The petty picking at Barack Obama continued into this week’s Pennsylvania primary as Hilary Clinton continued to grasp at straws in her last ditch effort to remain relevant for the Democratic Party nomination. For the last two weeks, Clinton and pundits have used Obama’s inarticulation on the subject of economic hardship, as a reason to suggest that he doesn’t understand “working class” America. Framed in every context from elitist to defeatist, Barack’s “bitter” comment reaction is a study in relative rhetoric as many around the nation still don’t want to have an honest conversation about why working people struggle in the American economy and why jobs leave only to never return to the communities they left. Relative, in the sense that, the bitter “pill” is only relevant when someone else says it. Rhetoric, because it is a diversion from the real point that Barack was trying to make - that frustration with the economy has a universal reaction that all can appreciate. In some communities, it’s sporting outlets - in other communities, it’s violence, in other communities still, it’s religion. There is a bitterness in all of us when life isn’t what it’s supposed to be, or what we think it should be. And the truth isn’t always pretty. But truth is truth.

Irrespective of the outcome of the Pennsylvania primary, what we are seeing is the rollout of a rhetoric campaign meant to turn you in circles, or twist you toward a particular candidate versus trying to point the nation in a particular direction. To those who think all people adversely impacted by a weak economy aren’t bitter (even though some out-of-work “white males” in rural Pennsylvania understood what Barack was saying), aren’t watching very closely. I must admit, it’s kinda' hard to do, when you make $100 million dollars in seven years, or your wife’s beer distributorship is valued at $100 million dollars.

How does the only candidate that has worked with poor and disenfranchised people become the one candidate that is out of touch with the common man (woman)? The vehicle that became the voice of the last (second) American Revolution (the Reagan Revolution), radio and television, is still the outlet for public dissention. Can you explain why talk radio and talk television is so bitter? Caller after caller on talk radio and talk television bears out the frustration of the American people. Yet Barack is not supposed to articulate it. Why can Lou Dobbs make a career of bitterly talking about a government or the market forces that have betrayed the “average American,” but when Obama says it, he’s out of touch with Americans.

What’s more telling in this whole escapade is that everyday working people know what the deal is, but some choose to cling to things that Barack didn’t mention, such as their racial bias against Blacks or immigrants, as the basis for why “good ole’ Americans” aren’t working. Those are the ones that won’t support Barack anyway, so there’s no need to give them cover. They’ll find any reason to support Hilary - notice how the media codifies Hilary’s misstatement about her Bosnia trip as an “episode” instead of calling it what it was, a “lie.” Moreover, they’re willing to ask Barack what he meant by his term “bitter” a thousand times, but will not once ask Clinton what she meant in her gun fire “moment.”

Enough has been said about the imbalance of the last Democratic debate, but not enough has been said about the real underlining reasons for this shift in the attitude of a media that suddenly can’t correlate the frustrations of the people with similar rationalizations across the board. For some Americans to mock Barack and insist that they’re not bitter in this post-911 environment, that has been so marked by a xenophobic bitterness that the country could be manipulated into a war that still doesn’t make sense, shows just how far some are willing to go to deny the socio-economic realities of this nation. They are the same ones that deny the real reasons for the war, and deny the real reasons the anti-tax movement is in existence.

Bitterness in America is pervasive inasmuch as the nation has become an increasing more hostile society as people become increasing more hostile about the state of their lives. Drinking beer and taking whiskey shots are part and parcel of what many do to cope in the American class divide. Others hunt, while others pray to divert themselves away from the realities of their lives. Where racism was once the great visible “sin” of the nation, classism was the great invisible “unspoken” one as egalitarianism (society of equals) was the premise and pretense to eliminate class conflict. Classism is America’s new sin and it is the root of conflict in our society. The world’s most affluent society is beginning to crack under the weight of its own decadence.

When the American Dream becomes the unattainable dream for the overwhelming number of Americans, the life we all believed was within reach has become a lie (or an episode if Hilary Clinton were to say it). It is a truth that smacks us in the face as Americans lose their jobs that leave the country and lose their only real asset, their homes, in record numbers. It is unthinkable that one could fathom the notion that bitterness would escape each and every one of them. Then, there are those who never had a job and a home in the first place and what are the frustrations inherent therein - in not being able to change one’s quality of life? How do you think those frustrations are played out?

Bitterness abounds and it’s a truth we, as a society, don’t want to talk about. Yet we allow pundits to mock Barack, not for what he is said, but because of how he said it. It’s a truth that is not pretty, and it would have not been pretty - no matter how he had said. Let’s not kid ourselves and play the games of relativism that causes rhetoric, not change, to become our reality.

BlackCommentator.com Columnist Dr. Anthony Asadullah Samad is a national columnist, managing director of the Urban Issues Forum and author of the new book, Saving The Race: Empowerment Through Wisdom. His Website is AnthonySamad.com. Click here to contact Dr. Samad.