CNN calls Obama elitist

I just do not know where to start on this one. I once again had the profound misfortune of watching CNN while at the gym. And once again, I came away with anger.

So, here's the deal. Yesterday, at San Francisco fundraiser, Obama said the following:

But the truth is, is that, our challenge is to get people persuaded that we can make progress when there's not evidence of that in their daily lives. You go into some of these small towns in Pennsylvania, and like a lot of small towns in the Midwest, the jobs have been gone now for 25 years and nothing's replaced them. And they fell through the Clinton administration, and the Bush administration, and each successive administration has said that somehow these communities are gonna regenerate and they have not. And it's not surprising then they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren't like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations.

Daily Kos has the summary of the back and forth between campaigns here. Personally, I don't believe the comments are that big a deal, maybe just a little accidental slippage of the truth. But that's not even what I care about here. CNN, and Kitty Pilgrim in particular, very Seriously, and responsibly, charged into the fray to make sure we understand "Senator Obama's political attack on small-town America". She wanted to make sure we knew about the "outrage" at the "stunning comments". CNN wanted to make sure we judged for ourselves the last to last night's poll: "Do you believe that Senator Barack Obama's comments reveal his elitist attitude toward every hard working American?" Just like Fox News, that poll question is exceedingly fair and balanced, isn't it?

At points during the program, Pilgrim asks several correspondents for reactions, and they seem to be trying to offer the idea that it's not nearly as condemning a moment as she wanted.

PILGRIM: Words are being parsed very, very carefully. This is quite a statement. Errol, your thoughts on this?

ERROL LOUIS, "NEW YORK DAILY NEWS": I think this is a problem Barack Obama should have anticipated and could have easily avoided which is he's walking on a tight rope every time he goes and speaks. Every place I've seen him campaign, in every state, he does something that politicians don't usually do, which is to ask people to be better than they are.

And to sort of delve into it and to say for this nation to work we all have to be better, we have to be more understanding, we have to be more generous, we have to be a little less narrow minded. It's very different from what politicians normally do.

And Roland Martin:

Wow. Politically dumb because he actually told the truth. At some point we have to accept the reality that there are people in America now who are angry and are bitter. And we do blame other folks for certain things.

Basically, Kitty Pilgrim and her producers were trying to shove the storyline that this was a huge gaffe down the throats of their correspondents and viewers, with phrses like the "very important controversy". Instead, you see them call her out. Here's another exchange: Pilgrim says she'll put the remark up, but then she puts Obama's response statement, and Clinton's remarks, never actually showing what Obama said. After:

PILGRIM: What strikes me about that remark, Roland, is that Senator Clinton is using this as an occasion to talk about being presidential. Did Senator Obama do himself a disservice in this remark in not coming up with a solution in siding with the problem instead of the solution?

MARTIN: Well, first of all, we don't have -- do we have the full tape of what he said after that, as well? Or do we just have that?

Even Roland Martin on the show was trying to get her to be a little fairer, just in case, maybe the remarks are being distorted a bit. The good news is that while Pilgrim was stuffing the anti-Obama spin down our throats, CNN correspondents fought back on both her show and on the Situation Room, surprisingly enough.

I hate CNN, but maybe, just maybe, there's a small chance it won't be too bad this time despite the MSM trying it damnedest.

UPDATE: It gets so much better. I honestly can't remember the last thing Hillary attacked on that she didn't also do or that Bill didn't do in his 1992 campaign. It's hilarious.