> > And even if small-towners represented a larger portion
> > of the population, what of it? It wouldn't make
> > abstinence eduction reduce unwanted pregnancies, or make
> ID legit.
>
> No, it wouldn't. But it galls me no end that "small town
> America" is somehow seen as more real than big town
> America. Brooklyn, where I live now, is just one of five
> boroughs in NYC, but it's got more than three times the
> pop of Alaska. But Palin is "real" because she's from
> the sticks, and I'm not, because I'm a, as Rudy (of all
> people) put it with a sneer at the RNC, "cosmopolitan."
> My zip code alone, 11238, has five times the pop of
> whatever the fucking little burg is that Palin was mayor
> of. Which makes her real and me an astral projection, or
> French, or something.
Just to clarify (because you're not explicit on this at times): You don't think that Palin speaks for or represents "small-town America" (actual small towns as opposed to ideological constructs) any more than, say, Rudy Giuliani or Katrina vanden Heuvel speak for New Yorkers, right? Because she doesn't, and because "stA" is just as complex and varied as urban America. And because whoever's values Palin thinks she represents, not all or even a majority of stA gives a fuck what she says.