We drink regular coffee (cream and sugar please) because we’re more authentic.

Far too erudite for my tastes. More funny pictures, please…

The images you use when describing the terrible no-good Elite might not be anti-Semitic, but I’m not convinced you’re in the majority there.

And even if you can clear the phrase of anti-Semitism (a pretty weak charge, I’ll admit), clearing it of anti-intellectualism is substantially more difficult. As I said recently about this subject, we’re dealing with people who have decided that the way to represent the downtrodden is to pander to their failures instead of rectifying the ways in which the system has failed them. One of the easiest ways to curry favor simultaneously with the poor and their exploiters is to rail against the degenerate liberal elite. Replacing ‘liberal’ with ‘technocrat’ is meaningless – there are no more honest technocrats on the right, simply a well-insulated kleptocracy. You wanna make friends with the hyper-capitalists, you go right on freaking out about people being manipulated by heartless elitists. After all, all they want is a little less interference by the nasty elitists in Washington – won’t you have a heart and vote to do away with double taxation/death tax/et-fucking-cetera?

So basically, whether or not ‘latte-sipping elitist’ is anti-Semitic (I wouldn’t charge you of being anti-Semitic, but I’d still argue the phrase as commonly used is), it’s anti-intellectual, it plays right into the right-wing narrative of irresponsible government, and it’s fucking destructive. You’re either railing against hook-nosed bankers or sneering IRS daemons. Take your pick – neither says much for you.

I recommend this article by Mark Ames ( http://www.nypress.com/print.cfm?content_id=10369 ) that addresses more clearly what most Americans mean when they speak of/think of elites. First, you must get as many people as possible to understand/agree with what you mean when you refer to elites (that is, clear out the bullshit and get people thinking of class rather than cultural affectation), then you must communicate what those elites are up to. I’m all for repurposing one of the Right’s favorite memes, but you have to get people to understand what you mean.

That said, the phrase isn’t anti-Semitic, and calling it anti-Semitism is indeed pretty unhelpful.

You’re still assuming that all populism is inherently wingnutty. It’s not. Just because wingnuts want to deflect blame onto specifically liberal elitists doesn’t mean that liberal elitists haven’t earned their share of the blame. Or have you completely forgotten about the Clinton years?

Any amount of genuine, actual, measurable, observable elitism is permitted so long as it backs up hawkish and ultra-upper-class favoring policies.

Any amount of genuine, actual, measurable, observable anti-elitism will be discouraged since it contradicts support for hawkish ultra-upper-class favoring policies.

The rigid backing of policies sure to make the lives of Israeli Jews more hazardous and the state they live in less stable is called “pro-Israel”. The suggestion that policies possibly could make their lives and their state less the playthings of power and more a stable part of the community of nations is labeled “anti-Semitic” or “anti-Israeli”. Any serious concern whatsoever for either Palestinian Arabs or Israeli Arabs is considered, by default, to be “anti-Semitic” or “anti-Israeli”, unless it is entirely garbed within the same ultra-right hawkish policies that currently endanger both them and Israeli Jews.

Suffice it to say, there is no logical argument that can be given which will convince the most powerful and their worshipers to respect arguments against their perceived most selfish interests.

You will never, ever, ever be able to convince them that the super-upper-classes’ most cynically dangerous greed is anything other than a gift to the masses. The uppermost elites and their cadre of useful idiots are deeply, deeply convinced that their mere existence is a great, grand, extraordinary gift to the unwashed majority — and to the extent they can get large chunks of the majority to agree with them, it crosses over into self-help entertainment as well.

Also, alec, why do you think the system has failed? Who do you think the owners of the system hire to run the system? to defend the system? to rationalize the system’s deficiencies?

The answer is: the “intellectual” elite. Or, as Hume said, the few control the many through Opinion. Well, who do you think manufactures that opinion? Sure, the kleptocrats *pay* for the manufacturing, but who do you think actually crafts Opinion?

The rightwing just seized some of the best slurs is all. Pretty impressive really that they so successfully co-opted Marxist-style language then used it to elect wealthy elites who crush the lower class. For a large part of the population, liberalism/leftism = elitist snobbery, while rightwing = blue collar salt of the earth types.

Astounding really. How’d they do it? (I’m not kidding). How did the party of the New Deal and labor unions get characterized as out of touch snobs in our popular culture, while the actual party of big business fatcats gets to run around in cowboy hats and blue jeans without shame or censor?

How’d they do it?

Simple, really. They did it by buying the vehicles of popular conversation, and repeating it over and over and over again betwixt song-happy snippets of bacon and the Bahamas.

None Can Resist My Bacon!

Delong is indeed the archetype

I am hardly a regular reader of his; but more than once, on the rare occasions when I go over to his blog, there’s a post about the latest shopping trip to Whole Foods,

I just shake my head and think — man, have you no shame??

Going along with what people above said (and the general ‘What’s the Matter with Kansas’ thesis), I think the ‘latte-sipping elitist’ meme is noxious specifically because it implies that the (‘latte-sipping’) college professor who donates to One-Laptop-Per-Child is a more present danger to the lower class than the (‘elite elitist’) smoky back-room businessman. In fact, I honestly cannot remember when I’ve seen it used without this assumed subtext.

As far as the anti-antisemitism, I haven’t connected those dots, and my barometer is usually pretty good.

is noxious specifically because it implies that the (’latte-sipping’) college professor who donates to One-Laptop-Per-Child is a more present danger to the lower class than the (’elite elitist’) smoky back-room businessman.

But, see, what I’m saying is that a *lot* of college professors have more in common with the back-room businessman than they do with the underclass. Indeed, a lot of college professors work to ensure (whether they know it or not) that the smoky back-room businessman triumphs. After all, when the businessman (who is too stupid to do it on his own) wants the system that he benefits from defended in Op-Ed pages and sustained by Conventional Opinion, he usually hires someone from Academe.

At any rate, both the businessman and even the best of the college professors fear and loathe the underclass on cultural grounds. Really. Hey, so do I, but that doesn’t make it right. And at least I know it’s wrong to go from that position to then say “fuck those Kansans,” because it’s *never* right to abandon poor people — even “culturally primitive” ones.

What is wrong with being elite?

The answer is: the “intellectual” elite. Or, as Hume said, the few control the many through Opinion. Well, who do you think manufactures that opinion? Sure, the kleptocrats *pay* for the manufacturing, but who do you think actually crafts Opinion?

They aren’t an intellectual elite; they’re at best advertisers and at worst whores. Characterizing them as an intellectual elite both concedes ‘elite’ to people who don’t deserve it and characterizes anyone within the elite as a sort of middle-brow partisan.

Compare Galbraith and Friedman; one of them jumps out at you as a brazenly apologetic fuckwit, a hype man for the exploiters of human misery, and the other as a genuinely intelligent and compassionate technocrat. According to the modern scheme, Galbraith is a horrible technocratic elitist and Friedman a freedom-loving man of the people. Never mind that one of them spent years trying to justify Villa fucking Grimaldi.

Blaming the intellectuals for the actions of a few shameless whores who like to think of themselves as intellectual is unfair. It’s like conceding ‘intellectual’ to fucking McArdle.

HTML’s reaction here is confusing, because the critique of “latte liberal = Jew” is being leveled at right-wingers, not left populists like himself. But, of course, there’s always a stronger bond between populists of all stripes than between populists and their surrounding political faction. The right-wing militia movement’s isolation amongst the Republicans is no fluke, and the same with the long history of left populists (like the Fascists) swapping sides.

Mad props to Ann Althouse’s Slowly Tilting Wine Glass.

HTML Mencken-

What percentage of college professors have EVER published an op-ed in a newspaper? I’d venture to say its infinitesimally small–for one, professors of philosophy, literature, sociology, and nearly all the hard sciences aren’t really the type of people that can write 700 word pieces of coherent opinion. I’d say you are more out of touch with the class of ‘college professors’ than college professors are with the poor. This point is further strengthened when you assert that the average college professor is somehow economically triumphant–which conveniently ignores the near decade of working for 15 grand a year, for the discouragingly small chance of a 80,000 a year salary. Most professors who make that kind of money don’t do it before their 40th birthday.

I intend to be a college professor, and I will never make as much money as my father, a career plumber.

I intend to be a college professor, and I will never make as much money as my father, a career plumber.

Same here, sort of – although in my case my father’s a doctor, which kind of informs my perspective on elitism. (You try stitching up your kids sometime.)

Compare Galbraith and Friedman; one of them jumps out at you as a brazenly apologetic fuckwit, a hype man for the exploiters of human misery, and the other as a genuinely intelligent and compassionate technocrat. According to the modern scheme, Galbraith is a horrible technocratic elitist and Friedman a freedom-loving man of the people. Never mind that one of them spent years trying to justify Villa fucking Grimaldi.

See, it’s funny that you say that, because I think of most Liberal Economists who have an electronic bully pulpit as being far closer to Friedman than to Galbraith. Max Sawicky and General Glut are exceptions, and Krugman’s finally come around (but it took the Bush regime to do it; in the 90s Krugman was unreadable).

Yes, the “intellectual elite” are whores. Not all of them. But enough of them to make anger at the species very excusable, even righteous.

Lets be frank. This one is tough for me to figure out.

I feel like I see your point here HTML, that there’s a real populist feeling of anti-elitism, and that this populist feeling of anti-elitism can be distinguished from simple tribalist hatred of urban middle-class people (“anti-semitism”). You are saying that, in failing to see the difference, Mr. Farley is blinding himself to something very real- a form of populism which exists and which could be well-dealt-with or poorly-dealt-with. You are saying that if the USA is ever going to examine class, we’ll have to examine this populist feeling and understand it compassionately rather than smearing it as simple anti-semitism. Or something like that.

That part seems… fairly clear to me. What is less clear to me is, why exactly you have chosen to dig in and fight Mr. Farley on this particular petty bit of identity politics.

Is it that you don’t see another angle to attack this issue? I can see how, in attempting to talk about class in the USA, you’ve chosen an extremely hard target. If racism is like a subtle disease that nevertheless can totally kill you, classism must be a disease that’s so dangerous it’s illegal to even think about it, or something. But you, HTML, have to think about it and talk about it.

Waht about meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!?!!1one1?

What percentage of college professors have EVER published an op-ed in a newspaper?

Are you shitting me? Almost every pundit has taught class at some time, usually in between gigs.

