OUR VIEW: Redneck refrains

And now this from the “with friends like these” category.
For anyone who suspected that the mainstream media was a biased bunch happy to carry the water for Sen. Barack Obama, when they weren’t busy swooning and mooning, MSNBC correspondent Andrea Mitchell erased all doubt on Thursday. What’s more, she did it in such a ham-handed way that it fairly invites editorial writers to use words like “arrogant,” “haughty,” “insolent” and “pompous.”
In case you missed it (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/06/05/msnbcs-andrea-mitchell-re_n_105462.html), Mitchell chuckled at the notion that Obama would choose to campaign in Bristol, Va. 
“Interesting images today. Barack Obama, Mark Warner in Southwest Virginia,” she said. “This is real redneck, sort of, bordering on Appalachia country. This is not the Northern Virginia, you know, sort of high-tech corridor. And these are voters that he would not logically be, you know, gravitating to. This is the beginning of a pivot.“
Mitchell, in case you were wondering, is a native of New York City. Anyone surprised?
It would be fun to feign indignation, but why bother? Mitchell didn’t break any news Thursday. She and the rest of her ilk are sycophants. So they think of Appalachia as a punch line? How long have we known that Mitchell and company think that way? And don’t Appalachians think of Mitchell and all the people like her, as a punch line, too? Don’t we especially think it’s funny when the acolytes on MSNBC genuflect as whatever anointed flavor graces them with their presence? Don’t we chuckle when they open mouth and insert foot?
Now a starry-eyed talking head’s foot in mouth moment doesn’t necessarily prove that Obama is unfit to lead this great nation. It does however, especially when coupled with images like YouTube’s Obama Girl (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKsoXHYICqU and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekSxxlj6rGE), make you wonder whether his followers are fit to be led. And though that’s a false stumbling block, it’ll be the reason voters turn on him, if they do. Americans can forgive a lot – incompetence, philandering – in their elected officials. They understand that all politicians, maybe especially those who claim to be unlike all politicians, are willing to throw preachers, friends and even grandmothers under the bus for a vote. What they can’t stand are the preachy, self-righteous followers bent on making nuisances of themselves at every turn. Unfortunately those nuisances, Mitchell being one, obscure the real issues of a campaign.
Still, Obama’s real trouble is not the people who surround him, as annoying, shallow and Kool-Aid stained as some might be, but the people he surrounds himself with. Questions about the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Michelle Obama’s lack of pride in the United States and ties to Bill Ayers haven’t gone away. Thinking voters have to wonder what type of cabinet the man from Illinois would fashion from that rough-cut lumber.
What thinking voters need to do is ignore the Dick Cheneys and Andrea Mitchells of the world, give this monumental election its due, give Obama and John McCain fair listens and make up their minds on the real issues. And they definitely shouldn’t fire back that Mitchell must be bitter because she’s married to a vastly more successful and intelligent husband. That would be redneck.