For some bizarre, inexplicable reason, Alice Marshall hates Jim Webb. Her latest attack on Webb is that he doesn't really come from working class roots. Alice writes: "Oh Please, your father was an Air Force officer. You grew up middle class with financial security. Your father did not face factory layoffs."That's what Alice Marshall claims. Now, here's Jim Webb writing (in "Born Fighting") about his mother and his grandfather, B.H. Hodges:
It was probably the blood infection that killed him. My mother was ten when B.H. Hodges walked inside the house and died. One of her strongest memories of that time was of my grandmother having to steal a few ears of feed corn from a nearby field, silently stripping the kernels of the ears with a knife, and them mixing them with lard in a frying pan to make dinner. And of brushing her teeth with twigs broken off nearby trees. And of her next-youngest sister dying before her eyes of typhoid fever after the two of them had shared the same drink of stagnant water from a barrel in an old black man's backyard. And of working all night in the woods of absentee farms with two of my great-aunts, secretly cutting and ricking wood on land that belonged to a different class of people in Memphis or maybe New York, hauling it away in a borrowed truck, and delivering it by dawn to fuel the ovens and woodstoves of homes in Searcy and Kensett.
Such privileged, secure roots Webb springs from, eh?
Now, here's the life of Webb's "father was an Air Force officer" famly:
On short notice our family of six traveled from Alabama to the isolated wilderness of California's central coast, where an old, eighty-five-thousand-acre National Guard training base named Camp Cook was being transformed into Vandenberg Air Force Base....At the beginning, the base had no family housing. We lived for a while crammed into a five-dollars-a-night motel room in Pismo Beach, my father driving more than 50 miles each way every day along narrow, two-lane mountain roads to and from the base, leaving before dawn and coming back well after dark. Later we rented a small home in Santa Maria...
Webb further relates that one of the schools he attended in eighth grade was a "converted World War II hospital complex on the base" with "old, yellow, wooden buildings sagged with age and disrepair," and crawlspaces underneath filled with "snakes, jackrabbits and skunks."
Ah, yes, the lap of luxury for Jim Webb and his Air Force officer father. What. Ever. Alice.
I've been a Navy brat growing up. I have brothers and sisters who are Jim's and Bob Kerry's age. They grew up in a different era than the one you pander to. How ARROGANT you have become! How INDECENT your comments. It makes me wonder if you honor anything at all. I think not.
I think you're caught up in a blogger's envy game ... where the real people behind these comments (here at RK) saw in Jim Webb those traditional Democratic Ideals which demanded promotion.... and ultimately George Allen's defeat. Jim Webb a patriot - who was for so long an ex-patriot from the Democratic party family (which chose to promote liberalism bordering on socialism) has come to join ranks and reinforce it's traditional focus towards popular causes.
You however look to a schmoosing lobby-ist for leadership? How pathetic!! Harris Miller is the flip side of a republican coin that says " go along to play along" and we'll take care of you at the end .... whether it be on IRAQ or the outsourcing of jobs ... we'll line your pockets and promote you ... just go along (oh and buy some influence if you can).
Take a look at yourself Alice .... what you value has been co-opted. Pathetic but true.
Tony Mski
PS. Does anyone have her pic somewhere? I'm wondering whether by chance I've met her at some Democratic function.
I hope everyone can accept the reality that not all people agree on everything....and no one ever believes they have a wrong idea. Calling someone on there mistakes is one thing, making fun of them is something entirely different.
I understand Webb's background as much or more than most who delve into his personal history ... there is plenty to read .... but Alice stepped over the line. Most people know she's "out there" ... but that's no excuse to attack a person's upbringing.
Alice is a sad figure ... in that she has gone well beyond objectivitiy ... entirely her prerogative ... but when it becomes a personal attack on somone else .. again that is sad ...or more accurately PATHETIC.
It's still cool to be gools however,
Tony
I'm totally picturing Lowell doing the whole finger snapping, head shaking in your face gestures along with that statement. It's a funny mental image.
http://gotv.blogspot.com/2006/04/miller-in-norfolk.html#c114455767806634713
Alice:
You asked why I think Webb is any better than Miller on outsourcing.
First, Miller is so terrible on outsourcing American jobs and importing foreign replacement workers that it is impossible for anyone to be WORSE.