RB: that ain’t my fault.

HTML Mencken-

That’s not what I asked. I asked what percentage of college professors have published op-eds—not what percentage of op-ed writers have taught college courses (which is significantly different from being a professor). I think your response shows that you either have no clue or never even though about it.

Wow, I didn’t know your real name was “Retardo” … it must take real high-caliber intellectualism to coin such witty repartee.

To me, “Creative Class” is exemplified by the nice folks who’ll critique the clusterfuck in Iraq by pointing out that there’s no boots on the ground in the Sudan – bright enough to use the analogy but too mentally lazy to look it up & find out that there are indeed many Yankee boots there, working covert ops to train government death-squads, exactly like they’ve done in many other resource-milch-cow dictatorships in the Third World.

The apostles of neoliberalism know how to wield the Anti-Semitic brickbat well & know that every time they do so, certain groups will praise them to the skies for their eagle-eyed vigilance. None of them dare to go quite so far as to bother checking for real evidence of Anti-Semitism, because it’d harsh the buzz you can only get from having a new infidel to despise, & recanting is such a, like, total bummer, y’know.

There’s a lot of dumb motherfuckers out there who’ll defend neoliberalism regardless of how many it bankrupts or kills (via lovely charitable organizations like the IMF & the World Bank), so passionate is their love of the part after “neo” … rendering them pathologically unwilling to see that neoliberalism is to liberalism as a jackal is to a lapdog.

The latte cadres (who tend to parrot progressive memes, but whose real-life activity often leaves much to be desired) have much to answer for – but they never will. Just like their wingnut doppelgangers, they can always pull off the highbrow version of saying the dog ate their homework, thanks to said wingnuts – because their REAL social relationship with The Glorious Republic Of Wingnuttia is symbiotic … just like Bush Jr.’s greatest political ally hasn’t been Cheney or Rove, but Osama bin Laden, with his magnificently timely attacks & videotapes. Reptilian groupthink & realpolitik can always be excused with the tremulous exclamations of how evil & crazy “They” are … & that in itself is some mighty fuckin’ crazy evil, right there.

My 2-bits’ worth.

While the antisemitism accusation is justly ridiculous, I also have a problem with “latte-sipping intellectuals” as a phrase. This is akin to “San Francisco values” and such, and it’s completely empty. I do not personally drink lattes, or any coffee at all, but judging from recent Dunkin Donuts commercials (“Our stuff has English names, not elitist European ones we’re too stupid to be able to pronounce!”) and the actual appeal of sitting in a coffee shop talking about political theory and making math jokes, I take personal offense at the phrase. I feel very strongly about NOT being bigoted when it comes to food, for example, and I strongly like “liberal” foods like sushi and “fine” cheeses, prosciutto, gulab jamun, and in general things other than the standard Americana “authentic” people like. And given that I feel strongly about something other than Local Sports Team, I’m well within the umbrella of “intellectuals”. I think people ought to spend time learning things; I think people should be excited about learning, whatever it is. I think people should understand basic mathematics as well, and possibly something about the universe — at the very least, acknowledge evolution. I think people should enjoy literature and hell, read some Dickens. And so on.

Does that make me an elitist latte-sipping (assume for a second that I like coffee) intellectual? Fuck yeah. So I resent that other people, themselves elitist and possibly latte-sipping intellectuals, or if not, people generally unworthy of having whatever platform they have, use this phrase to denigrate things. It’s like “gay”. Somehow, people who spend time thinking about politics aren’t authentic enough to have their opinion counted, since they apparently spent time considering this opinion rather than believing idiotic rumors about candidates’ middle names (Barack “Mohammed” Obama? WTF?).

Is every manifestation of contempt for cultural and political elites anti-Semitic and rightwing in origin?

English is a constantly evolving language. What does “anti-Semite” even mean these days? Though “Semites” includes both Arabs and Jews, it is now taken to mean “Jews” only (which makes for some considerable intellectual confusion). Right-wing Zionists, who seek to option out the fighting of their war with Iran to U.S. troops, have taken to calling any of us who object to this plan “anti-Semites”, as though our objection to this insanity is based in racial prejudice.

This particular invective has become so pervasive that it loses its power with each additional usage. I have been repeatedly called an anti-Semite for pointing out the apartheid policies of Israel against the Palestinians, which, given the actual meaning of the term, is worthy of some intense head-scratching. Given the ongoing transformation of the word, the definition of racial prejudice is being lost in favor of a new meaning, something along the lines of “opposition to the policies of radical Zionists”. This is acceptable to me, as long as we all recognize the newly defined meaning. Under these terms (and being a Jew myself), I’d welcome being labeled as an anti-Semite. However, until this new definition is universally accepted and the old one regarded as archaic, any further usage of the term is pointless and actually rather self-defeating.

Hey! Who’s up for a The Fool® parody? Anyone?
Too stale already?

Hey now! I’m stuck here in Kansas surrounded by these “culturally primitive” fuckwads!

That said, what a fabulous post here. I haven’t been on much but it’s rare for me to catch a longer post here of more original material. Duly impressed, and will alert the sorry sacks of shit I have to live around to the post. Keep up the good work, you anti-semitic bastard! I’ll try to say something less pathetic when my brain turns back on. It’s on enough to be wowed by that one, though, Mencken.

I asked what percentage of college professors have published op-eds—not what percentage of op-ed writers have taught college courses (which is significantly different from being a professor).

I know of some really high-caliber professors who have published op-eds.

John Mearshimer

Stephen Kinzer

William R. Polk

It took me only about 20 mins to find all those. Seems to me that lots of major professors publish op-eds & go on the radio & whatnot.

there’s a real populist feeling of anti-elitism, and that this populist feeling of anti-elitism can be distinguished from simple tribalist hatred of urban middle-class people (”anti-semitism”). You are saying that, in failing to see the difference, Mr. Farley is blinding himself to something very real- a form of populism which exists and which could be well-dealt-with or poorly-dealt-with. You are saying that if the USA is ever going to examine class, we’ll have to examine this populist feeling and understand it compassionately rather than smearing it as simple anti-semitism. Or something like that.

Yes. Emphatically, yes.

What is less clear to me is, why exactly you have chosen to dig in and fight Mr. Farley on this particular petty bit of identity politics.

Many reasons. One, I’ve been torturing myself lately reading shitloads of Norman Podhoretz and so I’m very attuned to the trick of accusing people of anti-Semitism in bad faith.

Two, there’s a lot of shit over there at LGM that has pissed me off — about the only one I can read anymore without screaming is D. I bit my tongue when Bean accused the very good and decent people who did the SCHIP commercial of racism (because the commercial showed a white girl). I bit my tongue for the most part when Farley championed wargaming U.S. & Taiwan vs. China. And I’ve always resented it that Farley was for the Iraq War because the DFHs in Seattle and Portland were against it. Also, Scott’s culture-crit is rapidly descending to Zhdanovian levels: a critic’s sole purpose being to inspect and judge according to ideological content. I mean, he’s not into Ann Bartow or Ampersand (The Simpsons is an objectively evil TV show because the character of Homer plays to “fatphobic” stereotypes — really, look it up) territory yet, and God knows he’s capable of writing decent criticism, but in the last couple of years: Ugh. Also, I have a vague memory of Farley taking the position that cultural imperialism does not exist (I may be wrong about that one).

Three, I’m sick, in general, of being in the friendly fire zone. It’s funny, because this is what the Sammich brigade unfairly accused *us* of, but too many people on my side make blanket accusations of bigotry that condemn their comrades. And often, it’s intentional. I mean, it’s not “aim for the wingnuts and if a few lefties are hit too, it’s acceptable.” Instead, the attitude is “fuck these so-called liberal bigots!” Dying of friendly fire is one thing when it’s because I was too close to the target; it’s another thing when I and people like me *are* the target. Ironically, the people doing this — or agreeing with this (okay, I’m thinking of Pinko Punko here) — are often the first ones who urge for consideration of hurt feelings. When I say, “WTF are you doing calling me a species of wingnut?” they say “Hey, HTML, you should consider why they are so angry with you!” But they don’t give a shit that when someone calls me a bigot it hurts my feely-feelings. I mean, I’m a fucking socialist. I hate tribalism; the one thing I’m taught *not* to do is “think with the blood” (i.e my identity); and I take that charge seriously.

One thing I do regret and apologise for is the assumption that academics are all wealthy. Obviously, many aren’t, especially adjunct professors. I’m sincerely sorry for assuming that about Farley.

If “latte-sipping intellectuals” is shorthand for “Jews,” what is “urine-sipping intellectuals” shorthand for?

even the best of the college professors fear and loathe the underclass on cultural grounds.

For a guy who claims to value reasoned argument, HTML, you sure do like to engage in evidence-free generalizations.

Are you shitting me? Almost every pundit has taught class at some time, usually in between gigs.

A disingenuous argument based on what might charitably be called a selective definition of “college professor.”

If “latte-sipping intellectuals” is shorthand for “Jews,” what is “urine-sipping intellectuals” shorthand for?

Those sneaky Thai’s?

If “latte-sipping intellectuals” is shorthand for “Jews,” what is “urine-sipping intellectuals” shorthand for?

Germans.

Duh.

I believe Killdozer said it best:

Intellectuals are the Shoeshine Boys of the Ruling Elite

Though both are awful, I’ve had less problems with Farley since he’s very nearly unreadable when he addresses sociopolitical issues, so I find it easier to ignore any post with his byline. The blunt stupidity of his anti-Semitic post is awe-inspiring, though. De Long is a narcissistic weenie who I once asked something on the order of, “If offshoring is so beneficial, then how about finding me a equivalent replacement for my exported programming job?” He did not answer, of course – I was just collateral damage and thus to be ignored. The only way that navel-gazer will ever understand what the policies he’s supported are actually doing is if he loses his job. Tenure insulates him from any negative repercussions. If every economist had to actually suffer through the policies they promulgate, the entire field would be turned upside-down. Thus they are carefully insulated to keep them from becoming even remotely a part of the real world.

And I should add that I think of LGM in kinda the way that D.A. and Brad (and many commenters) think of Corrente: that they are good people temporarily gone feral due to the current climate. They aren’t wingnuts (though Farley, by his own admission, used to be “on the other side”). But then, neither am I.

