Disparaging Remarks Disparaging Obama's Community Organizing Experience Sparks Anger

Washington, D.C. (AHN) - Speakers at the Republican National Convention who made disparaging remarks about presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama's (D-IL) early experience as a community organizer have fired up angry organizers and others.

Both former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani and vice presidential nominee Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin took jabs at ridiculing Obama's job experience.

Organizers reportedly say they were insulted by the comments. They say that they work for low salaries in an effort to help people without power fight to obtain better schools and safer communities, all things that they say politicians should be doing on behalf of taxpayers.

Obama defended the work he did for three years between college and law school. He questioned why the Republicans would think that it was ridiculous for someone to work for low pay to help other people.

"I don't know if they understand what it means for a young person, at the age of 22 or 23, to pass up more lucrative options and work with people who are having a tough time and seeing that when people work together, we can do amazing things, rebuilding communities and setting up job training centers and setting up afterschool programs for kids," Obama told supporters at a rally in Lancaster, PA on Thursday.

Obama added that he could only think that Republicans didn't value such work because they were out of touch with people who were struggling and didn't spend much time working on behalf of poor people.

Meanwhile, an Obama campaign worker on Thursday decided that the problem that led to Republicans ridiculing Obama's work as a community organizer might lie with a lack of understanding of what community organizers do.

To help clear up the confusion David Plouffe reportedly sent the Wall Street Journal an Obama campaign email saying in part, "Community organizing is how ordinary people respond to out-of-touch politicians and their failed policies."

But the simplest way to think of Obama's experience of bypassing high-paying jobs to work in a low-paying job for three years as a community organizer might be to consider it his serving a cause beyond his own self-interest, which is exactly what the Republicans say they favor.

That was the approach taken by ABC's Senior National Correspondent Jack Tapper.

Tapper wrote Thursday in a blog, "For nine years I've listened to Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., movingly call on younger Americans to serve a cause greater than their self-interest. Wasn't Obama merely heeding that very call? Wasn't Obama merely heeding that very call?"