The Real America!

Judith Warner lit the fuse, but Nicholas Beaudrot started it:

Ezra Klein: "How Could Clinton Win? Nobody I Know Voted For Her.": Via DeLong and Franke-Ruta (that's just the order their posts popped up in my RSS reader), the NYT's Judith Warner wonders if maybe, just maybe, the hyper-educated urban cosmopolitan upper-middle class journalists have a Pauline Kael problem [sic] when it comes to assessing the public's impressions of Hillary Clinton. The Village has inculcated the right-wing myth that Real America out there in the heartland (even though there are more World of Warcraft players than farmers) hates Clinton and will never vote for her, backed up by her weak performance in the 2000 Senate election. But this just doesn't pass the smell test.... I will say that... I didn't expect she would be able to improve her favorable figures this much this quickly; I thought she would have to do more than just show up on midday talk show circuit to improve her favorables, and that the Democratic primary electorate would not be particularly eager to nominate a candidate whose record and rhetoric has all the hallmarks of a centrist. But hey, I'm part of the hyper-educated urban cosmopolitan upper-middle class...

And Paul Krugman carried it forward:

The real America - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog: The real America I once wrote a piece about George W. Bush’s claim that he goes to Crawford to be with “real Americans.” As I asked at the time,

And what are those of us who live in New Jersey — chopped liver?

But here’s a statistic, via Nicholas Beaudrot, that really puts it in perspective: In today’s America, there are more World of Warcraft players than farmers.

Which carries us via Making Light and BoingBoing to Kung Fu Monkey:

Kung Fu Monkey: Farm Fetish: [T]his CNN piece (from over at Atrios) is the sort of thing that... gives me a headache. They send a reporter to literally Middle America, and surprise, discover that they don't much care for them Hollywood movies. Suuuurrr-prise! But one chunk of this report, to me, is symptomatic of a larger issue that grinds my molars.

ANDERSON: We stopped by the Lebanon [Kansas -- ed.] hotspot, Ladow's Market, where one local told us Hollywood just can't relate to a farming way of life.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They've never been back in here to know what it's like to actually have to make a living doing this.

You know what, Unidentified Male? You're right. I don't know what it's like to have to make a living farming. NOBODY DOES. For chrissake, only 17% of Americans live in rural settings anymore. Only 2 million of those people work on farms or ranches (USDA figures). Hell, only ten percent of the average farm family's income even comes from farming.... [W]hy in the name of John Deere's Blood-Soaked Wood-Chipper Gears, every time I hear a news report on what "real Americans" think do I wind up watching some farmer in their fifties and sixties bitch as they survey the blasted plains landscape behind them, and not only that, somehow their cultural observations are assumed to have more relevance than anyone else's?... [H]ow did we get to a point where this report may as well have started: "Hi there, Carol, we're about to talk to people twenty years older than the average American living a lifestyle less than one in five average Americans live ... to find out what the average American thinks" and somehow nobody blinks an eye?

There are four times as many Americans living in urban than rural areas. There are four times as many people sucking back coffee in New York city alone than make a living farming. According to the Burea of Labor, there are just as many people employed in Architecture and Engineering as farming, hell, 3 million people working in Computer and Mathematical jobs. But when one of these "What does America think about culture" pieces comes on, do I ever see a mid-30's software engineer onscreen.... Four million people in the US play World of Warcraft. And yet, do I ever hear:

ANDERSON: We stopped by the gates of Ogrimmar in Durotar, on the east coast of Kalimdor, where one local told us Hollywood just can't relate to the level-grinding life.

UNIDENTIFIED ORC: They've never been back here, questing Razormane or Drygulch Ravine, y'know ... or farming for Peacebloom and Silverleaf. They're out of touch.

No. No I do not.... The rural life, specifically, the agricultural industry, is a massive, important part of our nation's economic well-being.... For some people the rural life is an incredibly rewarding way of life. They should be very proud of the fact they have held on to this great tradition of commerce and, one might argue service....

But that life is not holy, it does not bless one with special insight into the intent of the Framers of the goddam Consitution or what America "should" be like.... Pardon me for enjoying my goddam latte.... I am just, I guess, well and truly tired of being told what "Middle America" wants, when Middle America is my age and lives in a goddam city, just like I have for my entire life.

