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More reader responses to the "Tone Deaf?" post and my question about what the political up-side is for the Obama Administration in downplaying the AIG bonuses fiasco:

TPM Reader BG:

Talk about a lack of perspective, the issue is everywhere and people are hopping mad. I am at my kitchen table right now listening to WNYC and talk about AIG and I have been and continue to be extremely frustrated with TIMMEH and The Prez. Anybody paying even a little bit attention knows that this isn't a distraction, it's the heart of the problem!

TPM Reader JM:

While visiting my apolitical Midwestern parents (who also don't really follow or discuss national news) this past weekend, the AIG bonuses came up in breakfast conversation. This IS something worth discussing, even to those who don't follow politics closely. My parents will be laid off (both of them) from their jobs at the end of this month. In discussing AGI, my parents weren't upset about the percentage of the bailout package that was going to these bonuses. They were upset over the fact that these AIG people are getting my parents' tax money as a bonus (not even a salary in which to survive on, but a bonus) & now my parents are simply trying to figure out how they are going to be surviving as a household living on unemployment. It's really scary times out there & the fact that these people are receiving far above & far beyond what their performances dictate that they should receive is a serious slap in the face -- even among those who aren't politically savvy.

TPM Reader HR:

I think that Rahm and the WH are trying to separate two strands of the conversation: anger at fatcats (which is not a winning issue for them), and anger at the effects of the recession on 'Main Street' (where the WH can show compassion and, in some instances, progress).

Unfortunately for them, the two can't be parsed. It's too late to disentangle, in the larger discourse or in real life, rage at the layoff economy from rage at AIG and Citi. As Gertrude Stein put it, "money is always there but the pockets change; it is not in the same pockets after a change, and that is all there is to say about money."

TPM Reader CN:

Emmanuel and Axelrod are wrong. AIG has become a major symbol of the predatory core of the economic meltdown--you can just say the 3 letters and get a predictably negative response at the water cooler, on the train, in the store, etc. My college students aren't usually very tuned into politics, but I got a pretty good laugh yesterday with an AIG joke.