Today's entry was provoked by a book called The Wine Trials, discussed in the New York Times in Eric Asimov's The Pour, and again (and better) at Fermentation. The basis of The Wine Trials is a study finding that people preferred cheap wines to expensive ones in blind tastings. But, Asimov asks, what does that mean? Does it mean the best wine is really the cheapest, or that the expensive labels gave upon quality have been riding on name alone for years? Or does it mean the cheaper wines are aimed at a different audience than the more expensive ones? As Asimov points out, a room full of random volunteers might prefer "Porky's" to Ingmar Bergman's "Persona," but does that make it a better movie?
Less expensive wines do, perhaps, cater to a different audience. Oenophiles, aka "wine snobs" to many, recognize these right out of the box, or sometimes even bottle - huge fruit, huge oak (sometimes you can just taste the oak powder, thrown into huge stainless steel vats to imitate oak barrell aging), vanilla, and sugar. These are things added to mass-market wines. Is that bad? Not if you like huge fruit, huge oak, vanilla and sugar. You will never mistake it for a first growth Bordeaux, but it is clearly what the grocery-store-bottle-of-wine clientelle is looking for and getting.
But that does not explain why the taste tests are different when people see the label. If they like the big manipulated wines better blind, why don't they say so with the bag gone? Do the label and price really change perception? Or are people too embarrassed to say they really don't "know" enough about wine to be "good" judges of the product? The obvious answer is the latter, but I think a lot of the former is there, too. There can be little doubt people change what they think of something depending upon their existing perception of it. "Is that a really 'good' (i.e. 'expensive') wine? Then that musty taste must be the RIGHT taste, right?"
This phenomenon is no more obvious than in today's political environment. Are you an Obama supporter? Or do you prefer Clinton? Is John McCain what we need to keep America strong? How would feel about what they say if you didn't know who said it? Does the label change what we hear?
Yes. It does.
The big kerfuffle this week is Obama's statement at a private fundraiser in San Francisco. The keyword, the one you've heard even if you don't follow it all, is "bitter." Obama supporters applaud the statement, proclaiming their candidate's honesty and bravery, his willingness to speak unvarnished truth. Clinton supporters think it was a naive thing to say, not so much for the content but for the naivette it demonstrates as a candidate, describing it as a fatal remark guaranteed to hand the Presidence to McCain if Obama is the Democratic nominee. McCain supporters see it a third way, going straight to the comment itself and say Obama hates "real Americans." So who's right?
Here's what he said. I am reproducing more than you usually see, because (a) I want the whole context, and (b) the first paragraph includes another statement just as potentially explosive, and only now getting some attention:
Here's how it is: in a lot of these communities in big industrial states like Ohio and Pennsylvania, people have been beaten down so long, and they feel so betrayed by government, and when they hear a pitch that is premised on not being cynical about government, then a part of them just doesn't buy it. And when it's delivered by -- it's true that when it's delivered by a 46-year-old black man named Barack Obama, then that adds another layer of skepticism.
But -- so the questions you're most likely to get about me, 'Well, what is this guy going to do for me? What's the concrete thing?' What they wanna hear is -- so, we'll give you talking points about what we're proposing -- close tax loopholes, roll back, you know, the tax cuts for the top 1 percent. Obama's gonna give tax breaks to middle-class folks and we're gonna provide health care for every American. So we'll go down a series of talking points.
But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. So it's not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.
Those were his words. Theoretically, they speak for themselves. Why, then, are so many people interpreting them in so many different ways? Let's start with Obama himself. They're his words. He gets the first shot:
What Sen. Obama said is that over the last 25-30 years, working class people in places like Pennsylvania have been falling behind, and that politicians in Washington haven’t been looking out for them. He also said that, as a result, many people have become frustrated, angry and even bitter about all the broken promises.
He was right.
The politicians who are now saying that we shouldn’t be frustrated are the ones who are out of touch.
Is that really what he said? If you listen to his supporters, absolutely. Take quick trip to Daily Kos, the biggest Democratic blog on the internet, and you will find "Robert Reich on Bitterness and the Press" on the front page. You will also find Recommended Diaries (the most popular reader contributions, promoted by the blog readers) including Sen. Obama: "Who's In Touch?" and Obama says "Shame on her" in brilliant response!. Other recent reader diaries include Why Bittergate is completely made up, Thomas Frank "WTMW Kansas": People are bitter in small town, and Religion, Guns, and Bitterness, among others.
