Public Image Limited - What

Public Image Limited - What does Sergeant Mom have in common with British Liberal Democrat foreign affairs spokesman Menzies Campbell?

For the last week, one thing; a realization that the media's image of the President is wrong.

Campbell, a major figure in the British Liberal Democrats (one of many parties that come in behind Labour and the Tories in the UK), said that while he disagrees deeply with Bush (as is to be expected), that:

“He is personally extremely engaging. He has a well-developed sense of humour, is self-deprecating and when he engages in a discussion with you he is warm and concentrates directly on you.

“He looks you straight in the eye and tells you exactly what he thinks.”

Mr Campbell, stressing that the President was “totally at odds” with his media image, went on: “I was not persuaded by what he said, but I was most certainly surprised at the extent to which the caricature of him was inaccurate.”

Campbell realizes something Sergeant Mom notes in her post on Stryker this morning:

Really, people, I am getting the feeling that you have never paid attention to all those stories and jokes about smart, cosmopolitan types who ventured out into the sticks to patronize the local yokels and wound up loosing their shirts, or their wallets, or at least a couple of illusions regarding making an assumption about a person based on that persons’ dress, accent, and apparent class (or lack thereof) when said yokels out-slicked the city slicker.

This, in fact, ties together quite a number of threads.

The US media and government establishments are completely centered on the coasts, east and west. While solid, convincing arguments can be made that race, class and gender are big divisions in American society, I've sensed for decades that regionalism may be the biggest one of all, in the long run.

The signs are everywhere.

Academygirl (link via SCSU Scholars, who are second to none at covering academia) has this fascinating piece, on how very difficult it is for gifted, poor, rural students to get noticed by "elite" universities.

She tells the story of Daniel Spangenberger, of Berkeley Springs, West Virginia, who:

SCORED 1330 on his SAT, well within the range desired by many elite schools, and now that he’s borrowed an SAT prep book, he hopes to break 1400 on his second try. His teachers say he’s smart, motivated and exceptionally mature. He holds two after-school jobs and also finds time to volunteer, setting up a computer cafe at the local Boys & Girls Club. And he drives his mother, who is battling cancer, to her monthly chemo sessions. Only two obstacles stand between Spangenburger and his dream: he comes from a poor family (neither parent went to college) and attends a rural high school. “With the right kind of college education, Daniel could do great things,” says Berkeley Springs High School principal George Ward. “But so many smart rural kids fall through the cracks. Top schools don’t know Daniel exists...Many schools say diversity—racial, economic and geographic—is key to maintaining intellectually vital campuses. But Richard Kahlenberg of the Century Foundation says that even though colleges claim they want poor kids, “they don’t try very hard to find them.” As for rural students like Spangenburger, many colleges don’t try at all. “Unfortunately, we go where we can generate a sizable number of potential applicants,” says Tulane admissions chief Richard Whiteside, who recruits aggressively—and in person—from metropolitan areas. Kids in rural areas get a glossy brochure in the mail.”

Of course, in many of the rural areas of this nation, there's a sort of reverse snobbery, which has served to keep many of the hinterland's best and brightest securely locked in the hinterland for generations. Kids are encouraged to go to the state college and come back home to build the communities, and carry on where Mom or Dad left off. Kathleen Norris spelled out the syndrome - and its results - in her classic Dakota: A Spiritual Geography"; part inferiority complex, part reverse snobbery, part monkish aesceticism...

...and partly what Academygirl and the Scholars note: persistent ignorance about the parts of this nation more than 100 miles from the coasts, which leads to underrepresentation at our "elite" universities, which leads in turn to underrepresentation in this nation's academic, media, upper-level administrative and governing classes.

Which leads to the media's ever-persistent myopia about people who don't...act like them. People like the President.

20 years ago, European leaders recall being amazed at Ronald Reagan's erudition and personability - completely at odds with the image they'd gotten from the US and European presses.

The cycle continues.

(Via the Professor and Rush)

Posted by Mitch at November 25, 2003 05:04 AM