If you’ve ever sat behind my minivan at a stoplight, you’ve probably noticed two things about me:  One, I’ve got an Obama sticker on my car.  And two, if anything upbeat comes up on the Ipod, I’m probably dancing around in my seat and singing loudly.  If it’s Tina Turner, I might miss the green light until you honk.

So, take any political commentary from me with a grain of salt.  I’ve already picked my horse in this race.  That being said, I like to think of myself as someone who considers both sides of issues and can admit when someone I support does something stupid (the bitter comment was stupid… blown out of proportion and not entirely inaccurate, but stupid).

That being said, what is currently blowing my mind is that Obama is being labeled as an elitist.

A good friend of mine, Kris, and I play a game called “Really.”  It’s partially based on that SNL news sketch and partially based on the fact that I’ve spent much of the last twenty years running around criticizing stuff.  It goes something like this.  One of us will text the other (that’s right.  I text.  I’m hip and down with the kids that way) with a comment followed by the tagline: Really?

For example:

“Chik-fil-a’s  new toy with their kids meal is a CD to learn Russian:  Really? Is that what kids are into nowadays?  Hannah Montana and languages with a Cyrillic alphabet?”

or

“Rapper DMX just got arrested for speeding:  Really?  When I was a kid, rappers got arrested for shooting their rivals in drive bys and doing cocaine off of J. Lo’s booty.  Now can I expect to see Lindsay Lohan locked up for taking three aspirin when the package clearly indicates that she should only take two?”

Or

“I passed a sign for a beef jerky outlet while driving through TN.  Really?  Is beef jerky such a high end luxury item that we need to provide people the opportunity to buy irregular jerky and jerky cast offs?

You get the point.  Anyway, I recently sent this to Kris:

“Barack Obama is an elitist:  Really?  A black man who grew up the son of a single mother whose father was an African goat herder.  How do you go from goat farmer to elitist in one generation?

Is Obama smart?  Yes.  Does he know what arugula is?  Yes.  (he’s got me there, I’m not even sure I spelled it right)  Does he understand poor people?  Yes, I really think he does.  He left law school as the editor of the Harvard law review.  He did not pursue a supreme court clerkship and instead went to work in inner city Chicago to help the poor and downtrodden of that area.  So, I really do think that he gets the poor.  Now, to be fair, the poor in inner-city Chicago are different from the poor in central Pennsylvania, but there’s a lot more similarities than differences.

So, feel free to disagree with the man on policies.  Universal healthcare is a debatable issue.  Continuing the war in Iraq is a debatable issue.  How in the world to get our country out of the economic mess we’re in is a debatable issue.  But whether or not the son of a goat farmer is elitist is not really a debatable issue.  He just isn’t.
 
By the by…

The Sex and the City movie just had its premiere in London:  Really?  Has there ever been a movie in the history of the world that was more fitting to be premiered in New York City?  What’s next?  Will the new Chicago 7 movie premiere in Paris?  Maybe the next Harry Potter should premiere in Akron.