The Heyday of Snobbery - New York Times
When you're right you're right. If I were to engage in my normal tendency toward reverse snobbery I would say, "Isn't it refreshing that the New York Times published such an article." (Already "If I Did It," like Borat creeps in everywhere).
David Brooks forces us to look at the current "... blue America snobbery, as people on the coasts try to fathom those who would vote for George W. Bush. The only logical explanation is that they are racist, anti-Semitic idiots who can be blamelessly ridiculed."
I have always marveled at the hypocritical intolerance of the intellectual left. He points out that this kind of cruel intellectual snobbery is not new, although Mencken may have been less funny than todays comedians, he was certainly more literate. As Brooks says Borat and the rest of the intellectually snobbish comedians are catering to a socially insecure segment of society. Why else would you find it so humorous to put down a vast segment of society, which, like the minority segments you valiantly defend, contains both good and bad people who may or may not be offended by your humor?
If you want a great description of the phoniness of the oh-so-intellectually-superior class, take a look at Tom Wolfe's "Radical Chic and Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers" written almost 40 years ago. Here is what one Amazon reviewer had to say
The cringing white liberal and the self-serving bureaucrat, the sychophantic Jewish silver-spoon socialist and the cunning black race-baiting political opportunist -- these are the types of characters that Tom Wolfe elucidates with wicked satire in his stories, which are a titillating admixture of acid fiction and scathing journalism. The types in this book, moreover, seem to be a fixture of the contemorary world, and their elucidation by Wolfe amounts to a humorous education in past forms. One cannot help but note that militant Islam receives the same perverted reception from several quarters as did the likes of the Black Panther movement of yore.
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