Ya know, I have a Lacan/ Žižek deconstruction of this whole thing if anyone’s interested. Or maybe I’ll just have a drink and sit this out.

Okay, HTML, I’m with you on the “latte-sipping intellectuals == anti-Semites” thing: that’s clearly a load of bollocks. Our own reactionary right wing (recently deposed from power – hurrah!) did a fair amount of denigrating local leftists using that (or a similar) phrase, and there was no connotation of Jewishosity there.

But tarring all college professors, say, with the ‘elitist’ brush is a tad far-fetched. Most (and by that I mean, around 90 – 95% of) lecturers are simply middle-class like everyone else. The real elite are those who inherited money and therefore have a leg up on the rest of us: elite means having more than everyone else, whether it’s money or power or ability to sway public opinion.

Sad though the fact may be, most university staff spend their time bitching about their students, marking exams, and conducting low-grade warfare against funding cuts and administrative decrees. They don’t conduct any sort of political activity, other than what falls well within their own discipline. Staff meetings in the philosophy department can get pretty heated when it’s the Socratic school against the post-structuralists, you know.

Maybe it’s different in the US. But down here, university (‘college’) staff aren’t a powerful elite that control public opinion, nor do they look down on the poor. Certainly, there’s a higher proportion of ‘inherited money and position’ folks at uni than in, say, plumbing, but that’s at least partly because the rich kids get better education. And it’s quite true that trades are a far better track towards money: plumbers and electricians make more money much earlier, and continue to make more money, than even most senior lecturers, and there’s far more security with a trade.

And maybe my perception is skewed because of the degree I did. You don’t get many maths and science lecturers in a position to sway public opinion on foreign policy. True, many of them did get involved in various causes, mostly lefty, but that was in their spare time, and they held no special position in those causes. Just volunteers in anti-war coalitions or women’s shelters or Greenpeace, just like everyone else.

In short, I think you’re sniping at the wrong targets: go after the class, not the stereotype. Aim for the actual elite who hold the power and make the decisions, not the strawman.

Three, I’m sick, in general, of being in the friendly fire zone. It’s funny, because this is what the Sammich brigade unfairly accused *us* of, but too many people on my side make blanket accusations of bigotry that condemn their comrades. And often, it’s intentional. I mean, it’s not “aim for the wingnuts and if a few lefties are hit too, it’s acceptable.” Instead, the attitude is “fuck these so-called liberal bigots!” Dying of friendly fire is one thing when it’s because I was too close to the target; it’s another thing when I and people like me *are* the target.

Yeah. I guess you really are in the freindly fire zone. As an Arkansan farmer socialist, you’re like caught in a contradiction dude! </freshman theory>

Well, I gotta say that while I don’t always agree with you, you are definitely starting to win me over on the importance of understanding, and coming to terms with, every part of the society, whether a given part is “northern”, “southern”, “liberal”, “leftist”, “conservative”, or what-the-fuck-ever. Rather than being caught up in a type of urban, “liberal” tribalism.

Okay, most of this post I couldn’t even understand. Now, that may be due to my own limitations or biases or it may be because what you wrote is nothing more than intellectual masturbation disguising a straw man argument or it may be that you are just smarter than me, but really, you know, there’s a war going on. I assume you can see it’s a big crock of shit (that war, I mean), so focus your energy on that and stop worrying about who is on the verge of Jacobinism (I admit to not even knowing what this term means, but I won’t bother to look it up, because I don’t care).

But they don’t give a shit that when someone calls me a bigot it hurts my feely-feelings.

I dunno who called you a bigot, but again, I don’t stand by that charge. The problem is anti-intellectualism – more specifically, letting the thieving dimwits who we’re against define ‘intellectual’ and then raging against it. America lacks a capacity for technocracy; we don’t have elite universities and we don’t have public intellectuals. What we have is a couple of people with a sociopolitical fetish for ‘reason’ who usually believe it has something to do with being a dogmatic pissant.

I agree with you that a lot of economists and public pretenders to intellectuality were basically Friedmanites – but the only people who honestly believe they’re intellectuals are their dearest friends and enemies.

To revisit the point I made yesterday, the thing at issue isn’t so much anti-Semitism but an effort by the upper middle class to save its skin.

Standing alongside the poor isn’t about fighting for their right to unionize, strike, bargain, and demand better treatment any more – and the people most strongly against that definition of populism are those who sling around terms like ‘elitist’. Rather, it’s about pandering to their presumed racism, classism, and sexism. The triangulators have successfully reframed the praxis such that high-powered corporate lawyers in favor of tax cuts and third-wayer capitalism down shots and pretend to be just like those precious middle Americans. The modern debate isn’t Debs against Taft but Bill Hicks against Larry The Cable Guy. Never mind taking sides (although if you can’t I don’t know what to say to you); the debate itself is perverse.

The modern debate isn’t Debs against Taft but Bill Hicks against Larry The Cable Guy. Never mind taking sides (although if you can’t I don’t know what to say to you); the debate itself is perverse.

Right. And I think that what HTML is trying to do is to reclaim the debate, reclaim the word ‘elitist’ as something that is more than a smear. Whether he’s succeeding here is another question entirely.

Three, I’m sick, in general, of being in the friendly fire zone.

And a rousing “Hear, hear!” from me on that. It’s been quite disturbing watching the American left tearing itself to pieces over the last X months/years.

Yes, I know the left is not some monolithic entity that marches in lockstep. But the sheer venom of some of the criticism/attacks/savagery directed from a lefty commentator towards another is breathtaking: why not save some of that for, say, the enemy? The gubmint, maybe, or the folks who want war ‘n serfdom? Why get so vituperative about what is really a doctrinal difference of opinion?

It reminds me a little of the schisms in the Christian church: from the monolithic Holy Roman Church, they split Catholic/Protestant and then suddenly there’s millions of the buggers squirming around like mosquito larvae in a water tank, each one a whisker away from the others but maintaining their primacy.

Loada bollocks. What the world needs is a cup of tea and a good lie down (my grandmother’s prescription for anything).

But down here, university (’college’) staff aren’t a powerful elite that control public opinion, nor do they look down on the poor.

I think HTML knows he’s talking about the actions/beliefs of some of the professors, not all. Maybe he’s not really making that clear.

When I say, “WTF are you doing calling me a species of wingnut?” they say “Hey, HTML, you should consider why they are so angry with you!” But they don’t give a shit that when someone calls me a bigot it hurts my feely-feelings. I mean, I’m a fucking socialist. I hate tribalism; the one thing I’m taught *not* to do is “think with the blood” (i.e my identity); and I take that charge seriously.

It’s really, really bizzarre that someone is calling you a wingnut. Reminds me of this guy I was talking with, started calling Cindy Sheehan a ‘wingnut’ because he thought her statements were dangerously naive or something. We’ve now reached the point where “everyone that I don’t agree with” is officially a wingnut, without the slightest regard for sense or logic.

When I hear the phrase “latte-sipping elitist,” I get thirsty for a latte. Even though I don’t believe I’ve ever had one, they really sound good.

Four — I haven’t had time to participate in many threads lately, but on the few that I have, which I think were in the D.A. & Brad vs. Corrente period, I made the simple and totally true observation that the upper-middle and middle classes were overrepresented on the internet while the under- and working classes were underrepresented. Furthermore, these facts strongly implied that real populism and class war (the good kind) issues would never get their due like other issues of grievance, which is lamentable. And the only person, IIRC, who did not disagree in the most strident terms was atheist.

Five — I admit to an obsessive vendetta with pundits and bloggers who were pro-Iraq War for any amount of time. I’ll never forgive it, never tire of pointing out the blood on their hands. And it’s especially galling to see these ppl with such shitty instincts advance in the field. And I’m so unhinged about it that I get incredibly frustrated and furious with defenders of these people who, at the same time, rightly demand the heads of Peter Beinart, Joe Klein, et al. What’s the difference? How the fuck can you glorify one and vilify the other? Don’t tell me because the one group are bloggers and the other are MSM pundits, because the ppl I’m talking about have all advanced to big media gigs. And even if they hadn’t advanced, it’s silly to claim that bloggers with quite a bit of traffic don’t influence — and therefore don’t have a responsibility regarding — the Great Debate. Sure, Bush would have went to war anyway, but these people provided him with cover.

Six – Speaking of elitists and people who were pro-War, and since it (and, apparently, every other flame war I’ve ever fought) was brought up several times in the LGM threads, do remember that the first thing the Editors thought of to bash me with is the fact that I’m mostly self-educated. Which is not to say that I haven’t logged many hours in class, but he’s right that I have no degree.

Yeah. I totally want to sip a latte while riding on public transportation, or something evil like that.

atheist said,

Yeah. I totally want to sip a latte while riding on public transportation, or something evil like that.

You’ve got PUBIC TRANSPORTATION?!

Jeez, what’s with all this disrespect for Brad DeLong and San Francisco values? The poor guy is from Chico or some place and wouldn’t sense a real San Francisco value gnawing on his ass. This is the guy who bitched because at the 2006 Frisco Democratic committee victory party they served guacamole when the appropriate treat would have been Rice-a-Roni™, or maybe it was Van de Kamp’s frozen jumbo prawns, I forget which.

This anti-semitism thing is way over my head, but, jeez, when we attack elites let’s first find somebody elite to attack. Goober Berkeley professors don’t cut it.

do remember that the first thing the Editors thought of to bash me with is the fact that I’m mostly self-educated. Which is not to say that I haven’t logged many hours in class, but he’s right that I have no degree.

Having gotten a college degree, and having known both people who have and people who have not, it seems to me that college degrees are often over-rated. You can learn some really great stuff if you know what you want to study and can apply yourself. Thing is, most people who go to college are kids who don’t have the slightest fricking clue what they want to study, and therefore don’t apply themselves well. It often looks to me like a class marker more than anything else.

And the thing is, it can really affect your career, having or not having one. In my view it’s kind of a sleeper problem in the USA- the overrating of college degrees.

