The Community Organizer

The Obama campaign and their surrogates attempted to regain some dignity off of Sarah Palin's zingers about his "community organizer" past. This series of posts in Slate commenting on Palin's speech are most amusing. Here, Slate writer Maureen Sullivan bemoans the "tone" of the convention:

The whole tenor of the evening was more mean-spirited than any convention I can remember. The crowd laughed at the mention of Obama being a community organizer during Giuliani's speech—what I think was not supposed to be a joke but rather a throwaway credit—but I'm sure all those laid-off steelworkers that Obama was working with to rebuild their lives wouldn't think it was funny. "Proud steelworkers," as Palin pointed out that her husband was. It's pretty mean to laugh at someone trying to help those with the true misfortune of a layoff; it seems cruel and unusual that those they were laughing at are professional kin of Palin's husband.

The Obama campaign was making the same argument today, coincidentally:) Now come on - does anybody really think Obama spent his days in South Side Chicago community-organizing steelworkers? The image the Obama campaign is trying to conjure up is rather obvious - a roomful of down-on-their-luck Todd Palin's being coached and inspired by a young St. Barack. But of course this is preposterous. In an article from a couple weeks ago about Obama's community-organizer roots, the steelworker angle is discussed.

And none of the laid-off steelworkers Obama talks about in stump speeches, the people he was brought to Chicago to help, could be found for this article, despite repeated requests to the campaign.

Here's a pretty straight-talking description of the community organizer, especially as a particularly Chicago-oriented calling. Does it sound like a job Middle America would be very impressed with? Here's a more in-depth look at Obama's vocation by Byron York in National Review. Apparently, the "steelworker-retraining" part of the program was a non-starter. But you don't need me to tell you that, no doubt a NY Times reporter is vetting Obama's claims this very moment.

P.S. Here's another gem from that Slate thread, this one by Dahlia Lithwick:

And if it’s small to go after community organizers, or people who are not “always proud of America,” or people with the misfortune to reside in cities, or people inspired by idealism, well so be it.

Oh, so all of a sudden living in the city is a "misfortune"? So city dwellers are supposed to be jealous of those living in the heartland, afterall? How about that.