Wednesday, February 11, 2009

WHY DOES ERIC CANTOR'S SPOKESMAN HATE JOE DA PLUMMAH?

I need to acknowledge something right up front: I first saw the AFSCME video below (an old ad with a new soundtrack) a few months ago -- I can't remember who linked it -- and I wasn't outraged. I thought it was a double-edged sword -- yeah, sure, a mockery of dese-dems-and-dose mooks, but also an acknowledgment that those mooks do the crap jobs, and maybe deserve a decent paycheck as a result.

Read Greg Sargent's (bowdlerized) transcript excerpt and tell me that's not a reasonable reading of the video:

"On your way to work tomorrow, instead of sittin' around with your finger up your a**, look around," the voice-over says. "There's a union out there called AFSCME and they're busting' their balls doing a lot of sh*t work you take for granted. For example, we pick up your f--kin' garbage."




I'll point out that I actually grew up around people who talked (somewhat) like this and did jobs like this. I don't think they're ridiculous just because they have dirty fingernails and don't tawk reguluh.

But, as Greg points out, Eric Cantor's spokesman, Brad Dayspring, sent out this video at a moment when Cantor is being targeted by AFSCME for his opposition to the stimulus bill. So we know he didn't distribute it out of respect for the working man.

And that cheeses me off, because lefties, liberals, and Democrats are forever being accused of insensitivity to Joe Sixpacks and Joe Lunchpails and Joe the Plumbers. We don't get NASCAR. We don't get guns. We don't get country music. We think anyone who speaks in a Southern accent is an inbred moron.

Well, Dayspring distributed this video because he thinks (Cantor thinks?) anyone who talks like this is an inbred moron. Is it not cultural contempt when it's aimed at blue-collar people who live north of the Mason-Dixon Line and east of the Appalachians?

I'm happy to see that Dayspring (a former teenage Limbaughnista) has apologized. I'd like an apology from Cantor, too.

Is that gonna happen? Fuhgeddaboudit.

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