First, I think it *is* possible for a word or phrase to be used in a certain way often enough that using it in a different context becomes an exercise in futility and being misunderstood. I must say, when I hear the phrase “latte-sipping elitist”, I think of right-wing anti-intellectual faux-populism. Even when you (HTML) use it, it’s hard (but not impossible) to read it differently. So, even though I never really heard any anti-semitism at all (‘course, I’m not Jewish, but whatevs) in the phrase, I’m not really sure I’d recommend using it much. I guess I’m not sure what the best term would be – “creative class” includes me and a bunch of other people who I wouldn’t really consider to be in the same category as Brad DeLong etc.

in RE: my bitching about the “Creative Class” and Academe, here’s Matt Taibbi today saying much more clearly what I mean:

back then (and in the seventies when I was growing up), reporters were mainly middle-to-working class guys who came up through the ranks of journalism, learning it as a trade, not a profession. They were independent-minded and iconoclastic. Nowadays journalism is a place for Ivy Leaguers who tend to be extremely conservative not in a Rush Limbaugh way but in a David Brooks/yuppie dickhead/periwinkle-towel-buying sort of way. They’re the prototypical Bobos in Paradise. They may have “liberal” politics but they very much are invested in protecting the status quo from a class standpoint. So we get a very different kind of journalism as a result. Much less advocacy journalism, much less anger.

Don’t be distracted by the David Brooks name-drop; the real meat is in the “yuppie dickhead” characterization and the “status quo from a class standpoint” thing. That’s what I’m talking about.

“… real populism and class war (the good kind) issues would never get their due like other issues of grievance, which is lamentable.”

True, but this fact does not allow you to assume that your own ideal of what those issues might be bears any relation to what they would actually be, were the poor and powerless to start particpating in these online debates. Just something to consider when you start waving around that unrepresented multitude as a brickbat in your personal online spats.

And they are, more often than not, personal spats, not principled vendettas, as you suggest in your next point:

I admit to an obsessive vendetta with pundits and bloggers who were pro-Iraq War

What you will not admit, however, is that you frequently use principled opposition to the war to gild your much less supportable economic vendettas, or that you unfailingly lump together war supporters and non-socialist leftists in your tirades, on those rare occasions when you see fit to allow the word “leftist” to apply to a non-socialist, or, horror of horrors, a capitalist (or “neoliberal,” to use your preferred term).

It’s silly to claim that bloggers with quite a bit of traffic don’t influence — and therefore don’t have a responsibility regarding — the Great Debate

Ah, but wasn’t high traffic at SN one of your reasons for complaint when you were whining about not being invited to the Democratic Convention? Nice how you get to have it both ways, there, HTML Malkin, with the meaning of “quite a bit” shifting depending on whether or not you’re getting what you want from the outside world.

the first thing the Editors thought of to bash me with is the fact that I’m mostly self-educated

Actually, what The Editors mocked you for was your use of an amusingly antique highbrow prose style and penchant for self-importantly referencing political philosophers in spite of being an autodidact; it seemed at the time as if you were insecure about your lack of a degree, and overcompensating for it, resulting in a cartoon version of academic writing— overly tweedy, high-pitched, self-important, and hilarious to the outside observer.

Journalism doesn’t equal academia, HTML, c’mon.
Academia is too big for the kind of generalizations you want to make here. Hell, each field in academia is too big. I could say you’re absolutely right about economics professors, and for the most part you are, but there are some who don’t lie and enable. Naomi Klein wouldn’t be able to write without them.
This, ultimately, has nothing to do with where one is or what they do, it’s about what kind of person they are.
You’re absolutely right that folk who got the war wrong and don’t accept the roots of their mistake need to be called out on it until they die, but you shouldn’t make it so easy for them to dismiss you, you have too much to add to the debate to let that happen.

What alec said.

And I suppose my substantive point here would be to ask how the standard progressive/working-class model of self-education (as documented relatively recently by jonathan Rose) fits with the modelling of ‘liberal elitism’. Because there’s a counter-narrative here, that of ‘class traitor’, that ought not to be discounted.

Where are you going to draw the line between the two? At what point does it tip over into Four Yorkshiremen? Because prolier-than-thou is a very dull game, and for every Nye Bevan there’s a Beatrice Webb.

You’re supposed to be a quality troll, Grandpaw. That was sad.
The high-traffic thing? Only connected in your mind.
Neoliberals do real damage. I’d say read The Shock Doctrine but you’ve probably already found a way to dismiss it.

To alec and HTML:

Whores are generally honest, hard-working people who provide a vital service to the community at large, whether or not the Powers That Be would like to admit it. Please do not compare the right-wing opinion mill to them.

And, amazingly, HTML was being too kind to ampersand inre: Homer Simpson.

But despite all that, I don’t believe that this is an example of how men’s oppression harms men. Rather, I think the sexism against men in these sitcoms are an inadvertent by-product of how men are advantaged in our society.

Oy.

This is about competing meanings of “elite”. The majority of arguments that I see on the net are over language and misidentified meanings of a common word or phrase. In the four threads that I’ve skimmed it seems to me that there are differing connotations of the word “elite”. The result being confusion and talking past one another and a whole bunch of heat with little to no light being shed.

The second most common reason that I see for these kinds of flame ups is not so much about content as tone. So, while I’m on your side in this HTML were I your editor I would have you rewrite the article and certain phrases would be crossed out, like “Is every manifestation of contempt for cultural and political elites anti-Semitic and rightwing in origin? Apparently it is”. I’m sorry but that one is going to have to go.

I hope this is taken ion the spirit in which it is given, friendly advice from a casual reader. I think I do understand the issues and frankly as far as the big picture goes I’m on HTML’s side here. I also want to thank Doc Amazing for his not inconsequential efforts in all this.

I know a number of latte-sipping elitists and none of them are Jewish.

I also know a number of people who enjoy various overpriced coffee drinks and none of them are elitists… they’re just people who enjoy food.

he actually questioned why people got into a lather over Pinochet? Egads. If he doesn’t know, I don’t think he can be helped…maybe he lives in a purely theoretical world far from the screams and cries of real victims.

to what they would actually be, were the poor and powerless to start particpating in these online debates. Just something to consider when you start waving around that unrepresented multitude as a brickbat in your personal online spats.

Lemme guess, you assume the debates would consist of the poor agreeing with you that sweatshops are awesome, and that the underdog corporations need protection from all powerful socialists like me.

that you unfailingly lump together war supporters and [neoliberals] in your tirades

Isn’t it funny, though, how often support of one coincides with support of the other? DeLong’s like the exception that proves the rule.

Ah, but wasn’t high traffic at SN one of your reasons for complaint when you were whining about not being invited to the Democratic Convention? Nice how you get to have it both ways, there, HTML Malkin, with the meaning of “quite a bit” shifting depending on whether or not you’re getting what you want from the outside world.

I know you’re really itching to bash me (already done privatizing that Amazon tribe’s resources and sent them to neoliberal re-education camp?), but this makes no sense. If you have a high traffic blog, then you influence the debate. I didn’t know this was a controversial point, but then any stretch to call me Malkin.

Actually, what The Editors mocked you for was your use of an amusingly antique highbrow prose style and penchant for self-importantly referencing political philosophers

And this was rich coming from someone who worshiped Michael “Even The Liberal” Kinsley and co-opted that idiot’s turgid prose style, though cleverly lightened with a few words and phrases and memes lifted from Fark and Something Awful. And when I did name drop, it was because ignorant people like the Editors bashed the same names, when they were right about crucial issues while he had completely fucked everything up. Nowadays, of course, he’s so touchy about his failings that he robots.txted his archive; and when he’s still stupid enough to paste some DeLong shit about Chomsky and people bust him on it, he assumes it MUST BE THE EVIL RETARDO IN DISGUISE!! As for my crime of using supposedly ten-dollar words, I remember the one he thought was so pompous and objectionable was “philistine,” which I used that one time, accurately, in describing him. I’ve since seen TBOGG, several of the ppl at LGM, and Atrios use the word. But then I’m sure they, too, are totally insecure.

The high-traffic thing? Only connected in your mind.

And by the fact that HTML Malkin brought it up twice: once before when complaining that high blog traffic hadn’t bought him a seat at the table, and then here, when asserting that high blog traffic automatically gives one a seat at the table.

All I’m sayin’ is that citing blog traffic numbers in a debate about anything other than blog traffic doesn’t lend a lot of weight to your argument, in my book, and perhaps people who don’t want to be mocked ought to learn not to break out blogging statistics in the middle of an online political debate. Particularly when they’re all adamant about how underrepresented Real Humanity is on the interwebs, no?

#

Whores are generally honest, hard-working people who provide a vital service to the community at large, whether or not the Powers That Be would like to admit it. Please do not compare the right-wing opinion mill to them.

Cheerfully conceded, although the idiom’s want of a word to imply someone who sucks cock joylessly to climb the corporate ladder is pretty telling.

And really, the same goes for people who joylessly engage in any kind of genital stimulation. I’ve always wanted to coin a parallel to ‘cocksucker’ to describe people like Larry Craig – ‘cuntfucker’, a joyless mercantile straight. Capitalism is all about sex, the terrible pecking-order sex we have (or pointedly don’t have) in high school. Sex lacks the pleasure and abandon of fuckin’ and the intimacy of makin’ love – that’s why it’s all they let us have.

(Forgive me for being incoherent and a little slow today – high off my ass.)

Brad — I know they aren’t all like that. If I’ve used too broad of a brush about academics, I apologise.

Because prolier-than-thou is a very dull game, and for every Nye Bevan there’s a Beatrice Webb.

True. That is something I have to guard against. Honestly, I don’t want to do any of this. The only thing I want to bash other (supposed) liberals for is if they were pro-War. The rest of this shit — let someone else do it. But I live around and work with a lot of poor people. White trash, like me ( that’s just my recent experience — I know that poor people are disproportionately minorities and I consider them a collective). But no matter their cultural faults, they’re poor and therefore should never be abandoned by the Left.

And none of this shit, as someone said above, matters as much as the war. That’s what I’d rather do: bash wingnuts and war-mongers. It’s more fun, I do it better, and it’s the most important subject there is. The Class War can come after the war is stopped. Yet, I can be provoked. And Farley’s comment fucking provoked me.

Well, of course it’s anti-Semitic. All bankers are Jews, after all.

You’re still not making any sense, grandpaw.
There’s no inconsistency. HTML was arguing S,N! is big enough to deserve a seat at the table, because high-traffic blogs have an actual impact on what people think.
But then HTML just said as much.

No fears, HTML. I didn’t really think you meant that, just one of those little but important qualifications that can disarm disingenuous critics.

LGM search with Pinochet as search term

The article in question. Why Pinochet?

