Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

Let’s start here:

Painting Democrats as elitist intellectuals who dwell in ivory towers is not a new tactic, nor is it an accurate one. However, few attempts at this smear have been so ridiculous as the move by the McCain camp to portray Obama as a Harvard grad elitist. I’ll not dive into a defense of Obama’s single-parent, self made background, nor his delving into community organizing rather than six figure law work after earning his degree. We’ve all heard his story a million times. In many ways it is Obama’s main strength, and you can expect him to hammer that message home a million more times before November.

The McCain people have deformed this story into a smear focusing on his Ivy League education and twisting his organizing experience into some sort of amorphous, mysterious and dangerous radicalism called “street organizing.” Somehow they’ve managed to turn organizing voter registration drives aimed at the underprivileged and housed in local churches as some sort of radical revolutionary mobilizing. Yeah, ok.

Intellectual. Elitist. Revolutionary. Dangerous. Liberal.

I won’t get into how Obama is far from a leftist liberal right now, but what I do want to get into is how McCain is the last person who should be claiming that Obama is an elitist. Aside from having a campaign staffer that forms his economic policies calling Americans “whiners” and aside from having recently been caught saying that, “people who make under $80,000 are too stupid to understand taxes,” the McCains own at least ten separate homes. TEN.

The statement itself is outrageous. Let’s use some imagery to reinforce what that really means:

Here are some pictures from Architectural Digest featuring just one of those homes:

Now, if you can, imagine ten of these. Ten of these, owned by one man who claims to for the people, the everyday American. A man who wants to run the country, who constantly addresses the public as “my friends” and who claims that Barack Obama, who only has money because of his bestselling books, is the out of touch elitist who is a threat to America.

Let’s take a tour of the rest of these homes on Google Earth, courtesy of the JedReport, shall we?

I am not in any way claiming that McCain is a bad person because he is rich, nor am I trying to start some sort of class warfare debate here. All I’m saying is that a man who married an heiress, has at least 10 houses and doesn’t even pay the taxes due on them shouldn’t try and label a community organizer who earned his money with a several books as elitist and out of touch with common Americans. That’s all.

While we’re on the subject, Matthew Yglesias at the Atlantic has a slightly more humous take on the whole situation. Check it out.

-Mike