Oh Hey There

"An elitist used to be a person who believed in rule by the best and brightest — initially, it wasn’t necessarily a pejorative word. Now it has become a term for people who think they’re superior to everyone else. That new meaning is more appropriate for the right than for the left, since the right is trying to make this a question of attitude than actual power, wealth, and influence. So we were treated last year to the remarkable spectacle of the multimillionaire Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild explaining on CNN that she was supporting John McCain because Barack Obama was an elitist who couldn’t connect with ordinary Americans. Granted, almost everybody found that one ludicrous (well, except Lady L., which only made it funnier), but really she’s only a notch up from Ivy-educated lawyers from privileged backgrounds like Ingraham and Coulter ranting about “the elites” who “hate us,” as Ingraham puts it, making free use of the first-person plural. There’s a condescension in that that insults the intelligence and dignity of American working people. In fact, “elitism” has become a self-diagnostic term these days: when you hear somebody using the word, it’s a pretty good bet they’re guilty of it."