Abu Wabu

Try as he might to "clarify" them by parsing them beyond all believability, Obama's illuminating San Francisco remarks are accurately contextualized at The Corner. The MSM have been all a-twitter about the "bitterness" aspect of Obama's slur, when the real insult is the word "cling", which reveals Obama's "special measure of arrogance"; in Obama's world, desperate American rubes wander in an existential wasteland from which they can only be delivered by turning their lives over to the Shining Obamian Light.

Rich Lowry:

Obama brings a special measure of arrogance to the standard liberal critique of Middle America. His candidacy has always been characterized by two paradoxes. How can he be so hopeful at the same time he and his wife, Michelle, portray America as a sink-pit of despair? And how can he claim to be a uniter when he’s an orthodox liberal who has risked little or nothing for bipartisan outreach?

Now, we know. Obama defines hopefulness as liberalism, specifically liberalism as embodied by himself. Only with Obama’s election will America be redeemed from its harrowing false consciousness. We will be unified, not by Obama reaching out to conservatives to hammer out compromises, but by conservatives shedding their bitterness and becoming Obama liberals.

This is the underside of hope: arrogance fading into a secular messianism based on the fallenness of everyone who disagrees with Barack Obama. And it’s small-town voters who are deluded?

Jonah Goldberg:

I don't mind [Obama] saying that small town blue collar workers are bitter over lost jobs. I think that's objectively true in some cases and perfectly defensible as a general statement. The offending word here is "cling." It's a word drenched in haughtiness and condescension. We cling to rocks when we are caught in a current. Obama's imagery suggests that because the economic tide is receding these people are clinging to God and guns, presumably to compensate for the undertow. But he also suggests that if the economic tide were rising these same people would let go of God and guns and ride the currents to happier and more progressive lands where everyone thinks like Obama. In his telling Pennsylvania was once Belgium on the Susquehanna — cheese parties, Sam Harris book clubs etc — and it can be again if only these people get good enough jobs to lay down their guns and bibles. As just about everyone has observed by now, this is a fundamentally Marxist way of looking at the world and Obama deserves to be called on it.

Thomas Sowell throws in on Obama's sinking fortunes in "A Living Lie", by putting B. Hussein Obidiot's words in the larger context of the left wing idiot's general world view, which he must carefuly conceal from "the others" out there in the real world:

Some of his recent talk in San Francisco has stirred up controversy because it revealed yet another blatant contradiction between Barack Obama's public image
and his reality.

Speaking privately to supporters in heavily left-liberal San Francisco, Obama let down his hair and described working class people in Pennsylvania as so "bitter" that they "cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them."

Like so much that Obama has said and done over the years, this is standard stuff on the far left, where guns and religion are regarded as signs of psychological dysfunction -- and where opinions different from those of the left are ascribed to emotions ("bitter" in this case), rather than to arguments that need to be answered.

Like so many others on the left, Obama rejects "stereotypes" when they are stereotypes he doesn't like but blithely throws around his own stereotypes about "a typical white person" or "bitter" gun-toting, religious and racist working class people.
In politics, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a "clarification," when people react adversely to what was plainly said.

Of course, like any liberal, Obama has no intention of taking responsibility for what he said. Jim Geraghty:

Barack Obama, speaking to the Associated Press' Annual Meeting:

Good afternoon. I know I kept a lot of you guys busy this weekend with the comments I made lastweek. Some of you might even be a little bitter about that.

As I said yesterday, I regret some of the words I chose, partly because the way that these remarks have been interpreted have offended some people and partly because they have served as one more distraction from the critical debate that we must have in this election season.

"The way those remarks have been interpreted have offended some people." Not, "I offended some people." It's your fault, or somebody else's fault for once again "misinterpreting" those remarks.

Then, once again, this is a "distraction" from what Obama wants to talk about. Whenever an issue comes along that reflects badly on him, it's a distraction from the "real issues." But what if Americans want to talk about this? What if they really think that an aspiring president looks down on them, and doesn't understand life in small town America? What if that's a critical debate and real issue to them?

Well then, they're just clinging to their old bigoted ways. They must instead embrace Obidiot before they can be free.

Obama scandal