A Tub of Politics with Extra Bitter, Please

I read over the weekend that cheap political jokes may be corroding our respect for the hallowed process by which we pick the next leader of the free world.A University of Iowa professor, Russell Peterson, got some ink Sunday after arguing that late-night shots at politicians turns our democracy into a laugh track. He argues that continuous nightly bits about the candidates' foibles and personal attributes contribute to the idea that all hopefuls are jokes and that Americans' choice doesn't matter.

I agree with Peterson. We all should pay more attention to the campaign's critical, serious moments.

That's where you'll find the real laughs.

Take the latest monumental debate over Barack Obama's use of the word "bitter" to describe the feelings of small-town Americans angered and bewildered by the economic and social forces that have hit their slowly dying communities again and again.

"It's not surprising, then, they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations," Obama said.

Whoa, pal, you can't tell the truth in a presidential campaign. You can't suggest that years of indifferent, damaging economic policies have knocked the stuffing out of many rural towns, or that people left to struggle in change's turbulent wake are rushing to embrace both hallowed traditions and the tired old scapegoats. That's tough medicine to swallow. You'd better take it back.

You missed mythmaking class in candidate school. It's all Bedford Falls out in the hustings. When hardy folks aren't filling sandbags to save the mill or helping their neighbors out of twister wreckage or pulling up their bootstraps after the plant moves to Micronesia, they're baking blue-ribbon apple pies and growing prize tomatoes. Grab a flag. Cue the Mellencamp.

I was born in a small town, Sen.Obama. I've lived in small towns. You are no small town, sir.

But thank God, and I mean the small-town God I cling to, that a millionaire, mansion-dwelling senator from New York, brave veteran of state dinners, Yale Law and renaissance weekends, is here to tell us the real truth about flyover country. She's a banded duck-downing, whiskeyshootin' country girl from way back.

She makes Gretchen Wilson look like a debutante. Hell, yeah.

Hillary Clinton's also getting a nice assist from a flock of coifed, peeled, powdered and insightful talking heads in designer suits on cable news, thoughtfully exploring Obama's patriotism problem or how Republicans, who will save rural America with a high fence and a same-sex marriage ban, can exploit this misstep.

Obama is clearly an "elitist," and can you imagine what would happen if we had an elitist president, one we wouldn't want to have a beer with? I don't like to think about it.

Also, just imagine if those well-groomed suits spent as much time talking about the economic realities facing small-town America, and the solutions needed to turn things around, as much as they talk about strategy and superdelegates and polls.

Cue the laugh track.