The Ropes
By Mitch Berg
The lefty spin machine is trying to fire back at Palin.
One of Palin’s best lines last night – one of many, many great lines – was
“I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a “community organizer,” except that you have actual responsibilities.
I think Ed, King and I jumped up in our chairs and did the “we’re not worthy” at that one (to the Pacifica folks’ irritation; I think we disrupted their broadcast. Sorry, Pacs).
This was in my inbox this morning from the Obama email machine:
Both Rudy Giuliani and Sarah Palin specifically mocked Barack’s experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago more than two decades ago, where he worked with people who had lost jobs and been left behind when the local steel plants closed.
Let’s clarify something for them right now.
Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies.
Well, no. It’s how groups get people organized for whatever purpose they want. It can be a noble calling; it can also be a means for chiding and harangueing people from above. And they’re not accountable to voters – merely to whomever sets the agenda for the “organizing” that needs to be done.
“Community organizers” do it on behalf of one group or another. Others change the poliices of “out of touch politicians” by going to PTA, running for school board or mayor or whatever.
In Chicago, “community organizers” are agents of the status quo, the Chicago democrat machine.
Sarah Palin started out in politics to be, um, an “agent of change” – and she made real changes, in Wasilla, in Juneau and, last night I think, in the way Republicans look at this race.
So yes. Yes we can.
