Because you can't spell "community organizers" without "Communist."

Much has been made in the last 72 hours about Sarah Barracuda's dig at Barack Obama's past as a "community organizer" on the south side of Chicago during her VP acceptance speech at the RNC the other night. The slight was in response to the Obama camp's belittling of her experience as a small-town mayor.

"Being a mayor is kind of like being a community organizer, except a mayor has actual responsibilities," Palin said. (I may be paraphrasing just a bit, but not by much.)

Naturally, this has rankled some people who fill the role of "community organizer." I suppose, in a very, very broad definition of the term, some of the disgruntled folks have a point - that is, if you want to include charities, ministers, and people who are actually doing good works in cities and towns all across the country.

But I don't.

When someone uses the term "community organizer," here's what I think of.

I think back to my first year of college, back to the group of people who were stationed just outside of McDonald's, casting verbal stones at people who were going in to eat, including me.

I think of the filthy hippies in that college town who had nothing better or more productive to do with their lives than be pissed about something, whether it be cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal's incarceration or the death penalty or titty bars or new apartments for people who really needed them.

I think of people who have plenty to contribute to society but choose not to, who feel that the world is unjust because we have haves and have-nots since we don't live in a socialist utopia, who are into various causes only to feel better about themselves and not because they've ever believed in anything substantive in their lives. These are the same people who wear the Che Guevara shirts without any inkling of who that POS really was.

So, when I heard Sarah Palin take a shot at "community organizers," I thought she hit the nail right on the head. And I still do.


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