admittedly both former President Clinton and the candidate I support - Senator Hillary Clinton - have used it; all politicians do.  Still, there are only so many times one can pull quarters out from behind people's ears, eventually they're going to want to know what the magician has in his hand.  Unfortunately for Senator Obama, when it comes to his "bitter" Pennsylvanians remarks, a lot of voters may be on to his trick.

Senator Obama has now characterized his remarks as "ill phrased".  His supporters have unearthed Bill Clinton quotes from the early nineties discussing the anger of unemployed blue collar workers.  Yesterday on CNN, Suzanne Malveaux mused that perhaps the voters weren't as offended by the words as the Clinton and McCain campaigns would like the media to believe.  This morning on Reliable Sources the usually thoughtful Howard Kurtz - admittedly with a soft touch - questioned the ethics of the blogger, Mayhill Fowler, who recorded the statements and then put the recording on HuffingtonPost.

Gloria Borger, an able political analyst for CNN, said, "...you had somebody in the audience who writes for HuffingtonPost, it was a San Francisco fundraiser, it wasn't mainstream media, right..."

To which Mr. Kurtz replied, "I was about to ask you that, this was Mayhill Fowler and the way she got into that closed fundraiser...reporters weren't allowed...she was a contributor.  What do you think think of the ethics of that?  And then she posts this recording on her blog."

Had Ms. Fowler used similar subterfuge to slip into a meeting of evangelicals who were demeaning people based on race and gender would Mr. Kurtz have posed the same question?  And no matter what you think of the manner in which Ms. Fowler obtained her information, does that information not become even more telling when one considers that Senator Obama thought he was speaking off the record to people who agreed with his remarks?  As we have heard over and over and over again throughout this campaign, Senator Obama has an amazing facility with the spoken word.  He didn't restructure his comments because he spoke poorly the first time, Senator Obama rephrased his words because the people he was disparaging found out what he said about them.

Totally without any statistical back up, based purely on a lifetime of personal observation, I have come up with the Strictly Anecdotal Theory of Adversity.  In my experience, misfortune tends to bring out the true character of a person.  My sainted daddy was a gentle, courageous, generous person.  The more riddled he became with cancer the gentler, more courageous and generous he became.  Such, I believe, is the case with most people faced with challenges such as illness and unemployment. 

Those who tended to be hateful, suspicious of outsiders, bitter, who clung mindlessly to religion during the good days become even more hateful, suspicious, bitter and mindless during the bad times.  People who were hard working, fair minded, enjoyed hunting for relaxation and went to church every week because of a deep rooted belief in God when they had jobs at the plant are still hard working, fair minded, enjoy hunting for relaxation and go to church because of a deep rooted belief in God even if today they are working for minimum wage at a convenience store.  This is not to say that there aren't those who lose their jobs and then lose their ways, who start to blame others for market forces and changing economies that are beyond the control of working men and women.  It is, however, condescending, uniformed and just plain wrong to say that when the factory closes down people become obsessed with guns and God and casting blame.

Now before it gets to sound like I'm a charter member of the NRA, I want to point out that while I have shot a number of guns within the confines of shooting ranges, I don't understand the thrill of the hunt; nor do I any longer fill a pew on Sunday mornings.  I don't, however, feel that those who think differently than I do about guns and religion need to be healed, to be transformed, to be given jobs so that they can become vegetarians on the outs with organized religion.

Senator Obama told us - no,  wait, he didn't tell us, he told donors at a closed door fundraiser in San Francisco - how he views unemployed blue collar workers in Pennsylvania.  He can change his patter, he can try to divert our attention but this time we watched his hands.