More insinuations Obama is un-American

Chris Matthew continues his efforts to suggest that Barack Obama is different and not a "regular" American:

MSNBC's Chris Matthews criticized Sen. Barack Obama's expression of patriotism, asserting that Obama "thank[s] America" because he "got certain things from it," rather than, Matthews claimed, "express[ing]" "that gut sense of Americanism," which, Matthews said, is "a hard thing for someone like Barack Obama ... to express." He also purported to distinguish Obama from "regular" Americans, saying: "People that don't have anything, including beautiful families and Ivy League degrees, know what they got. They're Americans."

...As Media Matters has also documented, Matthews has a history of purporting to identify actions by or characteristics of Obama that he has suggested demonstrate that he is not a "regular guy," including playing pool, ordering "weird" beverages like orange juice, and his bowling skills.

Similarly, National Review Online's Greg Pollowitz objected to the playing of U2 at Obama's rally Tuesday night because the group isn't American (via TNR's Ben Wasserstein):

U2's "Beautiful Day" is playing at the Barack Obama rally. No Americans write music Obama likes?

Now that Obama is the nominee, we're going to see a lot more of this garbage.

Comments

[Raleighite]

I recently received an email with a laundry list of anti-Obama statements. Near as I can tell, it is a repackaging of this website:
http://www.audacityofhypocrisy.com/?p=62

Yes, we will see lots more.

P.S. Trivial, but I don't really think Chris Matthews was saying the O.J. is weird when Obama ordered it. I think his point was, Obama was offerred a cup of coffee, and he asked for O.J. instead...I think C.M. thought that was rude, or bad form.

[David]

I agree with Brendan's point, but would object to his headline. The word "un-American" has a specific connotation of disloyalty. That's how the word was used during the McCarthy era by the House Commmittee on Un-American Activities. A less charged adjective for what Matthews is asserting would be "elitist."

[David]

I would add that the "not a regular guy" attack is nothing new. It was used against John Kerry, who was supposedly "French-looking". It was used agaisnt George H. W. Bush who supposedly didn't know about supermarket price-reading machines. It was even used against George W. Bush in his early Congressional campaign in Texas, where degrees from Harvard and Yale proved to be a negative.

[Rob]

I agree with David that Chris Matthews' suggesting that Obama is not a regular American or is reluctant to express his "gut sense of Americanism," while undeniably foolish, is quite different from calling Obama un-American. That's a specific term with a specific history and should not loosely be applied to characterizations of Obama as elitist.

Of course charges of un-American activity did not end with HUAC. As recently as four years ago, a candidate's wife was lamenting the other side's "un-American traits." Now that's a charge worthy of condemnation, and I'm sure Brendan wrote witheringly about it at the time.