Despite the oddly redundant title of this Maureen Dowd op-ed in the New York Times, Dowd makes a good point about the latest efforts to brand Barack Obama as an out-of-touch elitist:
This was Rove's take on Obama to Republicans at the Capitol Hill Club Monday, according to Christianne Klein of ABC News:"Even if you never met him, you know this guy. He's the guy at the country club with the beautiful date, holding a martini and a cigarette that stands against the wall and makes snide comments about everyone who passes by."
Actually, that sounds more like W.
Unfortunately, Dowd then goes on to overstate her case:
Obama can be aloof and dismissive at times, and he's certainly self-regarding, carrying the aura of the Ivy faculty club. But isn't that better than the aura of the country clubs that tried to keep out blacks? It's ironic, and maybe inevitable, that the first African-American nominee comes across as a prince of privilege. He is, as Leon Wieseltier of The New Republic wrote, not the seed but the flower of the civil rights movement. [...]Obama is the outsider who never really knew his dad and who grew up in modest circumstances, the kid who had to work hard to charm whites and build a life with blacks and step up to the smarty-pants set.
He might be smoking, but it would be at a cafe, hunched over a New York Times, an Atlantic magazine, his MacBook and some organic fruit-flavored tea, listening to Bob Dylan's "Blood on the Tracks" on his iPod.
I don't think Dowd realizes that to most of America, an Ivy League education, New York Times and Atlantic subscriptions, MacBook and iPod, not to mention organic fruit tea, sounds pretty much like the trappings of a different kind of elitism--the liberal kind.
She's right, in that Rove is trying to cast Obama as the kind of elite high-level Republicans understand and sometimes typify: the country-club son of privilege who looks down on all the little people. But she's wrong, in that the kind of elitism Obama does represent, the elitism of liberal scholarship and brand-name expensive consumer goods, is just as distant from the everyday lives of working Americans as the Republican variety.
Frankly, "elite politician" is as redundant a phrase as Dowd's title for this piece. When ordinary Americans are farther and farther removed from the lives and experiences of their leaders, it matters little that the elitism in question reminds them less of the country-club Republican stereotype, and more of Frasier Crane.
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I don't know Daniel, I drink Miller Genuine Draft (to chase the Jameson Whiskey down). However, I think those frogs in the commercial get all the Bud cash.
Daniel, now that you mention it, John McCain certaily isn't an average Joe Sixpack is he? I mean, how more elitist can you get than to live at the Hilton for all those years AND while on active duty in Vietnam?
"It probably just isnt good politics to characterize a group to which you do not belong."
Apparently that rule works in only one direction. Merely because I happen to prefer wine to beer, Beethoven to Nine Inch Nails, sushi to hot dogs, and Shaw to soap opera, I am fair game for anybody's prejudice against "elitists." I don't think people who prefer beer, Nine Inch Nails, hot dogs, and soap opera are any less intelligent or worthy than I, just different. But I don't get the same benefit of the doubt. It bugs hell out of me.
I don't think Dowd realizes that to most of America, an Ivy League education, New York Times and Atlantic subscriptions, MacBook and iPod, not to mention organic fruit tea, sounds pretty much like the trappings of a different kind of elitism--the liberal kind.
Ah, yes, because it's elitist to read a major metropolitan newspaper, use a laptop and mp3 player, and drink a certain type of tea. No common people ever do any of those things.
You can call those things 'liberal' if you want. They are not 'elite'. It is not 'elite' to own a $150 mp3 player, or a $800 laptop, or a $1.50 newspaper. Those are not the purchases of solely the super-rich, or even the moderately rich. (Or the country is in worse shape than anyone thinks.)
You know, this whole 'elite' concept pissed me off at the start, and I think I figured out why. It's literally replaced 'rich and powerful', except with the caveat that it's pure culture. And being culture, it's incredibly easy to manipulate.
So instead of the hard and fast fact that McCain is a multimillionaire, with a wife in control of a beer distribution empire, and Obama is a guy who's not particularly rich, the media gets to pretend that Obama is 'elite' and McCain is some normal guy.
The Fraser comment about is correct. We pretend politics is between Frasier Crane and Sam Malone. That is not relevant. The question is, to slip into another TV show, which one is the Rich Texan? Which one is Mr. Burns?
But the people are seeing through the crap. The question isn't what people do in their free time, or where they grew up. The question for each politician is simple: Are they one of the rich being put in place to propagate more money upward, or are they there for some other reason? (Almost any other reason is better.)
Incidentally, as I've pointed out before, by excluding more and more people from the right, all you're doing is moving the left/right line closer to the right.
The average person in this country is a not a beer drinking NASCAR fan. Even actual beer-drinking NASCAR fans aren't 'beer-drinking NASCAR fans'...they might do that, but they've got an iPod, or drive a hybrid, or have a Nintendo Wee, or blog (heh), or own a poodle, or like vodka, or going to the beach, or jogging, or classical music, or whatever extremely goofy thing the right will pretend, next week, makes someone a 'liberal elite'.
People are not stereotypes, and throw enough crap into your stereotype of 'others', you'll very soon hit things the people you're talking to do and care about. But go ahead and talk about how they're out of touch, and call them liberal elites for those hobbies. Maybe you'll convince them they, themselves, are liberal elites.
It will work about as well as calling commonly held political positions, like being in favor of some sort of health insurance reform, or not worrying about gay people, 'leftist'. People will decide you're correct, they are indeed leftist.
Now guess how people who think they're 'leftists' or 'liberal elite' vote.
(Yes, yes, I'm aware Obama did the same thing, and it bit him in the ass, and he lost some votes there. But that is notable as an exception. Whereas the right does it all the time.)
Actually, Max, the former Mrs. Heinz gets $0.057. It's a well-known but rarely discussed fact in western PA.
May I get a general response to a question on the term "elite"? It won't take but a moment of your time, fellow posters, and you need not post about it if you don't want to.
Do you ever consider the distinction between:
elite: synonym for the best, as M-W Online has it "a group of persons who by virtue of position or education exercise much power or influence [members of the ruling elite] [the intellectual elites of the country]";
elitism: "1: leadership or rule by an elite 2: the selectivity of the elite; especially : snobbery [elitism in choosing new members] 3: consciousness of being or belonging to an elite."
The way I see it, I want elites in the positions of leadership and responsibility, the best at what they do. I further have nothing but contempt for elitism, which like other -isms having to do with arbitrary acquisition and use of power is to be fought at every occurance.
The elites earn their positions through hard work, education and proof of ability. Elitists want to take over that process, allowing them to bypass it at will.
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