Mixed Metaphors Make The Head Hurt

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The fundamental problem with conservative culture war manifestos is that they’re directed at any of several stereotypes, many of which openly contradict each other. You’ve got your New England snob, your West Coast hippie, your inner-city minority, your college kid, your college professor, your demented atheist, your welfare recipient – essentially every group of person that conservatives find themselves alternately afraid of or dismissed by.

In turn, when conservatives are on the attack against Barack Obama, the lack of the most obvious racial line of attack tends to make what does come out a form of linguistically poisonous gibberish. Michael Knox Beran declares that Obama, the multiracial son of a Kenyan and a Kansan who made his name in the rough political world of Chicago is actually a blue-blood New England snob whose life is