In an interview with Hugh Hewitt, Sarah Palin remarked, ”It’s time that a normal Joe Six-Pack American is finally represented in the position of vice presidency, and I think that that’s kind of taken some people off guard, and they’re out of sorts, and they’re ticked off about it.” She further said that this is “motivation for John McCain and I to work that much harder to make sure that our ticket is victorious, and we put government back on the side of the people of Joe Six-Pack like me.” This is evidently a theme of the Republican ticket this year, and Republican supporters keep saying that the McCain-Palin ticket appeals to a blue-collar contingent from small towns who haven’t been to college and are strangers to big cities. I wonder if McCain and Palin have ever heard of places like the Bronx and Brooklyn, where you can also grow up in blue-collar families and neighborhoods? Also, do they realize that people who grow up with blue-collar parents sometimes go to college and enter the white-collar professional world? This is part of the American dream, remember? All the big cities that the Republicans don’t seem to care about any more have sections like the Bronx and Brooklyn, where this aspect of the dream is happening every day. There is no big divide between people who have been to college and people who haven’t. Many people have family, friends, and acquaintances from both worlds, and many are born in one and move to the other. And not everybody in the big cities spends all his time at wine and cheese gatherings. Is it possible that the Republican Party doesn’t know this? What is this division and resentment that they are trying to foment? My own father was a working man, but also a master craftsman who loved music and books. Calling him Joe Six Pack would have been inapt, inept, thoroughly tone-deaf, and awfully out of touch.