Gingrich in the land of racism and religiousity
The former House Speaker is a master of using language he thinks supporters want to hear - but did he hear them?
Last Modified: 28 Jan 2012 18:22
New Haven, CN - I lived there for almost a decade, so I'm familiar with the challenge of covering politics in the US South. The challenge stems from that region's peculiar social phenomenon: double consciousness.
Basically, seeing shouldn't always be believing. During the GOP primaries in South Carolina, I smiled to myself when I read reporting that was awed by churches that look like shacks, trios of wooden crosses mounted on roadsides and highway billboards admonishing drivers that they must be born again. I was reminded of HL Mencken, ever the cosmopolitan aesthete, failing to comprehend the pentecostal essence of public life there. And like Mencken, the reporting I read was factual, credible and sometimes funny, but often unable to see through the veil of culture to concrete truth.
Like the US as a whole, the land is soaked with religiousity and racism, but unlike the rest of the country, the land has been soaking in them for about 400 years. The result is that religion and racism are completely natural features in the landscape of public affairs - and that to notice would be like noticing the air you breath and the water you drink, and doing that is to stand outside of the normal patterns of political life.
Gingrich wins South Carolina primary
As such, they are like a thick mist lingering over a salt marsh obscuring the journalist's view, so that they can't see why a millionaire such as Newt Gingrich can crush a millionaire such as Mitt Romney, even though they are, politically and ideologically, pretty much the same dude.
in full: http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/01/201212810243551617.html
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