Paul Waldman writes in today's Washington Post under the headline, "I, too, am a hardscrabble American." It's about Florida governor Ron DeSantis' effort to brand (or re-brand) himself as what is sometimes called a "real" American. In any event, the "harsdcrabble" adjective caught my attention. Here's an excerpt from Waldman's column:
Perhaps that’s why [DeSantis] has decided to search elsewhere for the salt-of-the-earth realness that Florida lacks. In his campaign book, he tells readers that despite a lifetime in Florida, he’s actually from Ohio, kind of:
I was geographically raised in Tampa Bay, but culturally my upbringing reflected the working-class communities in western Pennsylvania and northeast Ohio — from weekly church attendance to the expectation that one would earn his keep. This made me God-fearing, hard-working and America-loving.
Apparently, people in Florida do not work hard, fear God or love America — at least not the way they did in the redoubt of Rust Belt customs that was the DeSantis home.
Waldman's column takes up a silly dialogue that's been driving me crazy ever since Sarah Palin declared herself a real American who represented the Joe Six Packs (or was it Joe the Plumbers?) of Main Street, pitting herself and them against Barack Obama and Wall Street types. I wrote about the recent iterations of who is a real American in my recent law review article on Rural Bashing (with Kaceylee Klein). There I observe that Mary Peltola, recently elected Democratic congresswoman from Alaska, seems to get away with this sort of "real" people talk--that she's not been attacked from the Left as so many before her have--perhaps because she is a person of color.