Pinochet has always struck me as a kind of middling dictator, not worthy of the hatred that the left holds for him. From what I understand, Chile under Pinochet was somewhat less bloody than the Philippines under Marcos and Argentina under its military junta.

And this

Brief Thoughts on Slobodan
I did not support (and still do not support) the prosecution of Augusto Pinochet in a European court. It seems to me that some incentive must be left for dictators to peacefully and safely leave power, and as long as Pinochet isn’t dictator of Chile, I really don’t care all that much about him.

Strikes me as highly pragmatic, more than I care for.

1. Atheist: I’m not Elitist enough to know how to quote (lol) but your opinion of the uber-importance of College Degrees is dead on the money. I’ve worked with people with Master’s Degrees who I wouldn’t let watch my house or walk my dog. Outside of their area of specialty (and sometimes even in their sphere) they are absolute idiots on a Biblical scale. Far too much value is put on completion of a Degree than actual competence in your chosen line of work.

2. Anti-Semitism is getting to be a tired complaint, and is the last refuge for someone who has no fucking argument other than pointing their fingers at others. I’m sick of fucking hearing about it to be honest, unless it is REAL and QUANTIFIABLE.

3. I agree that the salary a Professor may make does not necessarily make him/her Elitist, at least when you consider that there are lots of Blue Collar jobs (Firefighter, Police officer) that can make as much and even more than a Professor. But the very nature of being a Professor is to be an Elitist, that’s the fucking point of being one. It certainly isn’t to clean up financially, if that was their goal they would go into the Private Sector. Sure the extra time off is an allure, but it is the admiration and respect that you (should, but not always actually get, I admit) receive for being one. Not only are you (the metaphorical you I remind everyone, I don’t mean a specific person) part of the Elite, but you actually aid in the formation of the Elite’s next generation through your teaching. (Obviously, I refer to the “Top Schools” here, not just any run of the mill University or College.) Another fringe benefit is that you can grade that Elite. Wouldn’t you have loved to be one of Shrub’s Profs at Yale? Imagine the Semester’s worth of intellectual sodomy that would be your joy to give onto him for being such a dimwitted fuck of a tool. People could call me whatever they wanted and I’d go home laughing. 🙂

4. Yes, Starbuck’s is everywhere, there are two in my shitty little burg. It’s the same coffee made of the same beams, but the vibe is TOTALLY different in a Starbuck’s in Seattle or San Francisco or NY or Boston than it is in my town or in Butte, Montana, for instance. WAY different (and don’t get me wrong, I prefer the intellectual/artistic vibe far more than the “This shit has a lot of caffeine to keep me awake! Imagine how many hours of overtime I can work at the plant now!”). Plus, Elitists will move out into the sticks on occasion, they don’t all necessarily want to live in the City.

5. Do any of you have any idea about what happens on Coffee Plantations? They make Nike look fucking humane. Wal-Mart is ol’ St. Nick compared to them. A lot of the blogosphere (at least the meat eaters among them) questioned their responsibility for the horrid conditions in Slaughterhouses, as they should have (and me too). I know cows are cool and stuff, and I want stiff penalties for those who willfully abuse them, but maybe you all (because I never drink coffee, mostly because of the taste and expense, but also for the humanitarian angle) should think of the horrid treatment of human beings, even though they are not in the “creative class”. I don’t know, but yelling about racism and anti-semitism while drinking the figurative blood of Central and South American children is a bit much. I hope the steamed milk takes away the salty taste of the blood.

IMHO

Jackson

Not crazy about how I worded point four, it seems insulting to rural people, and since as Foxworthy says “I are one”, I should have used a different example.

Jackson

Lemme guess

No, I do not let you guess, that is the point. Notice how I didn’t make any assumptions about what the underrepresented might ask for? And that I didn’t wave them around like a cheap baton in support of my argument?

“this was rich coming from someone who worshiped Michael “Even The Liberal” Kinsley”

I’m pretty sure you’ve got to have a firm idea of who a person is without Googling before you can “worship” him, Mr. Simultaneous Strawman And Namedrop.

Now, be a good little boy and go highlight the section of my post where I accused you of abusing the thesaurus, then copy and paste it back so we can all see where this “ten-dollar-words” idea you’re responding to came from.

It’s not the long words, HTML Malkin (compare), it’s your long-winded “please-please-please-consider-me-smart” deployment of words that we find amusing. To be fair, it’s funny when VD Hanson or George Will do it, too, but come on, we all expect them to lack self-awareness.

Oh, and sweet baby not-Jesus, lose the narcissistic paranoia about The Poor Man, you pathetic little wretch. Blog admins don’t tell Google not to index their entire blogs just to prevent you and your ilk from wasting your days dredging up posts that only you will consider contradictory or embarrassing, blog admins do it because Google’s spider cripples their site DB when it starts hitting the archive table.

Hunter
But the very nature of being a Professor is to be an Elitist, that’s the fucking point of being one.

The genius of the rightwing meme in question is that it displaces working class antagonisms from the true elites (the one to two percent who actually own this country) onto the intellectual elite and adds a nice touch of homophobia for free.

Notice how I didn’t make any assumptions about what the underrepresented might ask for?

You’ve done it before. I was trusting you to be consistent.

I’m pretty sure you’ve got to have a firm idea of who a person is without Googling before you can “worship” him, Mr. Simultaneous Strawman And Namedrop.

Hey, I wasn’t the one who’d go on and on about Kinsley’s “awesome kung-fu.” Nor did I adopt his Sensible Centrist/Classic TNR schtick wholesale. I know who did, though.

Now, be a good little boy and go highlight the section of my post where I accused you of abusing the thesaurus, then copy and paste it back so we can all see where this “ten-dollar-words” idea you’re responding to came from.

Oh, so you’re not, actually, talking about the facts of the flame war? ‘Cause what I said happened really happened that way.

lose the narcissistic paranoia about The Poor Man, you pathetic little wretch

Right, because I’m the one patrolling my own threads looking out for anyone who defends Chomsky so I can accuse them of being HTML’s sockpuppet, even though I know that IP couldn’t possibly be his.

But speaking of pathetic wretches, shouldn’t you be renewing your subscription to The Economist, or did you let it expire after McArdle quit writing for them?

forgive me for I’m nobody and a lot of this shit is incestuous in-house bitchfesting and way over my head but jesus some of you folks here and in the thread over at LGM type like a bunch of stuffed ivory tower shirts.

seriously, you might want to step away a few feet from the mirror on the wall.

The genius of the rightwing meme in question is that it displaces working class antagonisms from the true elites (the one to two percent who actually own this country) onto the intellectual elite

Gah! But the intellectual elite does the true elite’s dirty work! Ergo, a sizable amount of the intellectual elite *deserves* antagonism!

Five — I admit to an obsessive vendetta with pundits and bloggers who were pro-Iraq War for any amount of time. I’ll never forgive it, never tire of pointing out the blood on their hands. And it’s especially galling to see these ppl with such shitty instincts advance in the field.

Hell yes. It’s incredibly fucking angering, to see people sign on to foreign policy that is not only immoral, dangerous, and horrifically expensive, but also something they would never support if they had to do the slightest amount of actual work on it. Then, to see that almost no-one remembers that they were wrong for years upon years, and that they advance in their fields– that just takes the motherfucking cake doesn’t it?

I really, really know what you mean.

seriously, you might want to step away a few feet from the mirror on the wall.

There are two types of animals: those who will attempt to kill a mirror and those who will attempt to fuck it.

Humans alone belong to both categories.

Grandpaw said,

June 15, 2008 at 5:26

Dude, has it ever occurred to you that you have an incredibly severe, chronic case of this?

There are two types of animals: those who will attempt to kill a mirror and those who will attempt to fuck it.

Humans alone belong to both categories.

Lol. Priceless. Humans are awesome! P

brad, on reflection, you’re right in that all that can be inferred by by the context surrounding HTML Malkin’s two invocations of blog traffic is that he considers himself to have an “influence— and therefore … a responsibility regarding— the Great Debate.”

The only contradiction is an imagined one, in that I’ve been imagining HTML Malkin to be the sort of person who is angered by his inability to influence this Great Debate, which is Capitalized because It Is so Important that It is become a Proper Noun (do you see where I’m coming from when I say his prose deserves to be mocked? And it makes things even worse if, as I suspect, he’s deliberately referencing a political philosopher by using The Capital Letters).

So my apologies for simply assuming HTMLM considers himself powerless, at least relative to the opinionists he criticizes.

I won’t back down, however, from my assertion that he deserves to be made fun of for using blogging statistics in the debate.

I’m sorry Grandpaw, I couldn’t eat another bite.

That, HTML, is where you’re wrong.
Business schools and law schools and medical schools and economics departments may still get all the attention, but most of academia has nothing to do with the interests of the economic elite, which is why there’s so little money in it.
If anything, developing one’s capacity to reason, via whatever means, is not something the economic elite want in anyone unwilling to seek a drop of their wealth. Look at how poorly the vast majority of Bush’s policies have done with academics.

#

Gah! But the intellectual elite does the true elite’s dirty work! Ergo, a sizable amount of the intellectual elite *deserves* antagonism!

The intellectual elite, such as it is, putters around in the liberal arts exercising little to no substantial political influence. ‘Intellectual elite’ is a contradiction in terms in the United States; the way it gets used it refers to the section of the middle class that seeks to emulate their intellectual betters (a category I identify pretty strongly with, because I don’t exactly look for direction from Christ), and very few of those support the war.

The closest they even got was that dark time in 2004 when it was fashionable to support the war in theory but oppose it in practice. Most of us are now entirely comfortable with the idea that the war was wrong from the outset, and if you look at the latte-sippers they’re for the most part a little embarassed about the whole experience.

Basically, what we have is two groups of people: an actual intelligensia (who are not an elite in this country or any other third-world country) and a non-intellectual elite. The non-intellectual elite pretty violently and immediately blames all of the country’s problem on the decadent queer latte drinkers, a reflexive condemnation they’ve grown used to the middlebrow newspapers and faux-lowbrow culture warriors parroting.

There are in fact a number of intellectual elitists who blessed and sometimes still bless the war – in the United Kingdom. Compare the influence and power wielded by, say, Dawkins and PZM – or, for that matter, Hitchens and Finkelstein.

