Obama: “What’s A Hitch Ball?”

The GQ profile on Obama has some amazing details that probably would, by all rights and normally, relegate him to the world of the laughable also-rans.  For instance, there is this item:

We stopped at a picturesque redbrick general store—“America’s oldest”—to photograph Obama and his family as they bought sandwiches and fudge and played with a puppy. As Obama stood at the counter paying, he looked quizzically at a display of trailer-hitch covers dressed in the guise of moose and turkeys. Turning to the phalanx of cameramen and reporters, Obama bravely wondered, “Who knows what a hitch ball is? This is a hitch-ball cover. We don’t know what a hitch ball is. Anybody know?” A cameraman politely explained that it’s the silver thing on the back of a truck used to tow a trailer. “Oh, I see,” Obama said, looking as if he was doing a mental calculation about whether this was one of those moments the press would use to make it seem like he’s out of touch. It wasn’t exactly President George H. W. Bush marveling over a checkout scanner, but still.

Make it seem like he’s out of touch?  There’s no need for the press to make him seem like anything–he is out of touch.  No one would confuse me with someone who is extremely familiar with pickup trucks, but even I know what this is.  It’s not some piece of arcane cultural knowledge that you acquire only after years of dwelling in deepest Oklahoma or Arkansas.  It is something that you learn when you come across a pickup truck.  No wonder “downscale” Democratic voters don’t relate to Obama–it seems as if he doesn’t even know how to speak their language or understand their world.