pilate.
Firstly cut the snark will you? I’m not that easily offended.
NOT easily offended = ignoring snark, not asking the snarker to cut it out.
The post has been updated to include the remarks made by former GOP heavyweights Pataki and Giuliani (which I have only just been able to find quoted in full), seeing as some people are so obtuse that they think this post is only about Sarah Palin, despite the fact that this post and every linked article refers to comments made by several speakers at the RNC.
Adrian - I suggest you learn to read.
Anyway, I have work to do. I can see this going downhill real fast now that tigtog has started with the name calling.
#7 and #13 - now who exactly was it who started the name calling in this thread?
It was Peter.
oh, dear, it’s still cracking me up.
What Peter should have said is that you guys are just plain sad. Nobody puts Obambi in a corner! LOL!
Well, #53 should put paid to any comedic troubles you’re having Laura.
Well this thread will definitely go downhill now that intellectual heavyweight Peter has decided to leave us. Take care with the filing cabinet.
#53 Nanuestalker:
Pshaw. I would have much preferred either Clinton or Edwards to have been the candidate. Of course, if they had been, then we’d be getting reruns of all those GOP “jokes” about lawyers that were so popular in 2004. Getting the convention delegates to howl with laughter at the employment history of the opposition is SOP for the GOP, and doesn’t garner much public outrage when the profession involved is elite and earns a high income.
That’s not really the case with community organisers though, is it? What volunteer community organisers who work for small organisations in their own spare time (all over small-town middle class America) are hearing is that what they do is so unnecessary and worthless that the idea that Obama could be paid to do it full time for a large Catholic organisation is a joke.
My apologies, but it appears that it has become necessary to draw attention to this segment of the LP Comments Policy:
tigtog -
Don’t think so, what rational people heard was a feisty & successful woman from a small town bitch slap a Harvard elitist who had the audacity of hopelessness to belittle her eight years of public service as Mayor of her home town. Look up what he said, he said he was more experienced than her because he’s run multi-million dollar election campaign for 18month and she’d run a small town. That’s right he forgot to mention that she’s run a State with a budget in the billions for two years since vacating her roll as mayor. Tut, tut, tut!
Nobody puts Obambi in a corner!
I don’t know whether its too funny or too sad for words!
Hmmmm…roll?
Nanuestalker, while I think the various “small-town mayor” digs against Palin, ignoring her governorship experience, have been ill-advised, I still see a rather huge difference.
Nothing from the Obama campaign or anyone else has said that “small-town mayor” is not a real job or not worth doing, just that it’s not particularly relevant experience for being in the White House. I can’t see how any other small-town mayors would be particularly offended by the idea that mayoral experience alone is not presidential level experience.
The jibes against “community organiser” as not even a real job and no “actual responsibilities” are ratcheting up the disrespect rather too many notches in comparison. There are real people who do that work who have heard their work dismissed as utterly ridiculous to even be involved with.
This was obviously a pre-planned and scripted theme for the various speakers of the convention to highlight again and again, not just some sloppy phrasing or moment of zinging pique from Palin. It is the way that the GOP has chosen to denigrate a whole area of public service that is the problem.
Hang on aint we kinda forgetting the no matter how wonderful Palin things she maybe or Peter thinks she is,she believes in the Republicans,a party let by a sory a bunch of liars that has ever walked the face of the earth.
McCain and Palin are just clones of Bush, another 4 years of that bunch of Crooks and thieves and out and out warmongers,I will believe they are different when Bush, Cheney and a few others on her side of politics are up in front of a war crimes judge
aint we kinda forgetting
no.
Geoffrey Robertson wrote this for New Statesman. The article concludes:
tigtog -
Take the blinkers off, what was at issue was the experience of Obambi & Palin (or as some of you refer to, as Jesus the community organizer & Pontius Pilate the governor).
He took a cheap shot at Palin’s executive experience in public service and was appropriately shot down for it. It not a big deal, the reference to ‘actual responsibilities’ is clearly directed at him. It blatantly obvious that the speakers before Palin were setting up for the punch line from her. You guys seriously need to get a grip.