The right-wing elitists who fuck up this country, and the right-wing would-be elitists who pretend to be intelligent in reflexively backing the man in power, are all reprehensible. The college professors who accepted the premises on which the war was waged are as numerous and influential as the realist policy wonks who opposed the war from the get-go – that is, neither at all.

In short, when you discuss ‘the intellectual elite’, you’re speaking of an extremely small population in the US. The actual opinion-formers are deliberately low-brow, your Rush Limbaughs and your Chris Matthewses. America has public voices, not public minds, and if you’re paid to sound pretty on the radio/TV/page in this country, you’d better be damned sure you’ll never have any qualms about blessing whatever Big Ol’ Dick is up to now.

The people who would form an intellectual elite in America were opposed to the war at least lukewarmly in its formative stages and are dead-set against it now. The worst thing you can say of them is that some voted for Nader in 2000 – they for damned sure didn’t in 2004.

Okay, now you’ve gone off the deep end. I capitalized Great Debate because, you know, I was just saying that the war issue was the most important issue EVAR.

And if I had meant it as a reference, just to be ostentatious, wouldn’t I have name-dropped the source? Because I’m a name-dropping fraud, right?

Your trolling’s for shit, robotslave. At least Gary is funny in a haha pathetic way. You’re just tiresome.

Oops. I was wrong, grandpaw, you’re not a quality troll at all. You just have a veneer of education.
Those kinds of semantic games are too boring to merit counter-argument.

I dunno – I haven’t been following you all. But my spouse let the channel changer linger on the Porno Movie award show in Vegas, and we heard the incredible line from one of the honorees “I don’t know about you, but sometimes it sucks to take a load in the face.” Then there was something about thanking the dedicated production assistants who offer Babywipes at critical moments..

Hey!!! It’s your very own Alternate Universe!!!!! Enjoy!!!

Okay, look at the gist of this post on Irving Kristol.

Now consider that the New Class intellectuals *he* was opposing — New Deal products — ultimately went extinct and were replaced by wingnuts like himself and neoliberals like DeLong. Fink Tanks are manned by academics; and even the “liberal” ones, like Brookings, live to provide the true elite with intellectual cover. Alec, stop getting hung up on the *quality* of their intellect. Obviously, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about their near-monopoly on opinion, where they come from, their general attitude, their skills at sophistry and as publicists.

I honestly don’t see how what I’m saying is very different from what Taibbi’s saying.

is grandpaw the aggrieved party? i ask because there’s another grandpappy that visits here but i think he spells his name “grampaw”

But HTML, just because right wingers seek the “verification” of academic “experts” doesn’t make that the point or nature of academia. Besides which, most of the type you’re talking about are the ones who are drummed out for mediocrity and/or want more money for their amazing selves.
I’m not saying yay academia, or denying that large portions of it function as factories for higher-end service industry position candidates. It also has a tendency to waste an extraordinary amount of talent and reward the wrong people. But sophists, to be pompous in my own way, were a huge part of why the Academy was founded in the first place. That they have crept into it doesn’t mean the endeavor is a total failure.

But no matter their cultural faults, they’re poor and therefore should never be abandoned by the Left.

Understood. So, what do you do if you get called a class traitor, or of having airs above your station? Insert the term you prefer: ‘uppity’ is racially coded in the US, but it fits the bill. Is it condescending to critique false consciousness — if we’re going to be all Althusserian about it? I’m pragmatic about a politics that stuffs people’s mouths with dollar bills to stop them talking about those damn you-know-whats, but it’s not comforting.

In certain parts of the UK, there is a very thin line between voting Labour and voting BNP. That’s populism’s tightrope, and it’s why the left has generally succeeded by balancing between the unions and the Fabians, the jagged-edges of working-class politics and the varnished tables of genteel middle-class liberalism.

(This is at a distance from the Farley spat, which, frankly, doesn’t interest me in the slightest.)

atheist:

Look not into the abyss.

He who lives in a glass house.

etc.

Personally, yes, I have considered my posting a problem, and I’ve made my peace with it, as with many of my other foibles. I do take measures to make sure I don’t overindulge, but I still very much enjoy arguing with people on the internet who are not used to being argued with (used to name calling and ranting, sure, but not to being argued with. Sycophantic politics blogs are excellent for this sort of thing, btw).

I’ve noticed, though, that this thread has gotten to the point where nobody’s bothering to argue the points I brought up any further, and HTMLM has retreated into that disturbing mist of his where evil sysadmins are out to get him and his IP tokens, he’s sinking into full-on secret-identities fever, having decided I once went on about somebody’s “kung fu,” apparently under an alias, and he’s hoping that flinging the “neoliberal” label at me hard enough will make my arguments go away (it’s a given that *I’ll* go away sooner or later; the larger problem is getting rid of those pesky arguments).

I think it’s probably best to let him go to bed and get some rest. I’m sure he’ll have a nice fresh load of bombast for me to pick apart the next time I feel like indulging myself. He, after all, indulges his peculiar urge a lot more frequently, and at greater length, than I indulge mine.

Fink Tanks are manned by academics; and even the “liberal” ones, like Brookings, live to provide the true elite with intellectual cover.
The problem here is that think tanks exist to pull in people with decent rhetorical slugging abilities, or sometimes just useful doctrinaires who failed at politics. There’s real consequences in the academy for being a half-cocked moron; for think tanks, if anything, fucking the rhetorical pooch with enough gusto is a sign of strength.

Alec, stop getting hung up on the *quality* of their intellect.
‘Intellectual’ refers to a certain necessary ability. The pretense think-tankers engage in no more makes them intellectuals than putting on a fuku would make me Sailor Moon. There’s a fundamental difference between really, really wanting to be an intellectual – and being accepted by a depraved system as an intellectual – and being one.

Obviously, that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about their near-monopoly on opinion, where they come from, their general attitude, their skills at sophistry and as publicists.
The sophists-publicists are the GOPnik media personalities. Brookingsites and other parasites simply provide them with ammunition – and that is their only job. They don’t actually have any intellectual vocation beyond reloading the right-wing piss cannon. When you look at the comparable infrastructure of the left, the people providing fodder for the liberal and left-wing public personalities are comics, journalists, and other media-workers.

There is an intellectual class in this country, and a very few of them are indeed conservative. However, for the fortunate sons who would form part of the intelligentsia in a normal country, jumping into a fellowship and acting as a piss-boy for freaks like Limbaugh is far, far easier and more profitable (as well as many times less risky) than going into actual scholarship.

The last intellectual elites were on their way out in the Johnson administration, as you note. But the right wing culture still hinges on them existing, stalking bureaucracies, making average people’s lives more difficult. This is what comes into play when people start talking about latte-sippers and elitists and moonbats. (Besides, you know, limp-wristed queers – I don’t think I’ve heard any serious acknowledgement that ‘latte’ is pretty much right-wing condescension for ‘homo’, and is part and parcel with the general narrative of faggot Dem versus cowboy GOP that plays out every general election.)

Stop treating Kristol as an intellectual figure. He’s not; we can’t defeat the likes of him by proving him wrong. Being wrong just makes them stronger; it lets them take their followers aside and rewrite reality, because it’s either that or accept that the lefty pantywaists are right.

Incidentally, as we have this debate the fascist throwbacks in talk radio are calling for Guantanamo inmates to be executed as a show of spite to the horrible islamist Supreme Court, and perhaps also to the Jihadis that wrote that damned constitution.

We do, in fact, live in a world where you can say shit like that without being exiled from polite society. A little snark would be nice, or failing that enough acid to last the next few years.

Okay, chiming in again to say that I’ve completely changed my opinion from a few hours ago. People who are feeling wounded by the wording of a comment on class issues and refusing to consider the content at all are engaging in self-centered-universe whinging, and should be yelled at until they stop. Whether this is productive or not is beside the point. Privileging your feelings over the fact that there are kids in this country who have little hope of graduating from high school, let alone going to college, is just a little self-important, to put it lightly. I’m sure this example could be better, but I’m not really well-equipped to talk about class issues, whatever. My point is, fuck you, and fuck me, too. We could all afford to take ourselves a bit less seriously, and just because someone calls us names, doesn’t mean they don’t have something worthwhile to say. Or even that they’re wrong to call us names, at that. Who knows.

Also, this post is directed at no one here, in particular. Mostly at the all-too-common “you called me X and I didn’t like it and so I’ll never link to you again ever never 4evar” phenomenon. A prime example is over at LGM where the ostensible current topic, Rob Farley himself, finally after much interpreting by 3rd parties admitted that yes, he may have drawn with too broad a brush, but since HTML said mean things about him he will never link to Sadly, No again, ever never 4evar!! so there. Also, the civility-fetish dude in the comments over there was a bit offputting. Still, some posters did end up talking about class analysis, and acknowledged that many parts of the US population are underrepresented on the intarwebs. This is the important stuff that people should be talking about (and doing shit about) – the petulance is just noise.

You wrote “the neoliberal-wingnut consensus on economics and foreign policy ” this implies that you believe 1) that there is a neoliberal-wingnut consensus on economics and 2) that there is a neloliberal-wingnut consensus on foreign policy.

Both opinions are totally false, but the second is clearly insane.

I don’t know how you managed to get so confused about Brad DeLong who is neither clueless nor callous on class issues. He’s the guy who told me that in 1992 a plurality of Americans supported “increased taxes on the rich to fund waste fraud and abuse” (It’s a Clinton campaign internal stupid).

I personally got my often stated enthusiasm for class war http://tinyurl.com/6evnvb from Brad DeLong (that day).
I don’t mean a shooting war, the rich have too much to lose to actually fight a class war with guns instead of money. I just mean that I think it would be an excellent idea to soak the rich.

I assume that you believe that no one who cares about US workers would be for free trade. Brad is for free trade and cares about US workers. However, Brad also cares about foreign workers. I think that it is a major rhetorical error to write “such people who regard their poor countymenwith only a bit more humanity than Trevelyan and Lord John Russell had for the Irish.”

Lord John Russell and Trevelyan were English (I’m not sure exactly which Tevelyan you have in mind but Wikipedia assures me that it is a Cornish surname). Thus theie indifference to the Irish had something to do with not caring about people of a different ethnicity and (really they would have admitted it to themselves) a whole different country. You when adding the word “countrymen” show that you are not indifferent to nationality. — Not necessarily xenophobic, but put the interests of a US worker somewhat above that of a foreign worker. This is normal. The alternative is so far left that it is unmentionable in polite society. Brad DeLong is that far left (so am I).

