The last time I attended a rally in Washington D.C to protest the war in Iraq, there were counter-protesters there, holding their own signs and American flags and other memorabilia you would expect to find at an NRA convention. There weren’t very many of them, and most of the thousands of people that were at this rally paid them no mind as we marched on by. I, of course, couldn’t help myself. Many of the posters read like Fox News talking points: ‘Support our Troops!’ and ‘Stand with the President!’ There was one, though, that caught my eye. It was held by a short, plump woman in her mid-40s or so, and said something along the lines of ‘I don’t listen to liberal elitists from New York.’ If she weren’t standing next to the other counter-protesters, I would have taken her sign as a compliment.
Of course, the woman didn’t come up with the slogan all on her own; judging by her looks, she seemed the type of person who couldn’t find the U.S on a world map, let alone New York. Rather, she likely picked the phrase up from one conservative radio program or another, or perhaps even from a book by Ann Coulter, queen of insanity-land and empress of all things wrong with the world. The phrase ‘liberal elite’ has been making the rounds on all of the conservative media outlets these past few years, and I still have been unable to decide whether to be offended or honored.
The remark is clearly meant as an insult. ‘Those liberal elitists,’ they say. ‘They don’t know what they are talking about.’ Call me crazy, but when someone labels me as ‘elite,’ offense is not an emotion I quickly arrive at. Even more surprising is that many conservative pundits see liberalism as a whole as ‘elite’. Naturally, I couldn’t agree more.
This all speaks to the brilliance of conservative media personalities. While liberals can rightly lay claim to most, if not all, of the greatest ideas in American history, conservatives routinely take liberals to task over mastery of wordage. Just look: some conservative fellow managed to turn the word ‘elite’ from a sign of wealth and class and excellence into a shameful label that is used to degrade and deride the opposition.
The most frequent target of the ‘liberal elite’ branding are the Ivy League colleges dotting the Northeast. Harvard professors are all liberal elites, Yale students are all liberal elites, Columbia administrators are all liberal elites.
A quick aside: It should be noted that the nation’s smartest people are the ones that gain admittance to the United States’ premiere institutions of higher learning, and that if they of all people agree with liberal ideologies’hellip;
Personally, I am totally cool with folks labeling me as elite; Roger Federer is an elite player, Tiger Woods is an elite golfer, liberal minded scholars are elite humans.
In the end, the question that begs to be asked is what to call our conservative counterparts? The two sides are as different as night and day. So therefore, if liberals are elite, it stands to reason that conservatives are morons. If your typical liberal minded person is a Harvard-educated, extremely wealthy philanthropist, then it seems the typical conservative should be a high school dropout with a dental bill that rivals a modest Long Island mortgage payment.
What, is that offensive? Then how dare you call me elite!