The front paged diary quoted Robert Reich on the issue of bitterness, and its use for political gain:
Are Americans who have been left behind frustrated? Of course. And their frustrations, their anger and, yes, sometimes their bitterness, have been used since then -- by demagogues, by nationalists and xenophobes, by radical conservatives, by political nuts and fanatical fruitcakes – to blame immigrants and foreign traders, to blame blacks and the poor, to blame "liberal elites," to blame anyone and anything.
What is their read on what Obama said? Basically, it's "hell yes people are bitter, and they have a right to be." The economy is passing these people from closed-down manufacturing towns down, and they have plenty to be bitter about. Not only that, they argue, but also anybody who says they should NOT be bitter is really the one who doesn't understand the working class.
But was that really the problem? Was it all about the word "bitter"? Not according to Clinton or her followers. Let's look at how she responded to the story:
"It's being reported that my opponent said that the people of Pennsylvania who face hard times are bitter," Clinton said during a campaign event in Philadelphia. "Well that's not my experience. As I travel around Pennsylvania. I meet people who are resilient, optimist positive who are rolling up their sleeves."
"Pennsylvanians don't need a president who looks down on them," she said. "They need a president who stands up for them, who fights hard for your future, your jobs, your families."
Senator Evan Bayh, a Clinton supporter, had this to say on how the statement might hurt the Party in November:
The far right wing has a very good track record of using things like this relentlessly against our candidate, whether it’s Al Gore or John Kerry. And I’m afraid this is the kind of fodder they might use to really harm him with.
Former Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack added:
I found his remarks undercutting his message of hope ... he suggests that somehow the faith of those who live in small towns is superficial. I think it’s difficult for a Democratic candidate to be successful in a general election if he misreads and misunderstands people who live in small communities.
They don't seem to be focusing so much on the "bitter" as the "clinging to ... religion" as the flub. Clinton herself laid out just that message yesterday, saying:
The Democratic party has been unfortunately viewed by many people over the last decades as being elitist and out of touch we have waged elections over that you don’t have to think too far to remember that good men running for president were viewed as being elitist and out of touch with the values and the lives of millions of Americans. So I think this is a very significant concern that people have expressed. You know the front page of the paper today in Scranton is very pointed and the mayor and mayors across Pennsylvanian and people across our country have all reacted.
That's what Clinton's campaign is saying. What are her supporters saying? To find that out, we need to dive back into the liberal blogosphere, this time to MyDD. Recommended diaries there include Looks like this story's got legs..., Sen. Obama must be feeling down today..., and Why would anyone be offended?. That last one probably does the best job of going to the heart of the issue for Clinton supporters, as it is based entirely upon the potential political effect of the speech:
Here's why people are offended.
- It's not the usage of "bitter."
If Obama had stated that voters were bitter about the state of the economy, no one would have blinked an eye. It's not the most flattering way to say that someone's angry, but it would have been an innocuous poor turning of phrase.
The controversial and insulting part of his speech is the part where he says that bitterness is the reason small town voters in Pennsylvania "cling" to their religion, guns, and anti-immigrant/anti-trade sentiments. That trivializes some of the most deeply held convictions of these people as mere inevitable peripherals of poverty, a condition itself which isn't exactly a flattering attribution to a large diverse voting block (non-urban Pennsylvania/Ohio/America).
It also addressed the argument that Obama's statement was true, made so often at Daily Kos. Once again, the focus was the political effect:
- It doesn't matter if what he said was arguably "true."
It is inappropriate to say something disparaging and then blithely defend it solely on the basis of its truth.
Example 1:
"You're really fat because you eat so many carbs."
"Say what!?"
"But it's true. I mean it can be scientifically and medically proven. You're over 650 pounds and if you ate less pasta, you would store less energy."
Example 2:
"Black people are impoverished so they cling to crime."
"WHAT!?" [outrage, and rightfully so]
"But it's true. It's in all the sociology texts, justice system statistics, etc. It's not their fault though; it's just the poor socioeconomic conditions to which America and its government has abandoned them." (See a parallel? a la "I didn't insult you, I just stated [what I consider] to be a socioeconomic fact.")
