Who Defines Ordinary and Normal?

A refrain I keep hearing about why Sarah Palin is so popular is that she is somehow ordinary and normal, in stark contrast to the “freaks” who constantly attack her. I’ve already noted the glorification of the cultural baggage that surrounds her: the beauty queen, eloping with her husband, hockey mother, husband as a fisherman, “Lake Wobegon accent”, small towns, guns, hunting, snowboards and snowmobiles, more guns… This is supposed to represent some “down home appeal” against people like Barack Obama and his supporters who are clearly not “authentic” enough.

As this narrative expanded, some of the usual suspects began to concoct a victim mentality out of it to explain the strenuous opposition to Palin from certain quarters. For in opposing Palin, for mocking her rudimentary and exaggerated readiness for high national office, they are somehow opposed to normal and ordinary Americans. For since she represents “ordinary people with an ordinary love of family and the normal human love of children”, any opposition must surely imply “the bizarre hatred of the Ordinary American” or the “insatiable hatred of normalcy and of America.” Or, as George Bush might have put it: “they hate us for our babies.”

Here is my question to these denizens of division: who are they to define what constitutes ordinary and normal? What Palin represents is a certain kind of rural white American culture, dominant across the south, but reaching also into the Alaskan frontier. There is a connection. As noted by the New York Times, the area where Palin grew up experienced a major influx of Oklahomans and Texans over the past three decades to work in the oil fields and fill the evangelical churches, and these very groups form the backbone of Palin’s support. But this is merely one particular culture, white American rural culture, a culture that has adopted a siege mentality not only against the prominence of secular liberalism that is happy to deride “rednecks” while remaining ultra-sensitive to slights against other groups, but also as a defensive bulwark against the rapid demographic shifts that will shortly doom this culture to permanent minority status.

What bothers me, and what propels me to write this post, is that I am sick and tired of the spokesmen for one particular culture abrogating the terms “normal” and “ordinary”, not-so-subtly implying that those of us for which this culture is entirely alien are somehow abnormal. Today, I’m going to get a bit personal. I beg your indulgence.

When I think of ordinary and normal people who love family, I think of the couple who immigrated to the United States from Guatemala and who work incredibly long hours cleaning people’s houses, and whose greatest joy in life was seeing their son accepted into a premier US college.

I think of the African-American women who run my local dry cleaner in DC, swelling with pride at the thought that one of their own could possibly be elected president of the United States.

I think of my friends from graduate school, a married couple who both work full time and devote every waking moment to their two young children and who are willing to pay whatever it takes and to make whatever sacrifices needs to be made to get them the best possible education. And I recall the woman in this couple telling me just last week that she burst into tears in her drive home, so upset that her fellow Americans could be leaning towards McCain and Palin after eight disastrous years of Bush and Cheney.

I think of my very good friend from church, an African-American man who grew up in a single-parent family in inner-city Chicago, only to overcome great obstacles and become the devout and devoted husband and family man that I can only aspire to. A proud member of both Opus Dei and the Democratic party, he is a reminder of the utter vacuousness of culture war stereotypes.

And lastly, I think of my in-laws who escaped from Vietnam with four young children on one of the last transport planes out of Saigon before the communists bombed the airport in 1975. After leaving Camp Pendleton, sponsored by a Catholic church, they built a new life in an utterly foreign land. My father-in-law started out as a janitor, and at one stage worked three jobs to provide for his family. Family was everything to them. And they raised four amazing children, all of whom enjoyed great academic success. Yes, they went to “elitist institutions” while their parents were proud Democrats and union workers who proudly walked many picket lines during the coldest days of winter.

These people are all ordinary, normal Americans. Black, white, asian, hispanic– representatives of many different cultures and backgrounds, part of the great diverse tapestry that is this country’s strongest asset. They are all decent people, dedicated to family and children. They might have nothing in common with the kind of white rural culture that is somehow being held up as the embodiment of sublime virtue, but do not dare tell me that they are not “normal” simply because of some latent insecurity on your part. Do not dare.