Comments

[andres]

Of course neither Ezra Klein nor Paul Krugman nor Wing Chun Primate (just to correct the linguistic slobbery) mention the crux: thanks to the Senate, those Unidentified Orcs in Kansas, Idaho, you name it, have indirect veto power over all legislation that passes through Congress as well as a disproportionate influence in the Electoral College. So it's little wonder that they get all those agricultural subsidies and that the clueless media identifies them, and not the urban coasts, as "Middle America". It really is time for some constitutional reform, say I.

[Ryan Lanham]

The key on all this is the Senate. Remarkable how so few small d democrats cry foul at what is obviously the major conservative institution in the US designed to shatter any semblance of democracy.

[anne]

I am lost here, and not sure what the post is about, but if about whether I would vote for Hillary Clinton the answer is "yes" though I would prefer Al Gore or John Edwards or Barack Obama in any order. I will vote for Democrats, up and down, but I could not be more unhappy with Clinton's unwillingness to pledge to begin leaving Iraq immediately on election.

I have no wish at all for a warrior princess or prince as President, and "no" I do not play video games.

[anne]

Please explain to me what this post is really about?

[IM]

Superman did grow up in Smallville, but he lives in Metropolis. Even in the early forties it was already presumed that the average american like Clark Kent lives in a city. And of course the U.S. is not only the most urban least rural nation now, but it was also the first nation were a majority lived in cities and that was almost a hundred years ago.

But this rural dwellers are the salt of the earth and city dwellers are a bunch of artifical parasites is an old rifgt-wing propaganda trope.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

I'm going to pull rank as the only gen-yew-wine farm boy around here (my parents farmed 640 acres until they sold the land to, uh, Dan Ackroyd, which shows you how little Hollywood knows about farming).

The main skill in farming is advanced economics. Farming is more urbane, if not urban, than running a telephone in a stock brokerage.

[Paul J. Reber]

Cute point, but probably a significant chunk of the 4m Warcraft players are <18yo. There are probably more total adult gamers than farmers by a pretty big margin (with some overlap too, I suspect). If polled, I suspect they'd turn out not to be too homogeneous except maybe on the "personal libertarian" issues (keep your laws off my games, music and pr0n).

Games with online communities probably foster more teamwork orientation among large semi-diverse groups, which might have interesting effects. Teamwork is a good way to overcome bias -- working as a group towards a difficult goal helps reduce effects of worrying about your teammates' race, gender, or orientation. But I wonder if gaming helps very much with that much since everybody is hidden behind cartoon avatars.

[justin]

Isn't most agricultural production in the U.S. on the West Coast? Isn't farming fairly technology and education intensive? Agronomy, plant genetics, soil science and such? Don't major universities (esp. land grant colleges) have extensive farming research programs and offer degrees in farm related areas in addition to all that icky diversity and courses about female writers? Aren't the media just perpetuating a backwards (and frankly exploitative) 19th Century idea about authenticity that they are too lazy to revise through, you know, reporting? Isn't the idea of looking for the "Real America" kind of, um, un-American?

[bvgiwr]

Now we know who are all those people they call farmers in World of Warcraft. They are not Chinese kids making a few RMB after school; they are American real-life farmers confused about whether they are in real life or computer game.

[bvgiwr]

This also brings up a topic on how to get more subscribers for upcoming computer games - put a cow in the beginning area and allow people to milk it and sell the milk for tiny amounts of game money. There's bound to be dedicated milkers, milking championships etc.

[Most game players are adults]

For some game playing demographics, according to the Electronic Software Association :

33 : Age of average game player

Adult gamers have been playing an average of 12 years. Among most frequent gamers, adult males average 10 years for game playing, females for 8 years.

Women over 18 represent 30% of the game playing population, compared to boys 17 and under who compose 20% of the population.

While a total of 38% of gamers are female, 42% of online game players are female.

69% of heads of households play video games

They also found that:

Ninety-three percent of game players also report reading books or daily newspapers on a regular basis

Gamers devote more than triple the amount of time spent playing games each week to exercising or playing sports, volunteering in the community, religious activities, creative endeavors, cultural activities, and reading.

