Are you ready for the New Elite? Are you, perhaps, part of the New Elite? If you're not sure, you may or may not want to read
this thing at the
Washington Post, a bizarre and foreboding op-ed by the infamous Charles Murray, co-author of the bizarre and foreboding
The Bell Curve. Basically, the New Elite are people who live in cities and college towns and don't care about things like NASCAR and Christian fraternal societies like the Rotary Club or whatever. Do you read lots of books but not
Left Behind? You you enjoy skiing but not football? Do you take "interesting vacations" but not in an RV? OMG, do you feel like you're looking into a mirror held up by Mr. Murray yet? It turns out that you are what's wrong with America. I just thought you should know.
Or.... or maybe you are, hilariously, Charles Murray himself, and you've seen all this "Tea Party" stuff, and you're thinking to yourself, "Hey, that looks good, I want some of that!" And then you wave your hands in the air and you say, "Guys! Hey, Tea Party guys! Have you seen
my book about how the blacks are genetically dumber than us? Would you like to hire me to speak at your events? Please? I know things and stuff about Ayn Rand!" And then you go back to your office at the American Enterprise Institute and think of other ways to save the country from The Elites. (Image via Getty Images.)
9 comments:
Well... I don't ski. But other than that, I'm in. Elitists unite!
That book (both of them actually) sure sounds like 10 pounds of merde in a 9 pound bag. I hope that by making a French reference I up my elite status!
Fran, you are playing so well! Murray's last big op-ed in the Washington Post was about how awful it would be for the US to be more like Europe!
Well done, Madame.
What a maroon! I love the way that he (along with all Reich-wingers) panders to the preposterous notion that small-town, Flyover, blue-collar existence imparts some sort of wisdom. If that asshole ever spent any time in America's hinterlands, he might just discover how narrow, bitter, self-indulgent, banal, and bigoted life often is there. The Elites are somehow "ignorant" because they don't know from NASCAR, Branson and Left Behind? Jesus wept.
With that glowing recommendation from you, I just had to read the article. He talks about how these horrible New Elite people remain isolated from real America due to "lifestyle choices"! As if a member of the New Elite would actually want to hang out with evangelical Christians (his example) when we could hang out with enlightened people in our isolated enclaves.
For what it's worth, I have read Left Behind. The writing was atrocious. It reads like something a third-grader wrote. So you aren't missing much.
calling everyone different from you an "elite" is a fine way to salve your impoverished soul and to congratulate yourself on how well you've avoided learning anything about how the world is. That's why they used to beat me up in school you know, because of my "lifestyle choices."
OMG, PUGGIE!!!111!!! Sorry, but I'm one of those New Elite Pug People who gets all squeey whenever a pushed-in face is waved in front of me.
Anyway, in way of Substantive Commentary, I think I remember watching a Book TV bit about Charles Murray's converted barn office in a ritzy, though admittedly semi-rural, Maryland village. Yeah, nothing elite about that! All the salt of the earth in Real America have office barns full of books and laptops and custom furniture!
Haw, Frank, that pug dog was one of the top image results for "snob" on Getty Images. I laughed so hard when I saw it that I had to use it, even though other photos of people with their noses in the air were better illustrations of the concept.
Smoking dogs, with or without hats, make everything better, basically.
Isn't writing for the elite Washington Post and its elite readers an elitist thing?
I think there's much more grist for a Tea Party Bell Curve book, but imagine the howls that that would bring.
That's weird, Pete: pugs are Regal, but they're not snobs. They just want to be loved!
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