ESSAY: Cleb Hates America (And So Can You!)

MICHAEL REAGAN, who is to the Reagan family as Tom Hagen is to the Corleones (fair-haired adoptive son and standard-bearer), recently put out a manifesto to his radio listeners and blog readers. He urged them to call three environmental orgs to protest the orgs' resistance to drilling in the Artic National Wildlife Refuge. He explained that these environuts hate America and are causing--yes, causing--high gas prices. For utmost convenience, he even provided phone numbers.

Yours truly answers one of those phone numbers. Over the last couple weeks, my co-receptionist and I have had the unique pleasure of absorbing rants. Birds are fine. Trees are fine. But people are more important. Or, You're all communists trying to destroy this country from within. I kept thinking it was Stephen Colbert, just fuckin with me.

I tried to take it in stride, cause receptionists are cool like that. But one comment stuck in my craw:

This is our country. Not yours.

I stammered back, "Well hopefully it's both of our country," feeling dubious about both my grammar and his buying the sentiment.

I GET THAT there's a rift between me and the Missouri grain farmer who demanded to know why I hate America. Rural and working class skills are often underrespected by city-dwellers or the well-heeled. Those of us who labor in front of computers sometimes forget that working with your hands also means working with your mind. I could understand the resentment behind the eye-rolling when, on my first trip to the feed store, it came out that I didn't know hay from straw. City slicker.

But the whole thing has gone too far with the implication that Real Americans are white, working class Midwesterners and the rest of us are just posers. Who would imply anything so absurd? Only everyone's favorite Ivy League-educated multimillionare. Hillary Clinton's by-now-pitiful case for the nomination is that she has Real Americans with her, while Obama's majority is made up of the nerdy, the coastal, the fey and those imminently snubbable black people who helped elect her husband twice.

Cut to Obama's "bitter" comments (which I steadfastly refuse to "-gate"). Clinton, like consigliere Reagan, is eager to stoke the notion of a ruling elite, oblivious to the struggles of Real Americans. In this construction, Obama-change and environmentalism are luxury goods. Real Americans can't bother with all that: gas tax holiday, please.

But I actually think of environmentalism as a heartland value, I suppose because my grandmother was a country Republican who composted everything from zucchini vines to rodent carcasses, who wanted to save forests and ban cars long before any of it was called environmentalism.


A CLINTON AIDE, speaking to Slate after last Tuesday's rout, insisted Obama is still failing. "The composition of his vote remains the same. He didn't resolve the issues that have dogged him, namely his ability to expand his base beyond African-American voters and liberal rich eggheads." Man, having more people vote for you just doesn't win elections like it used to.

The remark avoids blatant dismissal of black votes. (Clinton handled that herself with her creepy conflation of "white" and "hard-working.") But "liberal rich eggheads" is still okay.

Eggheads are Americans too. So are liberals, even rich ones. It would not be cool to demean Clinton's constituencies as just hicks, dames and fogies. But the Obama constituents--the white ones--are "elitists," not Real Americans, so writing them off is fair game. Clinton even remarked that the throng of economists who think the gas tax holiday is the worst idea ever are just a bunch of elitists.

This doesn't merely disrespect people with college degrees (who, you know, we might want to keep around). It's insulting to lower income- and education-level heartland Americans too. "Elites" aren't the only ones who care about the environment. And plenty of Real American Hoosiers saw through the gas tax holiday bullshit.

I think Michael Reagan underestimated his audience. Many of the callers who started out asking why I hated America came around to explaining their own views on the environment. "I think we should have solar panels on every roof in this country," said one, rather to my surprise. "You're an environmentalist," I replied. "Just like me."

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