I have followed Miller's activities at the ITAA for more than 3 years. His lies, manufactured studies, press manipulation and disinformation on this subject of outsourcing and alleged "labor shortages" is nothing short of Machiavellian.
Miller is a brilliant political operator but he has also proven that while he can manipulate politicians and the media, he is the enemy of working Americans and the long-term interests of the United States.
James Webb on the other hand has proven himself a courageous, selfless, public spirited patriot, a progressive, a scholar and policy theorist. He displays the much admired capacity to modify his views in light of new information and changed situations. He is adaptable and flexible. Among other things, Webb could well become a new Sam Nunn for the Democratic Party on Defense and Foreign Policy issues.
Add to this that Webb early on staked out a firm opposition to war in Iraq. This is a sharp contrast with Miller who, as we know, did not.
Webb has also specifically mentioned the plight of the middle and lower classes in the context of economic fairness. (See his comments on Hardball and the Daily Kos.) He has mentioned outsourcing related job loss as a concern.
So, we are offered a choice. On the one hand, there's Harris Miller, a cynical political insider who has actively served pro-outsourcing/anti-American worker business interests.
On the other, there's Webb, a democrat in the purest sense of the word: an inspiring, creative, innovative reformer with a record of service and integrity who has publicly pledged to address the issues of economic fairness and class stratification (among others). (The link that you provided does not in any way damn Webb as an outsourcing proponent...)
I must tell you Alice, Miller is a masterful political performer. His education and entire working life have made him an excellent political player.
I fear that you have been duped. Miller's claim that jobs are going offshore because some areas of India might have broadband is an outrageous -- even grotesque lie. Think "global labor arbitrage".
From personal experience, I can attest that my one-time "offshore" Indian colleagues lived in primitive conditions and were not exceptionally productive or innovative. However, they were paid under 10K U.S. $ annually making them an exceptional bargain.
That's also the reason that American IT workers have been replaced by the tens of thousands here in the U.S. with imported lower-wage Third World workers on "non-immigrant" or "business" visas. The Americans they replaced were neither lazy, inefficient or incompetent; they were just more expensive.
Rather than repeat all of the things I've posted about Miller, I invite you to read my comments at Raising Kaine and the Richmond Democrat.
I hope that you will reconsider your support for Miller's candidacy. He's not the person that you believe him to be.
Lowell, I know you took GREAT offense to Alice's criticism of Webb claiming to be "working class". But just looking at the quote she excerpted - "people out there like me...red-state folks, working-class people" - it doesn't seem entirely out of line that Alice would question whether it's fair for Webb to label himself as "working class".
Note he doesn't say "working class like my grandfather and many others in my family".
Maybe it's arguable whether a military officer when Webb was growing up made enough money to be considered "middle class". But surely Webb can't call himself "working class" or even "middle class" (just in terms of income) could he?
I mean, I grew up in a working class family. For most of my life, my dad worked in a factory. He was a "parts controller". He got paid by the hour. In the years my mom was able to work, she was a receptionist who also got hourly wage. They're working class. I'm proud of them.
Thanks to their belief in education and some decent public schools, I was able to move into the middle class. I went to college. I'm a teacher. (Though, sadly, in the city where I'm living now, a teacher at my level makes well below the threshold to qualify for low income housing, so one might say I'm on the lower end of the middle class rung just based on income alone.) But based on living conditions, I'm clearly middle class. I have a car. I own a condo. I had enough disposable income in 2004 to give money to political candidates. I wouldn't claim to be working class now, but I'm proud of my roots.
On the other hand, while Alice's criticism may have *technical* merit, it seems to me like it's fair to give Webb a little bit of leeway to be somewhat imprecise. I'm assuming he meant "people like me -- people whose families have working class roots..." or something like that. I have enough general goodwill toward both Webb and Miller that I'd allow each of them a little bit of leeway to be imprecise and not jump on them for it.
It just seems to me that there's a little too much of a hair-trigger response in the Miller vs. Webb blogosphere on both sides. Alice's and this one plus Ben's post and Howling Latina about Don Beyer are examples that stand out to me today as major overreactions to minor "offenses". We're all on the SAME TEAM as Democrats in the long run. I think we've got to give each other just a *few inches* of room to disagree while keeping the rhetorical guns on Allen.