A reader writes:
As much as I usually agree with your interpretations of public affairs, I feel the need to tell you that your reading of Jack Pitney's quote that you nominated for a Hewitt Award is completely misguided. As an avowed progressive who took time off from college to work for Barack Obama's Presidential campaign, I nonetheless value the opportunity to learn from professor Pitney at Claremont McKenna College. Regardless of his personal political leanings, he is first and foremost concerned with political tactics. I can tell you, without a doubt, that when he said Obama's statement was a gaffe, he wasn't saying that senior citizens should be offended, he was simply predicting that they would. I think there is a distinct difference between foreseeing unsophisticated responses from voters and driving them in that direction. What Pitney said did not venture into the latter category, and I believe including him in your list of Hewitt Award finalists is, in some small, meaningless way, an undeserved attack on his character. I hope that if you agree you will remove his name from the running.
Pitney's quote reprinted after the jump:
The text of the president’s speech to schoolchildren is largely inoffensive. But it contains at least one political gaffe. If you quit school, he tells the kids, “You’re not just quitting on yourself, you’re quitting on your country.” Among Americans between ages 65 and 74, 20.7 percent quit before finishing high school. For those 75 and older, the figure is 27.4 percent. The latter group includes some who quit in order to enlist in the armed forces after Pearl Harbor. And yet the president seems to be calling them unpatriotic.
Pitney is in a distant fourth place at the moment, so readers seem to agree that it was comparatively inoffensive.
The Dish 