In total, gamers spend 23.4 hours per week on these activities, compared to 6.8 hours per week playing games.

Fifty percent of gamers are regularly involved in creative activities, such as painting, writing, or playing an instrument. In addition, adult gamers exhibit a high level of interest in current events, with 94 percent following news and current events, and 78 percent reporting that they vote in most of the elections for which they are eligible.

http://www.theesa.com/facts/gamer_data.php

[Eli Rabett]

Why is South Dakota still a state?

[Eli Rabett]

Why is South Dakota still a state?

[Thorstein Veblen]

Two points: Ezra Klein left out the other stat that Hillary naysayers point to -- her winning in 2006 vs. a joke (who was a woman, so there was no possibility of sexism keeping Hillary down) in the New York senate race by a smaller margin than any of the other statewide Dems, despite the fact that she spent millions more, is the wife of Bill Clinton, she campaigned like mad, and had a campaign loaded with the "best" strategic minds in politics.

2nd point: In the last 16 Rasmussen head-to-head polls, I believe Hillary won two (although the trend is admittedly good). Given that she has a famous husband and such easy access to the media, that's not good. Once the Republican candidate is decided, she will lose that advantage. That's not good at all. The hyper-educated Ezra Klein might want to take a look-see.

[Thorstein Veblen]

To clarify, Clinton has lost 14 out of 16 head-to-head polls vs. Giuliani...

[Gene O'Grady]

For what farming America (West Coast edition) really thinks, I submit the Lane County Grange scarecrow contest at this year's county fair. Number two (number one was pretty well done too) was a remarkable number in black and purple evening clothes that obviously amalgamated the facial features, and ears, of George W Bush and Dracula. I realize Lane County includes Mark Thoma and a large university, but I have to think that most of those people successfully avoid the Grange exhibit and that the crowd yucking it up over Bushcula was the real Americans.

[albatross]

I guess I shouldn't expect any better at this point, but maybe the big media companies might try finding people who live in the South and West and Midwest, and who grew up there, to get some insights into the concerns there? Perhaps someone could even break it to some of these guys that that wonderful map in the famous New Yorker cartoon was a joke?

Surely, the way to find out about Hillary's likely performance in the Midwest is to look at polling numbers, along with voting data from previous years. The guys who run state and local campaigns know all about the voting patterns in these states, and would surely be no harder to talk to than any other source. If the NYT or Washington Post or any other source actually cared to know, they could have some very good analysis of likely voting trends in the Midwest. But that would only happen if they cared enough to do their jobs, which they don't.

[Kate G.]

yes, the rest of us are chopped liver. This has been a simple answer to simple questions.

Kate G.

[Drake]

If you live on a family farm in an area where population density is, say, 10 per square mile, your own opinions will seem very important to you.

[piotr]

People are a bit confused between people who own the farmland and the people who actually raise and pick the crops. As you drive through Central Valley, CA you can see that the difference can be profound.

Real Americans are mostly illegal aliens. So forget about Senate over-representing the interests of people who work on farms. Agrobussiness is another story. Didn't Sen. Clinton met with representatives of agriculture industry in the offices of Monsanto lobbyists? Sen. of New York State, I may add? How many vegetable pickers attended the reception?

Personally, I am an immigrant from Poland where family farms are still a norm, and farmers (or peasants, as they are usually called, with one Peasant party in the current parliament and another being probably represented in the next) actually pick fruits and vegetables when they grow them.

I also read that nowadays it is impossible to run a larger dairy farm in USA without illegal workers. Forget about just 2 millions of people making living on farms. There are 2 millions making good to so-so living on farms, and many more who do the work.

[wood turtle]

What does this have to do with anything?

[Tyrone Slothrop]

The instinct that farmers are ur-Americans reflects a powerful sort of nostalgia similar to what Luc Sante and I were trying to get at here:

http://allintensivepurposes.blogspot.com/2006/06/why-soccer-balls-will-forever-be-black.html

[Tyrone Slothrop]

That url is:

http://allintensivepurposes.blogspot.com/2006/06/
why-soccer-balls-will-forever-be-black.html