The Clinton summary? Obama's statement was politically stupid, injurious to the Democratic Party's ability to win in November. Nominate Obama, they say, and the Republicans will beat him over the head with "clinging to religion" every day between now and Election Day. Also inherent in that argument is that the "Reagan Democrats," the people Obama supporters think he brings 'back to the fold,' will stay Republican in droves in response to the comment.
How about McCain? What did he and his followers hear? This was the first reaction:
McCain's campaign also criticized the comment Friday. "It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking," said Steve Schmidt, a senior advisor to McCain. "It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans."
The McCain camp also responded to Obama's follow-up, noting that it focused on "bitter," rather than "clinging to," and calling it "spin":
Tucker Bounds, a spokesman for Mr. McCain, issued a similar response.
"Instead of apologizing to small town Americans for dismissing their values, Barack Obama arrogantly tried to spin his way out of his outrageous San Francisco remarks," Mr. Bounds said, adding: "You can’t be more out of touch than that."
McCain himself said:
"I think those comments are elitist," he said, referring to Obama's comment
that some small-town voters are bitter over the economy and, because of that, they "cling to guns and religion."
"I think anybody who disparages people who are hardworking honest dedicated people who have cherished the Second Amendment and the right to hunt and their culture that they value and they’ve grown up with sometimes in the case of generations and saying that’s because they are unhappy with their economic conditions," McCain told an audience of reporters at the Associated Press Annual Meeting in Washington, D.C.
So how are McCain's supporters responding to the whole kerfuffle? To find that out, we need to take a hard right turn in the blogosphere, to places like Red States, where two front page diaries announce Voters Disagree With Obama's Comments Demeaning Small Town America and Watch For The Bait and Switch. The first diary suggests, based upon a Rasmussen poll, the comment will be more injurious during the general election than the primary. The second makes the same observation as the Clinton campaign, that Obama is trying to shift the focus from "cling to ... religion" to "bitter:"
The switch here (see the video above) is to say that the issue is whether or not people are frustrated over the economy. Um, no, that's not it at all. The issue is Obama's characterization of the reaction of people in small-town Pennsylvania to those circumstances - the fact that he (1) equated religion and guns with bad things people believe in only because they are frustrated, (2) suggested that people in places like central PA are racists, (3) suggesting that people in places like central PA don't know what's good for them and that their beliefs are artifacts of their economic circumstances and (4) implied, by this litany, that he himself doesn't believe in things like religion and, amusingly, anti-trade sentiment, even though he has made both out to be key themes of his campaign and even though he has lately been pretending at outreach to gun owners.
It is no surprise that the politicians and their campaigns are spinning the words to their benefit. That is what they do. What I am curious about is why their supporters, active, involved individuals, could all listen to the same words and get entirely different meanings. Sure, some of them are advocates and you need to take what they say with a grain of salt. But most of them are not. Most of them genuinely believe what they heard is actually what was said. To believe otherwise is to believe on Obama supporters are honest and everybody else is lying. Or is that Clinton supporters are honest, or may McCain supporters?
A better conclusion is that people hear candidates like they taste wine - the label isn't everything, but it means one hell of a lot. If they know they're drinking a Lafitte, or a Petrus, by damn they're going to find a way to like it, and if they see it coming out of a box the sneer begins before the first sniff.
So what are we supposed to take from this? I'll give you my opinion. We should all get off our high horses, our utter confidence that "I" know what he said and what he meant, and "YOU" don't. Or even worse, "I" know what he said and what he meant, and "YOU" are lying. Good wine tastings are done blind. If only politics could be done the same way.
Today's wine tasting note:
2006 La Crema Pinot Noir Sonoma Coast
Clear light garnet color. The smell was fruity, mostly tart cherries and strawberry, with nary a hint of earth. A little hot, the alchohol was obvious The taste started tart cherries and strawberries, too, but slowly added a bit of sage and the tiniest hint of mushrooms. Not a soft wine, it was fresh and acidic. The finish, like so many moderately priced pinots, was black tea tannic. The finish was short, still tart and acidic. This is a very typical new world Pinot, a good food wine but nothing that will make you say "Wow!"
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