Inaccurate epithets

[DesertFox]

Randy Spitzer
The New York Sun
31 Mar 06


Eliot Spitzer's insistence on characterizing upstate New York as the new Appalachia perfectly illustrates the old adage that you don't have to knock a person down just to lift him up. When speaking recently at the West Side Institutional Synagogue in Manhattan, he said: "You drive from Schenectady over to Niagara Falls, you see an upstate economy that is devastated. It looks like Appalachia."

Initially, I thought he had misspoken. But instead of correcting himself, he aggressively defended his comments, making it abundantly clear that he does not understand upstate New York, does not understand its history, does not understand its culture, and does not understand what has gone wrong with its economy. His dubious solicitude betrays the classic, condescending attitude of well-to-do residents of Manhattan, who often see little of value in New York north of the weekend communities in the central Hudson Valley.

Whether Mr. Spitzer has spent time in the real Appalachia is an open question. As a former correspondent for CBS News, I filed reports from the hills and hollows of Appalachia, from places like Pike County, Ky., where the poverty was real and men's faces wore the sorrow of a life spent working in the coal mines. The poverty I saw there was palpable and troubling.

More (http://www.nysun.com/article/30202?access=332301)

[Native American]

Eliot Spitzer's insistence on characterizing upstate New York as the new Appalachia perfectly illustrates the old adage that you don't have to knock a person down just to lift him up. When speaking recently at the West Side Institutional Synagogue in Manhattan, he said: "You drive from Schenectady over to Niagara Falls, you see an upstate economy that is devastated. It looks like Appalachia."

Not only that, but perhaps the thing that troubles Spitzer the most is that both Appalachia and upstate New York tend to vote Republican, whereas the Manhattan elites such as him tend to vote Democrat.

One wonders what the reaction would be if editorialists writing for papers in Appalachia and upstate New York wrote "If you take the bus, subway, or taxi through Manhattan, you see the dregs of human society - prostitutes, thieves, crack whores, drug addicts, and homosexuals infected with AIDS. It looks like Hell." ?

Or is it "only allowed" that Manhattan elites can look down their leftist Democrat noses at rural, Republican-voting areas and make rude, insulting, stereotypical remarks about the residents of such areas, while residents of those rural areas are not expected to make "rude" remarks about the denizens of Manhattan and other heavily-Democrat areas of the country?

[DeclinetoState]

Isn't New York a state like many others where the "movers and shakers" who have most of the money and power are concentrated in a comparatively small area and don't really give a damn about the rest of the state?