Letters to the Editor
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Say It Loud, I'm Smart and I'm Proud
I'm a shit kicker from Kansas who began announcing myself as a proud elitist around the time Junior the Decider started threatening Iraq. The idea seemed half-baked and there's no shame in thinking things through. In fact, that appears to be what many of the War Czar candidates are doing. Of course, it's easy for Junior to surround himself with these marginal Christians - they're plentiful and no one else wants them. Obviously, no one with all their marbles would want to be connected with this administration, so there we are.
Cheney is pathologically paranoid, Junior spends half of his time trying to complete a sentence and the other half subconsciously looking for constitutional battles just to prove that he's better and smarter than the old man - and gosh darn it, people like him. Or, they did. Not so much now.
When Newt Gingrich becomes what passes as an intellectual in Republican circles, it should be clear to everyone that, indeed, mediocrity has won the day in America.
We've had years of myth building in this country around ideas like deregulation, a trickle down economy, privatization working better than government, etc. The only good that has emerged is that we've been dealing with the consequenses of these conceits for over 25 years and the net result is that the rich are richer, primary education is in shambles, higher education is getting out of reach for more people, we're in an ill-advised war with no end in sight and it's costing us a lot of money - the degree to which most people who can't even comprehend how it will end up affecting them and their children.
Time to deconstruct. You're right - everyone should proudly proclaim themselves an elitist. And a populist.
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And then there's Bill ...
Bill Maher's genius, such as it is, has been to channel the discontent of some angry white males (at least the nominally educated fraction) against the sinister clowns of the current repuglican establishment. But take away the novelty of frat-boy mockery directed at conservative targets and very little remains.
I'm a Harvard graduate with pre-Revolutionary antecedents on both sides and a doctorate from the University of Virginia. I grew up in Ohio in the nineteen-sixties with no money in a "middle-class" industrial town surrounded by farms. My friends were as likely to be the sons and daughters of factory workers or tavern waitress as they were to come from the upper middle-class elite of professional people and managers out of which my parents had fallen.
I know at first hand how sinister heartland conservatism can be. Ohio has long been a cautionary tale for the nation as a whole.
But I'll say this: to substitute the reflexive mockery of a lightweight like Bill Maher for the supposed mediocrity of "hayseeds" like me and the people I grew up with is a bad bargain. I wouldn't trade a hundred Bill Mahers for one of the "hayseed" kids I grew up with.
You can't call yourself a progressive if you don't believe in social equality. Bill Maher--and Salon--ought to face this fact and put it front and center where it belongs.
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Your bigotry is showing
Not content to comment on specific wrongdoing or failures, Bill Maher let's his bigotry run free and slanders an entire group of people, looking down his nose at anyone who thinks differently from him.
That's what they mean by "elite," Bill.
This is the same "smart" Maher who got his story about the HPV vaccine (another chance to bash Christians) disastrously wrong on so many fronts (the archived version carries one correction, but the story is 180-degrees wrong on many things) because, being the elite he is, didn't think he had to actually ask anyone what they thought about it, simply inferring their position because they're (a) conservative and (b) Christian.
And Salon and Maher-types think they're oh-so tolerant and progressive. You're shown to be the simple irrational haters that you are.
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not really a new tendency
Anti-elitism is part of classic American populism, not a new rightwing conspiracy, though there is a particular form of it used by the right, which I'll get to below. At its best, anti-elitism the tendency to be skeptical towards anyone who says "Trust me. I'm your better." At its worst, it's a lazy, kneejerk rejection of anything that challenges your "common sense" preconceptions. E.g., if Tiger Woods were to give me golf lessons, I'd be better served by paying attention than by trying to second guess him. But this is not the same as paying him obeisance as an elite person; it's acknowledging his merit as a golfer (we won't get into whether his advice would have any value whatsoever to a klutz like me).
Part of the problem with Maher's argument is that he's taking a broad notion and using it out of context. In the most general sense, any exceptional member of a category is elite. If I held the Guinness world record for smelly feet, that would make me elite, just not in a way that most people appreciate. George W. Bush is elite by virtue of being born into an affluent, powerful American family. I don't believe he deserves any more or any less respect from me on this account, and in that sense, I'm against elitism.
Now the amazing trick that the rightwing has managed to pull off is to serve the needs of the elite (in terms of power and affluence, that is, rather than the golf-elite or the smelly-feet-elite) while simultaneously making the appearance of elitism an unpardonable offense. There is still an elite running things, but they just know better than to make a public show of it. And they're still sending their kids to Ivy League universities, and those kids are still greatly advantaged when it comes to joining the Washington inner circle, even if a few bones get thrown now and then to the evangelical base.
I agree with Bill Maher that the rightwing has accomplished something new in the demonization category, but it doesn't mean that I have to embrace uncritical elitism as a countermeasure. I think what Maher is actually championing here is meritocracy rather than elitism. Meritocracy comes with its own set of hazards, but it is fully compatible with the spirit of anti-elitism that says you ought to be suspicious of pedigrees and fancy clothes.