Palin's Small Town Snobbery

[cali]

by Steve Chapman
Americans disdain snobbery in all its forms except the most popular one: reverse snobbery. Joe Biden would never get up in front of a crowd and suggest that the citizens of Manhattan are morally superior to the residents of Possum Gulch, Ark. But Sarah Palin was happy to tell the Republican National Convention that the very best people come from the country.

"We grow good people in our small towns, with honesty, sincerity and dignity," she declared, quoting the late journalist Westbrook Pegler. "They are the ones who do some of the hardest work in America, who grow our food, run our factories and fight our wars. They love their country, in good times and bad, and they're always proud of America." Not like those idle, insincere, lying city folks who dare to suggest that America can sometimes be wrong.

But no one seemed to take offense. The myth of rural virtue and urban vice is an old one in this country, and it persists no matter what the changes in the landscape. And whatever questions Palin may face in her debate with Biden, her paeans to small-town virtue aren't likely to be among them.

Most Americans, it seems, can tolerate hearing of the superiority of the small town, as long as they don't have to live in one. You wouldn't know it from listening to country music stations, or to the governor of Alaska, but four out of every five Americans choose not to reside in rural areas.

Maybe if they ventured beyond the city limits more often, those people would not be so inclined to believe everything they hear about the merits of rustic hamlets, which harbor a full complement of social ills.

<snip>

http://townhall.com/columnists/SteveChapman/2008/10/02/palins_small_town_snobbery?page=full&comments=true

Note: Yes, this is from a right wing site- the same one that published Kathleen Parker's now famous call to Palin to step aside, and that makes it all the more interesting. As far as I know, Townhall publishes ONLY right wing points of view.

[jakem]

1. and they love their meth labs and rape kits!

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

2. I've lived in metropolitan areas, in small towns, and in the country

and you can find the same sort of people everywhere. I mean, I can go visit progressive, liberal types in the heart of Minneapolis, DFW, or Houston, or I can go down in the valley and see the same sort of nice folks in Parthenon AR (see, SOME Arkansas town names are classy!). I can also find racists and idiots both places, too. To say that the country is better or worse than the city is an over generalization.

[Arugula Latte]

3. I'm so bloody sick of the anti-urban snobbery.

Republicans sure know how to alienate millions of people at a time, don't they?

[eshfemme]

4. As someone who's lived in all types of areas, I resent that kind of generalization too.

My mom's family is a small rural farm family in Taiwan and I lived there for an extended period of time. I also grew up in NYC and then went to college in a suburban/exurban area. So yeah, it's fucking stupid to try to say one group of people who live in a type of community is better.

It's dumb because we're all interconnected-- the cities couldn't evolve without the support of the rural farms that provide the resources possible to maintain such a concentration of the population. At the same time, the suburban and rural areas don't do well if their cities are allowed to die off.

When you champion "small towns" at the cost of cities, it's a type of snobbery that is damaging because it is promoting a counterproductive view that would lead in the ultimate destruction of those "small towns" that you are touting. So yeah, Sarah Palin and those "patriotic" "family values" Republicans who say this bullshit are fucking idiots.

[RoadRage]

5. If small towns are so great.. why does everyone seem to leave them?

I live in Omaha, NE.. and Nebraska is chock full of small towns. Take a drive out west, and you see town after town consolidating schools.. factories.. stores, etc. Many of them shrink to the size of non-existence.. what may have been a town of 500 30 years ago is now 4 or 5 houses with elderly living in them who refuse to leave. Their kids & grandkids may come back and visit.. but most of them have moved to the "big" cities of Omaha or Lincoln.. or out of state completely.

A few of my best friends grew up in small towns - and not one of them ever would want to go back. They might seem like the American Dream on the outside.. but the politics, gossip, and lack of opportunity is a reality in most small towns. There are positives, but there are also a lot of negatives as well.

I'll just go ahead and stay in my "small town" of about 800,000... that's small enough for me.

[cali]

6. I actually moved from a big city to a tiny fural village

and I love it. I've lived in Vermont for over 25 years now, and I still feel the same way about this place. As you say there are positives and negatives.

[RoadRage]

9. Cali.. how is your town doing?

Is it growing bigger.. getting smaller.. or staying the same size? I didn't mean any offense to small towns (hell - people think Omaha is a small town compared to bigger cities).

In them mid-west though, many small towns are just going away, because the economies can't sustain them anymore. Just curious how it is out east.

[cali]

10. well, my village is only a couple of hundred people

but it is officially part of a larger town of about 3,000 that's about 5 miles down the road from where I live. I've lived here for over a decade and I've lived in the Northeast Kingdom (the name for the overall region) for nearly 30 years. Nothing's changed very much. It's poor and rural. There are fewer dairy farms than there were 30 years ago, but dairy farming is still a big part of the local culture and economy. One good thing that's happened is that there's been a flowering of small artisan cheese making. Right down the road from me is Jasper Hill farm which is making some amazing cheeses. Cabot is also just a few miles away (not artisan cheesemaking, of course) and they're doing well. Still, this is a poor area. It will likely stay poor. I was talking to an elderly person who's lived here all her life not long ago, and she told me that the depression didn't really make much of a difference around here because poverty was so widespread before the depression.

What really changed Vermont, was the influx of people during the 60s and 70's. The hippies, and those who just wanted to live here in a simpler way, really fit in pretty seamlessly and they really changed things.

[EstimatedProphet]

7. It does go both ways though

Is this article trying to deny the image of rural people as uneducated inbred rednecks? I certainly have run across a good number of people that think anyone not from a city is stupid. And I've run across just as many people that think anyone in a city is stupid too. All of it breaks down to where the person making the generalization lives.

[alcibiades_mystery]

8. Someone finally said it

:thumbsup:

[barbiegeek]

11. When is urban american going to speak out on the small town snobbery?

I do live in Rural America. I visit major cities, like Chicago & LA. When is Urban America going to stand up to this Small town Snobbery. There are areas of rural America that are so bad that Compton looks nice. Please stand up to this. It makes me crazy. I'm more afraid of my neighbors on the other side of town, who have been up for 3 days on crank and their Rifles, then I am walking in downtown Chicago at 2 am.

I would love to City Dwellers all over America speak out.