Ivy League Grads on Food Stamps

A letter to MSNBC's Mike Barnicle:

Mike,

I am writing to you in reaction to you appearance on Morning Joe the day of Barack Obama's choice of Joe Biden as his running mate.

Your analysis: the Biden pick will help deal with Obama's "elitism" problem. This frame about Democrats has been around since Nixon's campaign in 1968, but it is particularly ridiculous in the case of Barack.

You do of course know the facts: he grew up in single parent household and was on food stamps for a time. Hardly elitist.

Like Obama, when I was growing up, my family was on food stamps for a short time; my father was always in and out of work.

Guess what? I got a scholarship to Regis, an elite (all-scholarship) Jesuit high school in Manhattan, and among the best high schools in the United States, if not the best Catholic one.

Like Obama, I went to Columbia on grants and loans and held a job for expenses. An Ivy Leaguer, yes, but hardly an elitist. I even still live in the Queens neighborhood I grew up in.

I HATE Starbucks, I used to un-ironically watch professional wrestling, I like Kentucky Fried Chicken. But I've also read Finegans Wake and know who Derrida is, though I think he's a poser.

What I'm trying to say is this: you have no idea what you are talking about and your identification with what you call "lunchpail Democrats" borders on the fraudulent, especially since the last time you had dirt on your fingernails was when?

I guess it would have been better if Obama had gone to Andover and "cleared brush" on his fake ranch.