Colin Powell questions the politic wisdom—and the truthiness—of Sarah Palin’s implicit attacks on the values of people who live in big cities:
Gov. Palin, to some extent, pushed the party more to the right, and I think she had something of a polarizing effect when she talked about how small town values are good. Well, most of us don’t live in small towns. And I was raised in the South Bronx, and there’s nothing wrong with my value system from the South Bronx.
I was raised on the north side of Chicago, and there’s nothing wrong with my value system from the north side of Chicago either. When my father left my mother our next door neighbors—our landlords—slashed our rent. My mother was barely getting by and our landlords didn’t want my mother and her four children have to move on top of everything else we were going through that summer. It was years before they raised our rent. Mr. and Mrs. Paluch came to my mother’s funeral earlier this year and when I thanked them—again—for what they did for her, for us kids, they insisted—again—that they only did what any decent people would do.
Most Americans live in big cities and the GOP won’t be able to crawl out the hole its dug for itself so long as its candidates make insulting comparisons between small town values and big city values—so long as Sarah Palin types continue to insult people like Dennis and Kathy Paluch.
Yet, at the same time, you left Chicago for Seattle — whose principle benefits are (were) its low density, neighborhood style architecture.
Low density is the key to decreased crime and increased prosperity — like in the exurbs.
You say you lived in a house, with neighbors who rented it to you. Nice going — few can afford to even rent a house by themselves in Seattle today thanks to merciless inflation due to GMA and the City Fathers who want to keep us in rabbit cages so their rents can go ever skyward.
You mean Palin’s attempt to co-opt the trappings of Western state separatist movements into the aw-shucks, “old-time American values” hogwash that the GOP uses to convince rural voters to vote for tax breaks for billionaires was less than a resounding success? I dunno, I think they should try it again. Practice makes perfect.
Small town values = poverty, teen pregnancy, racism, high divorce rates, poor education, homophobia, fundamentalism, indiscriminate use of firearms, methamphetamines, and economic monopolization by Walmart.
What are the Republicans defending?
Gosh, Colin Powell, do values systems learned in the South Bronx involve lying to the United Nations and trying to cover up the My Lai massacre?
Colin Powell, War Criminal and Bush Administration Stooge, is in a bit of a glass house when it comes to criticizing anyone or anything. He really should keep his war-mongering mouth SHUT, unless he decides to fill it with both barrels of a shotgun before pulling the trigger.
Roscoe, don’t forget DADT. And Colin Powell is an honorable man.
Low Density?
Um, no, we artificially kept all the growth out of Seattle for a couple of decades, but this is still way lower density than you’d expect for this kind of city.
I learned my value systems mostly in Pennyslvania (we Quaker kids north of Philly on rural tree farms exemplify the best of the 4H spirit) and the Kootenays in BC, only to have them later corrupted by the big city values of places with more than 1000 people.
I think your parents have more to do with your values than where you live though.
As someone who spent far too many years in a small-town environment, I can say that, at least so far as that one particular example is concerned – IT SUCKED ASS.
I wouldn’t want to generalize based on my own experience, but I run into far fewer racist/sexist/homophobic/religiously insane people in Seattle than lived just on my street back in the old “home town” (which I don’t actually claim, except for the extent it’s where I graduated high school – and most of my relatives on my Mom’s side still live there).
I’ll take Big City Values over that unabashed Small Town bigotry and hypocrisy any day of the week…
I’m also tired of the endless parades of reporters going to some small farming community in Iowa to interview “real Americans” on whatever the national issue of the day is (ok, mostly I’m sick of it because it was nonstop before the elections). If you want to interview real Americans, go to Watts or White Plains – this is how most of us really live.
99 percent of Americans live in cities.
Get used to it.
@1 “Low density is the key to decreased crime and increased prosperity — like in the exurbs.”
Bullshit.
If that’s the case, then why does New York – with the highest density in the country – have lower crime rates than Seattle for everything except murder?
A lot of factors increase crime: lack of opportunity for youth, broken education systems, disparity of wealth. But density alone doesn’t.
Landlords are not the best example to hold up when illustrating good values. Most of them are scum.
@11
Actually, people are always bad examples, since most people are scum.
@10 just skimming over your data source, I notice that among cities with a supposed “lower crime index” Seattle outranks them heavily in property crimes. Many of these cities ranking “below” Seattle in terms of overall crime see higher numbers in other areas such as murder, rape, and aggravated assault. So we rank above a lot of places in stolen cars, but well below in murder and rape for those same cities…pick a few cities and compare.
I’m sorry, but I’d rather live in a city with fewer violent crimes than one with fewer property crimes – not to mention the fact that few people in many East Coast cities (especially your example, New York) have cars which artificially lowers their crime index. There are also a *lot* of cops in new york, and the population is so dense that there is less physical ground to cover. When the store I was working at in Manhattan was robbed, it took the cops less than 2 minutes to respond. Why? because they were parked around the corner. Literally.
I can tell you as a person who has lived for years in both Seattle and New York – the sheer density of cops in NYC is incredible. I wouldn’t be surprised if this manages to prevent a lot of “petty” crime as well. Just on my daily travels I’ve seen undercovers bust everything from drug sales to turntstile jumping in the subway. New Yorkers know that they’re being watched and this curtails a lot of bad behavior. Property crime is definitely a problem here, but according to this chart our violent crimes are not nearly as bad as many other cities in the country, and if that doesn’t say something about the character of this town then I don’t know what does.
I always like how small (minded) town people claim that they are always there to help their neighbors in times of need, but the minute you mention any social programs, they immediately decry taking their tax dollars and paying for welfare queens.
It seems to me they don’t mind helping, as long as they personally know the helpee. Otherwise, everyone can go fuck themselves.
@14,
Yeah, they want to decide who is “worthy”. Any white person = worthy. Any black or brown person = not worthy.
An illustrative example is those couples who have multiple births. White couples who use fertility drugs and then have six, seven, eight babies at a time get everything (house, cars, food, diapers, medical care) donated to them for the next 18 years. There have been documented cases of black couples stuck with multiple births (without using fertility drugs) who got shit.
Seriously, have these assholes ever lived in small towns? They’re fucking hellholes. No privacy and nothing to do. It’s why I did so many drugs in high school.
Dan, I was raised in the north of Chicago area too. I’m sure of your values. What I know of them, like education, justice, fairness and family and freindship all are values we share. What she meant was values like prudery, self rightousness, ignorance and a hate for justice for anyone but them. Oh, and pro-life for cells in a petri dish and a hate for science.
My friend’s girlfriend left him rather unexpectedly, and his landlord lowered his rent when she heard. I thought that was mighty decent.