anymore. Certainly, TV has proven repeatedly that it is a "vast wasteland" of trash, idiocy, violence, pandering and ignorance.  Besides that, I strongly recommend it! :)

I guess just having been born and raised in SW Va. (Wise County, to be precise) doesn't mean that I know anything about where I came from, either culturally or geographically. I have a feeling that my elementary, high school and college education in this Redneck area that "sort of borders on" itself might have been a better education than hers.

Or ... could it be that such a well educated "journalist" just didn't do so well in her geography classes ?

Recommended reading for Andrea: "Born Fighting" would be a good start. Then an actual trip to that Redneck part of Virginia's part of the Appalachian mountain range. I'd bet she doesn't know that the Appalachian mountain range is the 2nd oldest east of the Rocky Mountains.

Or even better, maybe she could join Jim Webb on his next trip to SW Va. so he could explain to her what it all means, who the people really are and even introduce her to some real people who actually do real work, read, and learn mundane things like history, geography and how to think for themselves.

The idea of the "pivot" is in direct realation to the media itselfs criticism of Obama for not campaigning in WV and KY as well as really hard in southern OH or southwestern PA. They created this vacumm and now they seek to fill it with more absurdity. I the end, Obama did not have to waste money in those areas and still came out with enough delegates----delegates was the strategy all along.
As to "redneck", many in that area and many friends our side of Bristol that I get chances to see at races take pride in being "rednecks" and though many of us may not identify with it they see it as a badge of honor. These folks are very conservative and very hands off government so it is true that as a percentage this population will not be going for Obama's kind of agenda but it is great that he is attempting to follow through with what RFK began back in late 60's in going to these areas.
By the way, Obama can expect some really hard questions on climate change/coal energy from these folks and so far from what I have heard these folks are not impressed. This will be a very tuff environment but it needs to be tackled.

What do you expect from the wife of Alan Greenspan?

by many of the same people who wouldn't dream of making such remarks about minorities.  The neighborhood I grew up in in Northern Virginia was chock full of people who'd moved in from the country - Luray, Winchester, Warrenton, and all - to take advantage of the post-war boom.  You haven't lived until you've ridden a school bus through your neighborhood and listened to kids from neighboring communities refer to it as "shitsville" and "redneck land" and a "non-mobile trailer park."  Some people are just ignorant - and I'm not talking about "rednecks."

I read about this yesterday in the Potomac News

If you are ever looking for someone who lends the word "elite" to "media," then look no further than Andrea Mitchell.

Guess that sums it up.

This kind of thing seems to come out of Andrea Mitchell's mouth quite often. On top of which she rarely has any insight or information beyond that possessed by the most sophomoric of bloggers.  

I don't understand why she has that job.

The only person who is entitled to call groups of people 'rednecks' in public would be someone who openly considers himself to be a redneck. Like how black people get to use the 'N' word but the rest of us mustn't. It's just the way it is and Andrea Mitchell has been very rude in failing to observe this.

to tags.  Maybe she should have used NASCAR fans or whatever the more acceptable code word de jour is.

As someone who lives in a Volvo-driving household with an ultra-liberal who drinks chardonnay, listens to NPR and often wears Birkenstocks, for months now, I've had to expend considerable energy dealing with the damage done when my wife found out Jim Webb was into guns.

Conversely, Senator Obama's standing rose in her eyes, if that's even possible, when she found out that his bodyman, Reggie Love, had revealed that Obama's favorite meal was hers, salmon and broccoli.

So tagging has its pitfalls in both directions: i.e. gun owners bad, salmon eaters good.

I think the point is that we're in somewhat of a new political era in that Obama has fractured the demographic tags that, in the past, toplined our political divisions.  Though Obama is an African-American in the truest sense of that phrase, he never experienced the life and vicissitues of being a black American until he arbitrarily moved to Chicago to become an African-American in the accepted sense.  Webb has fractured a few cliches himself, this self-described redneck intellectual who is an armed, anti-Iraq, Vietnamese speaking Marine hero.  

The two of them together would truly confound Rove-inspired attempts to typecast them and put them in a box the right can then step on.

for the very selfish reason that I can't bear to part with him  in the Senate, you've almost converted me to your point of view just to think of the head-scratching and false starts we'd see from the Rovian hordes trying to figure out a way to bring such a combination down.  

The Rovians, let alone the Clintonista feministas, haven't even gotten started on the Manchurian Candidate implications of Webb speaking fluent Vietnamese.  And then there's the Vietnamese geisha girl third wife and ...  Wait one doggone minute here, folks.  The First Lady presiding at the head table at a state dinner for Sarkozy and Carla would be black and, though the Vice President himself would be as white bread as they come, the First Vice Lady would be Vietnamese?!  End times are surely upon us.

Wait another one minute ...  Has anyone ever seen Senator Webb enter a church?  Or mention that he speaks regularly with a higher father, urrh, Father telling him to get into or out of Iraq?  I dunno ...

But Webb's seriously into concealed weapons and his son is a combat Marine veteran of Iraq, so he can't be all that bad.  And he likes his Wild Turkey and, no doubt, his grits.

Rove's head would probably explode.  So yeah, Catzmaw, that alone might make Obama Webb worthwhile.