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Well, he didn't say (I'm getting this all after the fact since I was pretty busy for a few days) small town Americans are bitter, he said that economically depressed people become bitter.
I didn't think there was anything controversial about that idea except for the political maladroitness of saying it out loud where he did. From what I've seen I will say that I'd prefer he stood by his...ahem...guns and didn't try to backtrack on it.
"Yes, I meant what I said. When people suffer economic hardship and a curtailment of opportunities over a long period of time they look to build up their self esteem in other ways and these ways can be harmful to community and national cohesion. In poor inner cities you may develop a gang culture, which is in many ways just a particularly violent and narrowly cast form of xenophobia. In rural areas it isn't nearly so violent but they too begin to look for ways to redefine themselves in a search for something to stand for.
In San Francisco, an area that has been on the good side of our nation's great economic changes over the last 30 years, it is baffling to them that people in places like parts Pennsylvania seem to so identify themselves through things like gun ownership or religious affiliation. And while these aren't inherently bad, I do think they are a sign of groups of people who have lost so much and for so long that they do become angry and bitter at any perceived attempt to take even more from them and cling, yes, I said cling, to what they still have with a tenacity that strikes others as curiously militant."
I think that is mostly what he meant. And it was stupid, politically, to go anywhere near actually saying it. Particularly when he wasn't talking directly to the people he was talking about. Plus, it is essentially what he said about racial tensions and issues in this country and he was praised to high water for that.
Somewhat unrelated, I liked Jon Stewart's comments last night on the media universally labeling it as "elitist" and how if a person running for president doesn't think he is better than us, why would we want him/her to be president? Condescending is bad in anybody, but I'm perfectly fine with elitist.
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