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Huffington from Tahiti: Obama's No Elitist

12:25 AM, Apr 15, 2008 • By MICHAEL GOLDFARB
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An interesting story from the Times on the woman who broke bittergate wide open last Friday night at HuffPo:

Ms. Fowler said she found his response "professorial" and judgmental toward blue-collar voters and that even though she supports him, she was "taken aback" by them.

"I'm a religious person, and I grew up poor in a very wealthy family -- sometimes we didn't have enough to eat, but my larger family was rich," she said. Her father was a hunter. "Immediately, the remarks just really bothered me. For the first time, I realized he is an elitist."

Fowler thought about it for a few days, nervous that it might damage Obama, before deciding to run with it. The Times noted that Arianna herself was "on a cruise in the Pacific" when the story broke, and that "she may not even know about the stir it created." Not true. Arianna wrote in to the paper with this update:

"I was indeed in Tahiti, but fully wired. Not only watching what was happening on our site and everything online about Mayhill's post, but watching regularly updates on CNN International! There was no escaping this story, even in the South Pacific. As for my feelings about the political fallout, here is my post from this morning."

More by Michael Goldfarb

Shockingly, Huffington's take is a bit different than her reporter's. She insists there's nothing at all "elitist" about Obama's comments, and she accuses Clinton of "twisting Obama's words in a way that confirms every right-wing demagogic caricature of her own Party." Actually, you know what confirms every right-wing demagogic caricature of the Democratic party? Arianna Huffington attempting to rebut charges of snobbery with a story filed from a yacht off the coast of Tahiti.