Best Is the New Worst - Elite Bashing

[groovedaddy]

PITY the poor word “elite,” which simply means “the best” as an adjective and “the best of a group” as a noun. What was once an accolade has turned poisonous in American public life over the past 40 years, as both the left and the right have twisted it into a code word meaning “not one of us.” But the newest and most ominous wrinkle in the denigration of all things elite is that the slur is being applied to knowledge itself.

Senator Hillary Clinton’s use of the phrase “elite opinion” to dismiss the near unanimous opposition of economists to her proposal for a gas tax holiday was a landmark in the use of elite to attack expertise supposedly beyond the comprehension of average Americans. One might as well say that there is no point in consulting musicians about music or ichthyologists about fish.

The assault on “elite” did not begin with politicians, although it does have political antecedents in sneers directed at “eggheads” during the anti-Communist crusades of the 1950s. The broader cultural perversion of its meaning dates from the late 1960s, when the academic left pinned the label on faculty members who resisted the establishment of separate departments for what were then called “minority studies.” In this case, two distinct faculty groups were tarred with elitism — those who wanted to incorporate black and women’s studies into the core curriculum, and those who thought that blacks and women had produced nothing worthy of study. Instead of elitist, the former group should have been described as “inclusionary” and the latter as “bigoted.”

The second stage of elite-bashing was conceived by the cultural and political right. Conservative intellectuals who rose to prominence during the Reagan administration managed the neat trick of reversing the ’60s usage of “elite” by applying it as a slur to the left alone. “Elite,” often rendered in the plural, became synonymous with “limousine liberals” who opposed supposedly normative American values. That the right-wing intellectual establishment also constituted a powerful elite was somehow obscured.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/30/opinion/30jacoby.html?th&emc=th

[uberllama42]

1. The "elitist" meme is just standard anti-intellectualism

No one who throws it around objects to elites who agree with them. You don't here them complaining about corporate elites, or conservative judges who went to Yale. It's a total red herring.

[SharonAnn]

5. Welcome to "Appalachian America". Demagoguery, anti-intellectualism, and deep ignorance.

[Jade Fox]

6. Exactly.....

At the same time, self-appointed intellectuals, like those who insist that Intelligent Design is based on sound science, demand to be considered equal to people with actual knowledge based on study and research.

[pscot]

2. Christopher Lasch, in Revolt of the Elites,

argues that America's economic elites have abandoned the lower and middle classes to pursue their own enrichment. That idea seems to be gaining some traction on the net and in the alternative press. The government and the corporate elites have sold us out. For the last 10 years America's #1 export has been jobs. Business reports record profits, but workers pay declines. Taxes on the rich are slashed while our infrastructure decays and our cities fall into ruin. The complicit corporate media distract us from the looting of our economy with culture wars and trash entertainment. One need look no farther than your TV for the source of anti-intellectualism. An evening of watching television dumbs one down, numbs the senses, creates a passive and subdued populace. Unfortunately, nothing is going to change until people are ready to take it to the streets

[angstlessk]

3. the article itself differentiates between elites and elitists..you describe

elitists..Galbraith was an elite regarding the economy as was Smith ..but they were NOT elitists!

[Demeter]

4. When Bushbots are the Elite, the Degradation of the Language Follows Naturally