He hasn’t said it recently, but I personally have no doubt that he still believes that workers of all countries should unite (and work for free trade and progressive income taxation). I don’t see how you got the idea that he agrees with wingnuts on anything.

Hey Mencken- you know what makes the phrase “latte-sipping elitist” right-wing? The substitution of cultural issues for economic issues. You oppose the banking and economic elites – a sound policy. What the fuck do lattes have to do with it, other than to cover-over economic concerns with cultural resentments? The whole fucking point of phrases like that are not to mobilize the people , but to redirect their anger towards people like the Jews, the intellectuals, the gays, the blacks, the out-group-of-the-week. These phrases have never been used otherwise. Hit the banks and the economic elites as much as you can – but for god’s sake do it right! And Brad DeLong is a smart guy – he’s not just a shill for the banking industry. If he was, he’d be in favor of a full-on hand out for the capitalists but he’s not, and you need to accept that smart people can disagree on what is possible in a capitalist system. Good christ – we don;t have enough worries right now we have to be dealing with this shit?

Robert, stop. It’s nice that you’re so loyal to DeLong, but you know exactly what I’m talking about. Anyone can read a free trade thread over there and see exactly what I’m talking about.

And don’t be a pedant about how the leaders and economists of GB rationalized Irish misery. Yes, the Irish were a different ethnic group; however, this is irrelevant to the nationality issue because the English were responbile for them. This is rather different than if they had been blase’ about the plight of, let us say, Germans — Trevelyan and Russell were not German *citizens* or overlords, had no political responsibility to or for Germany. Which is not to say — to use DeLong’s favored fallacy of undistributed middle — that as humans, they should not have cared about the suffering of Germans or indeed the people of any other nation. But that is very different from *responsibility*. Obviously, there is a heirarchy for responsible people to follow. At any rate, the Irish misery was rationalized by these people as much if not more on the grounds of “economic law” (sound familiar?) as on grounds of racism.

Brad DeLong is that far left (so am I).

Economic libertarian is not synoymous with “that far left.”

the phrase “latte-sipping elitist” right-wing? The substitution of cultural issues for economic issues. You oppose the banking and economic elites – a sound policy.

Fine. Money-grubbing elitist. Greedy elitist. How does this change things? See what I mean? Both of these phrases *can* convey anti-semitism. But that doesn’t make them inherently anti-Semitic any more than “latte-sipping elitists” is inherently anti-Semitic. It’s right to watch out for real anti-Semitism. It’s not right to throw around blanket accusations.

I’m not saying Brad DeLong is wholly awful. On the contrary he’s very smart and says a lot of good things when he talks about wingnuts. But poor Americans are right to hate him and people like him, because his work is to rationalize/apologise for the Wealthy Criminal Class making the poor poorer in a absolutely evil race to the bottom. DeLong proceeds from the assumption that greed really is good, and that the only thing to do about it is to bump up the tax rates a little and have the government pay for retraining former factory workers to be retail slaves. Poor people used to be able to count on intellectuals like DeLong to work as a brake against the Gilded Age mentality of the wingnuts. Instead he’s enabled them. On economics, DeLong is to the right of Richard Nixon — and to add insult to injury, he calls himself a “social democrat”, as if he’d ever even dream of being so radical as to adopt a Scandinavian platform (the people who do dream of a Scandinavian style welfare state, on the other hand, DeLong smears as outright communists). He wonders why real social democrats like Barbara Ehrenreich lost faith in the Democratic Party, utterly unconscious to the fact that it was DeLong’s favored policies in the 90s of NAFTA and Welfare reform and all that neoliberal, DLC, Clintonoid crap that kicked the poor in the teeth so hard that it would have been stupid for them *not* to lose faith.

But the very nature of being a Professor is to be an Elitist, that’s the fucking point of being one.

Pig’s fat arse, to use the local vernacular. Jackson Hunter, I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with these supposed elites, but from my experience, what leads people into the academic track is an unwholesome delight in things like Riemannian geometry or simulated annealing, not the desire to sip lattes and boss around Teh Little People.

But then, my experience came in the maths department. I’ve also got some knowledge of life in the physics, computer science, geology, botany, chemistry, and philosophy departments, just through friends, and I can tell you it’s pretty much the same there: folks who want to Kontrrrol Ze Vurld don’t wander into the hallowed halls of academe, they wangle a job in the gubmint or with the corp-rats, because that’s where the power is, friend. The stereotype of the Oxford don wandering around a book-cluttered study wearing fingerless gloves and being adorably absent-minded is far closer to reality than your stereotype.

And HTML: yes, sadly, the world sees possession of a degree as a valuable thing, while self-induced learning is less valued. The reason is probably that a degree is measurable, while knowledge and understanding are, if not measurable, at least time-consuming to assess. And many kids go into the university degree mill with no clear idea of what they want or what they’re doing, focus solely on passing exams, and emerge at the other end with a piece of paper and, mostly, still bugger-all understanding of the world.

If I were Emperor Of The Universe, I’d model education more along the lines described in Rite of Passage: intensive, guided by tutors, one-on-one, and so forth. Trying to foster learning and thinking, rather than forcing ‘facts’ down the throats of a room full of kids so they can regurgitate on command.

Gah! But the intellectual elite does the true elite’s dirty work! Ergo, a sizable amount of the intellectual elite *deserves* antagonism!

Well, if by ‘intellectual elite’ you mean the few pundits who do that, then yes. If, of course, by ‘intellectual elite’ you mean everyone with a degree, especially anyone who teaches in a university, then no. No, they don’t. They neither do the dirty work nor deserve antagonism. A sizeable amount of the university population are there simply because they’re passionate about some arcane fragment of the world and want to spend their lives investigating it.

a different brad said,
June 15, 2008 at 7:02

What ADB said. With knobs on.

If I were Emperor Of The Universe, I’d model education more along the lines described in Rite of Passage: intensive, guided by tutors, one-on-one, and so forth. Trying to foster learning and thinking
Ain’t that the Oxbridge system?

Pig’s fat arse, to use the local vernacular. Jackson Hunter, I don’t know how much experience you’ve had with these supposed elites, but from my experience, what leads people into the academic track is an unwholesome delight in things like Riemannian geometry or simulated annealing, not the desire to sip lattes and boss around Teh Little People.

It’s probably wise not to generalize about these things as there certainly are elitists and snobs in academia. Sounds to me like Jackson Hunter has some first hand experience of this. Perhaps it depends on the department you’re in. My sister had to kiss the butts of a number of egocentric assholes – to put it politely – in the political science department to get her doctorate. Her true mentors are great individuals, but others who aren’t worthy went through her work with a fine tooth comb to ensure she’d quoted or cited them sufficiently.

Your statement about government reveals a lack of knowledge of how the civil service works. Many academics who end up working for government (scientists, economists, social policy analysts, statisticians, to name a few) aren’t in powerful positions and they’re certainly not making big bucks.

Hey Mencken- you know what makes the phrase “latte-sipping elitist” right-wing? The substitution of cultural issues for economic issues. You oppose the banking and economic elites – a sound policy. What the fuck do lattes have to do with it, other than to cover-over economic concerns with cultural resentments? The whole fucking point of phrases like that are not to mobilize the people , but to redirect their anger towards people like the Jews, the intellectuals, the gays, the blacks, the out-group-of-the-week. These phrases have never been used otherwise. Hit the banks and the economic elites as much as you can – but for god’s sake do it right!
Unreservedly agree.

And Brad DeLong is a smart guy – he’s not just a shill for the banking industry. If he was, he’d be in favor of a full-on hand out for the capitalists but he’s not,
Reserved disagreement.

and you need to accept that smart people can disagree on what is possible in a capitalist system. Good christ – we don;t have enough worries right now we have to be dealing with this shit?
Yeah, sorta, kinda. As long as we bear in mind that we’re all on the same side (or supposed to be, anyway) I don’t see this getting too terrible. As the prior commenter said, there’s no sense getting into a ZOMG NO MORE LINX 4EVA huff about it (I was a lot more annoyed at HTML yesterday and as far as it got was ‘I respectfully disagree’).

I think the attitude you (HTML Mencken) hold, along with a willingness to pin the problems of the country on earnest scholarship, is a horribly negative thing, but my beef is more with the idea than with you for holding it in reasonably good faith.

The left’s greatest enemy has always been factionalism. Unfortunately, the US lacks a parliamentary system in which those differences can be expressed, so . . .

At any rate, the Irish misery was rationalized by these people as much if not more on the grounds of “economic law” (sound familiar?) as on grounds of racism.

And the misery wasn’t just something that befell the Irish – the same dogmatic insistence on free trade and a destruction of the previously-existing charitable relief structure wound up turning a dry year in India and a flood in China into full-blown famines as well. The British Empire is a textbook example of free-market capitalism working spectacularly for a small minority of people in a small minority of places, and if you added up all of its victims you’d wind up with a sum to beggar Hitler, Stalin, and Mao put together – but no one man (or woman, want as we might to blame Victoria) can bear the onus for them. We like to blame democides on a single bad apple, but it’s bureaucrats failing to regard human compassion before statutory duty that ultimately does us in.

And really, the people who sold the grain of Ireland, India, and China (and, although under a different specific regime, in Scandinavia and the Ukraine) have even less to acquit them than the underlings of the great dictators of the 20th century – for it wasn’t like the liberals were in the business of having truculent underlings shot.

Geez, I’m tired just reading this thread. That’s a lot of words in some interesting positions with one another. But the usual advice about finding yourself in over your head probably applies – start at the beginning (I’m taking a bigger chunk of the Farley piece for context):

Alliances with people who view your destruction as a stepping stone to Armageddon and who, moreover, hate everything else that you represent (loathing of “latte sipping elitist intellectuals” is recognizable as anti-semitism to anyone with eyes open) will not, in the fullness of time, prove sensible.

You know what? Fuck that with a Grande Venti Soy Madagascar sugar fruit bat in a reusable thermal mug. That line is fucking stupid. I tried to think of ways to tear it down, but really, there’s no point. When Jerry Falwell is crowned Lord Shepherd over the Great American Theocracy, it’s not the fucking indie film producers that are going to be the target of the pogroms. It’s the muslims and the mexicans.

