Barack Obama's 'Appalachian Problem': ; Is This Just a New Way to Explain Away a People the Country Forgets - Often?
Sunday Gazette-Mail › May 19, 2008
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Summary
Once again the American media's compulsion to entertain rather than to understand has projected Appalachia to center stage of national politics.
Hillary Clinton's landslide victory in the West Virginia Democratic primary has provided yet another opportunity to reduce economic and political issues in Appalachia to time-honored tropes about cultural differentness. Within the past week, an embarrassment of journalists, bloggers and late-night television hosts have turned Sen. Clinton's support among blue-collar voters in West Virginia into a confirmation of the white "otherness" of Appalachian culture rather than an expression of fundamental (and more complex) issues of class, gender and race or even political organization in the Mountain State.See the full content of this document
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Barack Obama's 'Appalachian Problem': ; Is This Just a New Way to Explain Away a People the Country Forgets - Often?
Newhouse News correspondent Jonathan Tilove even suggested that Sen. Barack Obama has an "Appalachian problem" that goes beyond race to the peculiarities of "Appalachia's whites and the Scots-Irish who se...
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