In actual fact, a better measure of experience is accomplishment. What has Obambi accomplished as a legislator or community organiser?
Do you ever experience doubt, Nanuestalker? Just wondering.
Dude, of course they were talking about Obama and playing one-up on his questioning of Palin’s credentials.
The point is, in the process they have trivialised community work generally. They went further than saying Obama’s experience is not sufficient to govern the USA, they said it was useless work, and made repeated jokes about the worthlessness of community work.
Hear hear.
.
It’d be really nice if we could lift the bar come election time. Particularly in the States. I remember the last time I did service in an electoral booth. There were two members of one of the major parties I won’t say which. One was seasoned, the other a first-timer.
.
The seasoned one spent an hour explaining why various members of the parliamentary ‘opposition’ (that is to her party) were, and she used this terminology again and again: inhuman, not human, monsters, almost human. Like that.
.
Hatred of enemies is bred in the political game and, considering how homogenous so many politicians are, it’s a bit rich and a lot disgusting.
.
And probably here to stay.
Y’know you’d think from the way people are talking that Palin was running against Obama for prez.
gilmae
The Right don’t bother with that kind of fluff; they just hate. Media, the Left, Washington, Americans, themselves.
Glm, y nd t gt t mr. Hv y vr chckd t ths pgtg’s “prtfl”? t hts fr strl! Gld mdls glr!
Hell yeah! Spit. What a let-down. Dagnabbit. Can’t these Democrats do better than gettin’ up some uppity negra? Jesus H Christ. We should give Dubya four more years. He’s a successful business man after all.
.
.
Spit.
Nick -
All the time, that’s why I never buy into this political spin.
FDB -
Without doubt a few noses will be out of joint which often happens when sarcasm is used, but the community organiser sledge wasn’t offensive if you look at the context. Over on the Cat, I did say yesterday after her speech that a few might be upset, but seriously this is manufactured storm in a teacup.
Adrien-
“Y’know you’d think from the way people are talking that Palin was running against Obama for prez.”
Strangely true, she’s really spiced up this election for the moment and we still don’t know whether or not she’ll be any good when unscripted. Good fun I reckon!
I zink it’s time to change ze cansteechochun. Ve need sambady mit zer bady in ze Vite Haus. Somebady who vill make all ze HumVees have ze biofeul and vil derminade ze enemies unt zee zem scadda befaw me.
OBAMBI on his experience vs Palin:
“My understanding is that Gov. Palin’s town, Wassilla, has I think 50 employees. We’ve got 2500 in this campaign. I think their budget is maybe 12 million dollars a year – we have a budget of about three times that just for the month”
Nanu Translation services:
Obambi: “I ready to be president because I’m running for president”
Nobody puts Obambi in a corner!
Tigtog - I probably shouldn’t help you work out how to wind up conservatives but I’d be willing to bet that if you called a young liberal an “activist” they’d be mortally offended!
Some catholic organisations may also use the term Community organiser I am more interested in how Joe Six Pack uses the term and I suspect people who help at their local school, childrens sporting team etc do not refer to themselves as “community organisers” which is why the speech writers felt safe to use the term.
It’s very Obama-esque sounding to me and the audience will have got the context cyrstal clear even if you haven’t or don’t want to for political reasons.
Its a self important term to dress up what he has(not) achieved to try and solve the experience gap he suffers from.
Kingsley - the GOP know quite well what Obama has done as a community organiser. It did not involve chucking paint at G8 meetings, but rather helping poor people improve their lot.
obama’s record is there for the googling, its not difficult. WaPo - ” . . . these accomplishments demonstrate that Obama has what Dillard, the Republican state senator, calls a “unique” ability “to deal with extremely complex issues, to reach across the aisle and to deal with diverse people.” In other words, Obama’s campaign claim that he can persuade us to rise above what divides us is not just rhetoric”
The questions McCain has to answer are; is the veep choice indicative of McCain’s judgment? no proper vetting, decisions on the fly, a high level of ‘maverick’ risk taking? It’s not difficult to argue that Obama is a safer choice on these grounds.
