Those trying to tarnish Sarah Palin’s speech last night have decided to criticize Palin’s alleged insult of community organizers: “I guess a small-town mayor is sort of like a ‘community organizer,’ except that you have actual responsibilities.” MoveOn.org wrote in an email that Palin’s speech “told us that she can be condescending and dismissive of the real work Barack Obama did helping real people on the South Side of Chicago.” By Obama’s own telling in Dreams from My Father, he didn’t get much of anything accomplished working as a community organizer, but today he didn’t deal so well with this criticism. When asked how community organizing is relevant to the White House, Obama said:
Watch for yourself:
No one denies that civic activism can be meaningful work. Before she was even elected as a city council member, Palin was engaged in grassroots local politics. According to Time magazine, her first leadership role in her community was as one of a few people chosen to create a police department:
Sarah Palin wasn’t denigrating the work of community organizers last night. She was simply making the point that it’s not something so utterly selfless and amazing that a presidential candidate would focus so much attention on it. And consistent with that, you don’t find Palin constantly bringing up her work in Watch on Wasilla.
