fbpx
Politics Foreign Affairs Culture Fellows Program

Parochial

People who’ve never been in a Wal-Mart think she is parochial because she has never summered in Tuscany. ~David Brooks Actually, they might think of her as parochial because her first trip overseas was in the last two years, before which she had never left the country.  They might think of her as parochial because […]

People who’ve never been in a Wal-Mart think she is parochial because she has never summered in Tuscany. ~David Brooks

Actually, they might think of her as parochial because her first trip overseas was in the last two years, before which she had never left the country.  They might think of her as parochial because most of her life has been spent, reasonably enough, in the same few places in Alaska.  The point, of course, is that if there is something wrong about urbanites disdaining small-town America–if they are so provincial and limited in their “cosmopolitanism”–there is nothing the matter with identifying Palin as parochial when she clearly is that.  For that matter, there shouldn’t be anything wrong with being parochial, so it should not matter whether urbanites think that someone is that. 

The response to condescension towards Palin has been something like, “How dare you think that she is a normal, small-town person!  She lives next to Russia!  So there!”  At least half of the jibes at coastal and urban elites are premised on the idea that the provincials can be all the things urbanites are while still retaining their authenticity, but urbanites are supposedly forever doomed to empty, rootless existence.  At the heart of outraged defenses of Palin is a keen desire to cover up for something that the apologists know are glaring flaws for a Vice Presidential candidate, as if they all feel compelled to make excuses for her and pretend that she is a globalist-in-waiting.  Hence the strained references to proximity to Russia, the insistence that coming from an oil-rich state provides insights into national energy policy and the notion that she instinctively understood the Bush Doctrine better than Gibson in her Zen-like avoidance of defining something that must always be in flux.  It is not enough that Palin is who she is, and it is not enough to praise her small-town lifestyle, but we must also endure lectures telling us that she is some sort of a globetrotter because she once went to Kuwait. 

Update: At C11, Phoebe Maltz makes some good points about why most urbanites wouldn’t be acquianted with Wal-Mart.

Advertisement

Comments

The American Conservative Memberships
Become a Member today for a growing stake in the conservative movement.
Join here!
Join here