Similarly Palin appears to have none of Obama’s unifying skills or instincts, but was chosen precisely because she is highly divisive, appealing to the increasingly eccentric Republican base. She seems to have used her executive skills to favor publicly-employed relatives and persecute their workplace rivals. She clearly dissembled on the ‘bridge to nowhere’ issue (she originally favoured the bridge to nowhere and only backed down after national ridicule).
The republican base can only deliver 30% of the US vote; their inability to prevail was clearly demonstrated in the failure to impeach Clinton. Given the impulsiveness and riskiness of the McCain veep decision it’s not at all clear that McCain can make up the difference.
A well known community organiser.
I thought the point about being a Mayor was well made. In preceding paragraphs, she’d mentioned getting involved in school sport and then the PTA; eventually running that, and then progressing to the local council. . She then ended up as Mayor, the job with the personal responsibility of leadership. A community organiser is not a leader. There may be an argument for some sort of managerial responsibility, but hardly executive leadership. That was the point. It was not a jibe at volunteers in a community. That was her response to criticisms of her experience, and it was aimed squarely at Obama. Anyone who missed that is not as well “nuanced” as they would prefer to portray themselves.
The quip was in response to liberal claims that she was inexperienced because she was Mayor of a small town and then Governor of a sparsely populated state. The difference is that Obama has held representative positions in both state and national government, but has never had any real responsibility. He has never been a leader. One of the key aspects conspicuously absent from discussion on this thread about Giuliani’s speech was the fact that Obama voted “present” some 130 times whilst in the Illinois State Legislature - hardly a ringing endorsement of his executive leadership credentials.
I was also labouring under the misapprehension that Jesus was a carpenter. There is a very detailed account of his community organiser/activist/political career http:// http://blogs.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/timblair/index.php/dailytelegraph/comments/mccain_jesus_tied/#commentsmore here. Enjoy.
Shorter Timmeh: the gospels in one quip. I had no idea among the man’s other multifarious talents, he was a biblical scholar as well as an Insider.
Psst, Kim. Tim Didn’t write it.
Oopsy! So Timmeh isn’t a biblical scholar after all!
Nevertheless the commenter obviously hasn’t got to the bit where JC gave up carpentry for another gig…
FFS, in Matthew 4:18-26 Jesus called his disciples to be fishers of people, that’s the whole point of having Disciples.
You’d think that supporters of a Christian Right candidate would get their Christianity right.
Oh come on Kim, even avowed Lefty Mrs Sharpe found that funny.
Hey, you know who else was a community organizer? Don Corleone.
Pete M, be careful now. Don Vito’s community organising involved responsibilities.
Sorry, Richard, I must be one of those humourless leftists because I’m not lolzing at pete m’s comedy gold either…
Yeah, the `playful` anti Community Organiser schtick reveals the elitist scumbags the GOP really are at heart. Which they DO try so awfully hard to conceal these days. Unlike me, who revels in it!
Incidentally, this is all childs play. What for naked race baiting when mid October rolls around and the republicans wake up to the fact they really are going to lose to a black man.
They’ve already started with that, Lefty E.
http://firedoglake.com/2008/09/04/theyre-not-even-pretending-anymore/
Oh, oh please… uppity? UPPITY? Scratch these God-bothering turkeys and they`re its fucking instant Klan?
Smash these worthless, backwoods shit-kicking inbred banjo-pluckers, Barack. Blow them to hell for all of us. I wanna see six types of piss come November.
Lefty, I give you the November poll in under a minute.
Kim, there’s a saying about a hat fitting…..
Well it’s about time Obama came out and compared himself to Jesus instead of just insinuating it.
well let’s see . . . hey, obama hasn’t tortured anyone. i guess that makes him a lot closer to jesus than the republicans
Craig Mc, that comeback didn’t come from the campaign. Just from some smartarse on a blog. It’s also far more likely to be meant as an ironic dig against the Republican’s silly messiah stuff than as an endorsement of the idea.
The “uppity” slur is from this GOP genius.
http://www.youtube.com/w