Why does Time Magazine hate Alaska?

Michael Kinsley of Time Magazine has written quite the angry tirade about Sarah Palin.  Apparently Bostonboomer’s report on the meltdown of PB 1.0 is spilling over to the mainstream media.  They are in full panic mode and it shows.  Michael begins by clutching his pearls and screeching “How dare she!!!”:

Sarah Palin thinks she is a better American than you because she comes from a small town, and a superior human being because she isn’t a journalist and never lived in Washington and likes to watch her kids play hockey.

First of all Michael, who are you talking to?  I come from a small town.  I’m not a journalist, and I don’t have any kids, but if I did, I’d probably enjoy watching them particpate in sports.  She doesn’t sound like she’s claiming superiority to other Americans, but rather identifying with a whole lot of them. 

But Kinsley is not talking to me.  He’s talking to the rabid kool aid kids who think that anyone who dares oppose Obama is an evil racist, and that anyone who mentions small town, middle America is taking a swipe at “urban” (read black) America.  Not only is that kind of propaganda insulting and juvenile, it is itself racist.

We’ve seen this stuff lately from the Kos Kids.  The good white kids who have stood up to their evil racist parents are getting lectures about keeping their eyes on the prize, and not wasting their time trying to convert anybody racist enough to support John McCain, or even worse gasp!, Sarah Palin.  This is from a diary entitled “White people, can we talk?”

I’ve found throughout my short life that few white people fully understand the extent to which all black people even, brilliant, successful and beautiful black people like the Obamas, are still subject to racism. This used to frustrate me, but then I thought about how separate black and white people often live. Some whites are well aware because they have black friends, black spouses or lovers. Or black people who are in their lives in some real intimate way that has allowed them to see the difference in treatment first hand. But for those of you who are not racist, but don’t have black people you are close to, you are finding that many people you know don’t want to vote for a black man for president and are using any excuse not to do so even though they know it’s in their own best interests to vote for the Democratic Nominee. Many of you, especially people under 30 are getting aquainted with how race plays out in modern America, more covert then overt. You are shocked and hurt. I undderstand, but you better get over it and fast….

So if your anecdotal experience is that some people you know are moving to McCain who you though were available to Obama, don’t be alarmed because they were never available to Obama they just didn’t want to tell you why. Palin has given them cover for their decision, but please know that the decision was made already. Palin is a good excuse because she is a woman, but when they got into the voting both, alone with their racism, they were not going to vote for Obama. Ever.

Listen up texasmango, or whatever the name of the race baiting asshole who wrote this, we are not going to vote for Obama. Ever. But not because we’re racist.  It is because that “brilliant” black man accused us of being racist (among MANY other things), not because we are, but to win an election.  That is not acceptable.  But then I imagine that in your “short life” you haven’t had enough experience to even understand what racism really is.

But not only are the Kool Aid dispensers at Kos seeing racist dog whistles in Palin’s appeal to “small town” America, serious journalist like Kinsley are too (or at least they are pretending to to whip up the angry young obots).  But Kinsley takes it one step farther.  Not only is Sarah Palin a racist, small town, money grubbing, bigot, the whole state of Alaska is too!!!!

Back to reality. Of the 50 states, Alaska ranks No. 1 in taxes per resident and No. 1 in spending per resident. Its tax burden per resident is 21/2 times the national average; its spending, more than double. The trick is that Alaska’s government spends money on its own citizens and taxes the rest of us to pay for it.

I won’t bother to explain why comparing Alaska to the rest of the states is like comparing apples to oranges.  Just take a look at a map and you’ll get the idea.  But this kind of argument is laughable anyway.  In fact, I’m not exactly sure what Kinsley is even trying to say.  In one breath he says Alaskans are overtaxed, and in the next implies that the rest of us are subsidizing Alaskan citizens.  I find that charge highly suspect.  I wasn’t aware, for example, that the Alaskan government  even had the authority to “tax the rest of us” (/snark).  I think what Kinsley is trying to say is that our federal taxes subsidize Alaskan citizens and industry.  Well you know what?  they do in a lot of other states too, like say, farmers in Illinois.

• $13.4 billion in subsidies 1995-2006.
• Illinois ranking: 3 of 50
• Top Recipients 1995-2006
• Top Recipients in 2006
• 34 percent of all farmers and ranchers do not collect government subsidy payments in Illinois, according to USDA.
• Among subsidy recipients, ten percent collected 65 percent of all subsidies amounting to $8.77 billion over 12 years.
• Recipients in the top 10% averaged $34,383 in annual payments between 1995 and 2006. The bottom 80 percent of the recipients saw only $1,128 on average per year.

But Kinsley’s faux concern about economic injustices is just a cover to get his real message out there.  That Sarah Palin, as well as all Alaskans, are racists who hate the rest of Americans because they’re not “like them” (WARNING: MAJOR DOG WHISTLES AHEAD!!)

Why is a windfall-profits tax good for Alaska but not for the U.S.? Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? People in Alaska are better than people in the rest of the U.S. They’re more American. Although there are small towns and farms and high school hockey teams in the lower 48, there are fewer down here, per capita, than in Alaska. And there are many more journalists and pollsters and city dwellers and other undesirables who might benefit if every American had the same right to leech off the government as do the good citizens of Sarah Palin’s Alaska

This is about the most ridiculous statement I’ve seen coming from the mainstream media.  Notice how he conflates Palin’s jab at journalists to include city-dwellers.   Note to Michael: We’re not that stupid.  What I see is a journalist with a bruised ego crying foul to anyone who will listen.  Kinsley is right about one thing, however. Alaska is different than a lot of other states, especially when it comes to ethnic diversity:

19% Percentage of Alaska’s population who reported as American Indian and Alaska Native alone or in combination with one or more races in Census 2000. Alaska led all states, followed by Oklahoma and New Mexico, each at 11percent, and South Dakota, at 9 percent. Sixteen percent of Alaska’s population was American Indian and Alaska Native alone, also tops in the nation, followed by New Mexico (10 percent) and South Dakota and Oklahoma(8 percent each). http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/2001/cb01cn64.html

So to add a second question to the title of my post, why does Michael Kinsley hate Native Americans?  Or is he just saying that they’re racist too?  Maybe Michael just believes his journalistic predecessors who believed that Alaska was nothing more than Seward’s Folly.