Associating a small group with the cause of all a person’s disappointments is a tool. Sure it’s an ugly malignant tool, but that’s all it is. That’s why you don’t see more murdered civil servants, or more post offices on fire. Because it’s hard to de-humanize someone to the needed degree using this one tool alone. You need it to be backed by hate.

So all you wanking liberals, take your fucking latte, wrap it nicely in your fucking advanced liberal arts degrees, and then fold it until it’s all sharp corners… Geez, I’m sure you know some gay people who were raised in very conservative small towns, or who live there still. Maybe you can talk to some of your colored friend who know someone in prison, or the illegal immigrant that cleans the office. Until you’ve been the victim of some real discrimination, don’t go fucking telling us that you’re the jews of liberal evangelical fascism.

V. Claude to Eustace.

Yes, we are fighting at last, it appears. This morning as usual,
Murray, as usual, in hand, I enter the Caffe Nuovo;
Seating myself with a sense as it were of a change in the weather,
Not understanding, however, but thinking mostly of Murray,
And, for to-day is their day, of the Campidoglio Marbles;
Caffe-latte! I call to the waiter,–and Non c’e latte,
This is the answer he makes me, and this is the sign of a battle.

– Arthur Hugh Clough

It seems to me that you are conflating a number of different terms — something the rightwing is very good at achieving.

Is elitism the same as intellectualism? By definition, No. Traditionally, elitism is the desire to maintain a particular social hierarchy in which class remains immutable. Intellectualism is the movement to place reason and knowledge above other concerns. Historically, the two concepts often intersect, ie. Edmund Burke, Thomas Hobbes, et al.

Within our contemporary lexicon, the terms elitist and intellectual have been recontextualized, or possibly redefined, to suggest anything which is opposed to the status quo, or questions traditional assumptions. So, for instance, to question America’s role as a benevolent force in the world is to question the culturally accepted truth of American exceptionalism, and will, today, cause one to be labeled as both an intellectual and an elitist. One becomes an intellectual, within this lexicon, by questioning accepted truth; one becomes an elitist by disagreeing with the majority who accept the cultural truth.

Terms such as elitist and intellectual as, as I have suggested, somewhat fluid; however, a term such as anti-semitism is less so. as others have pointed out, anti-semitism can be applied to any action or philosophy which negatively markss any semitic people, However, for historical reasons, anti-semitism is generally accepted to be those things which discriminate or cast dispersions on those of Jewish dissent or faith.

To suggest that by engaging in intellectualism, or elitism, as defined by the cultural lexicon, is to engage in anti-semitism is to suggest that that those of the Jewish faith or decent occupy some special area of cultural truth. Thus, by leveling this very claim we define Jews as a cultural symbol, rather than a diverse group of people. By doing so, we are performing an act of anti-semitism within the argument itself. For we are dehumanizing a group of people in order to mold them into a cultural symbol.

There seem to be a number of people in this thread who believe that intellectual pursuits — particularly academic pursuits — are far removed from the ‘real world’. While there may be some direct removal, the importance of theory should never be discounted. Indirectly theory filters down to the real world on a regular basis: neo-liberal and ‘free trade’ economics began as a theory at U of C; Islamism began as a theory in the 19th Century, and Representative Democracy began as a set of theories by Locke and others, I would, personally, go so far as to argue that one of the failing or contemporary progressivism has been its lack of cohesive economic and political theories. Nonetheless, not all theories are good or viable, and this is why they must be tested and conflicted with other ideas, in order to arrive at a more coherent synthesis.

BTW, I prefer cappuccinos or black coffee over lattes — not sure what that says. . . .

Fine. Money-grubbing elitist. Greedy elitist. How does this change things?

Those two don’t call upon conformity and culture war like “latte-sipping”. I have no idea where Farley got the antisemitism — I have lots of Jewish friends who throw around horrible antisemitic jokes and I’ve never heard one about a latte. But you’re still wrong that that kind of populist rhetoric will get you anywhere.

I truly believe you will never assemble a progressive coalition while running against the decadent left in their coastal enclaves and the scary black people with their crunk music in the inner cities.

Didn’t Trotsky and Stalin already have this debate? Who won?

Actually, what The Editors mocked you for was your use of an amusingly antique highbrow prose style and penchant for self-importantly referencing political philosophers in spite of being an autodidact; it seemed at the time as if you were insecure about your lack of a degree, and overcompensating for it, resulting in a cartoon version of academic writing— overly tweedy, high-pitched, self-important, and hilarious to the outside observer.

Well, this should be easy enough to check:

I’ve met many people who are very intelligent, well-read, competent, respected and so on, and none of them have ever felt the need to respond to an off-handed comment about a third party (and was it the “autodidact” which did it? Because Mr. Vidal is without question the autodidact’s autodidact)

1. Outside of tweedy “pompous professor” characters in very broad film comedies, nobody has ever actually called anyone a “philistine”. That was a dead give-away.

Hmm. No, grandpaw, I’m a-gonna have to conclude that you’re utterly full of shit and a disingenuous asshole, just like your buddy the Editors. It seems pretty clear he wanted to wave around his formal education “like a cheap baton” and hope that good ol’ intimidation did the trick to keep some uppity cracker from thinking that he had a right to challenge his betters just because he read some book. Much like how Jeffro Goldstein called HTML – if I recall correctly – “a hick with a library card”. Translation: what you know ain’t shit unless you were instructed by an accredited professional in an overpriced classroom.

So go fuck off and get back to cracking jokes with Crazy Andy about ZMag and everyone to Bill Clinton’s left.

What boobyp said.

Part of what HTML’s channeling is the well-worn radical critique of liberals, social democrats, etc. Which is fine, I suppose, if that’s what floats your boat. What this has to do with my profession is, frankly, a bit confusing. But whatever.

Another part of HTML is channeling an important achievement of the post-war American conservative movement: the cultural redefinition of “elite” as “eggheads” and “college professors” rather than an economic class. There was more than a little anti-semitism at stake in all this, but that’s really a distraction from the more basic issue: if you choose to define “elite” this way than you’re playing into the hands of a significant conservative strategy for demobilizing progressive economic policies.

Just to be inflammatory:

1) Computer programmers and other white-collar professionals are “elites,” even if they’ve finally had the same K/L ratios that have hurt the manufacturing sector bite them too;
2) DeLong’s standard answer, IIRC, to the distributional effects of trade is trade adjustment programs–which is basically what any lefty economist who believes in open trade advocates. The problem is that these programs almost never get implemented.

Can we point out the elephant in the room, that many of the people who snipe about intellectual elitism are damn fools? It’s ultimately the fault of a society that does not respect “book smarts,” that does its damndest to keep the masses ignorant so they’ll continue doing shit jobs for a pittance, but the only people I ever hear say things like “a college education is worthless” are people who worship the almighty dollar over any sort of knowledge, be it neurobiology or the complex workings of machinery. Our assembly line culture has made knowing anything outside one’s jurisdiction unnecessary and suspect.

Know your place, don’t ask questions, and for god’s sake, don’t be smarter than me, you Starbucks-going, Whole Foods-shopping, Prius-driving faggot.

HTML: two things. First, with respect to this: I admit to an obsessive vendetta with pundits and bloggers who were pro-Iraq War for any amount of time. (which is a fair enough impulse). Rob, Scott and I were not blogging until late 2003, but I can certainly assure you that at no point did Rob, or any of us, ever come close to waivering in our convictions that this war was a terrible idea. So you’ve mischaracterized Rob’s position here on the stength of a misreading of a post the coalition he finds himself in. He’s less anti-war in general than you (or I) but he certainly never came close to supporting this clusterfuck.

Second: Do you see any contradiction whatsoever between writing this:

When I hear the phrase “latte-sipping elitist,” I think of several things. Culturally, I think of scenesters or scenester wannabes, arbiters of taste, awful people very much on the make, navel-gazing yuppie scum… Fuck it; I could go on and on, but here’s a good shorthand: I think of people who write for Gawker.

and then moments later writing this:

I hate tribalism?

I just don’t get why you purport to hate identity politics but are eager to reduce class analysis to a particularly petty form of identity politics. What do you hope to accomplish by divorcing class from economic status like this?

Can we point out the elephant in the room, that many of the people who snipe about intellectual elitism are damn fools? It’s ultimately the fault of a society that does not respect “book smarts,” that does its damndest to keep the masses ignorant so they’ll continue doing shit jobs for a pittance, but the only people I ever hear say things like “a college education is worthless” are people who worship the almighty dollar over any sort of knowledge, be it neurobiology or the complex workings of machinery. Our assembly line culture has made knowing anything outside one’s jurisdiction unnecessary and suspect.

Yes. Thank you, unrelated waffle, for saying what I was trying to work out in my head and couldn’t quite express well enough to post.

I’ll take the Pepsi challenge on the working class background with anyone – hell, I’m a 46 year old non-traditional single mom college student on food stamps even as we speak! – but I happen to listen to classical music just because I like it, enjoy reading law (ffs), and frequently sip lattes, hazelnut skim-milk lattes being my particular favorite. (My first coffee was Folgers instant, donchaknow, and I can still drink it in a pinch). I don’t think this makes my anarcho-syndicalist ass elitist. Or am I an elitist simply for knowing what the fuck an anarcho-syndicalist is?

I’m so confused.

I wish you’d all give the lattes a rest, honestly…my tits hurt somethin’ awful.

Sorry, Bessie. Maybe we should all go to soy, only I suspect that would be extra-super-elitist.

Don’t forget the non-dairy creamer now, ya hear?

Just for clarity’s sake, I should point out that there are about 1.67 million college professors in the U.S. They are overwhelmingly (60-80%) liberal/progressive politically (though not nearly as monolithically so as conservatives claim). The median salary for college professors is $56,120 which compares to the $31,336 for all fulltime workers over 25, $82, 400 for those with professional degrees (medical doctors, lawyers, architects, etc.), and $70,800 for all Ph.Ds. This generally puts them squarely in the middle classes and indicates that they have made significant economic sacrifices to pursue academic careers. A vanishingly small number of these people have ever written a column for a newspaper.

There is a kind of “intellectual elite” in this country, but it consists exclusively of the faculty and some Ph. D graduates of the Ivy league and the handful of elite public universities (Berkeley, Amherst, William and Mary, Michigan, etc.). It emphatically does not include the vast majority of faculty at two and four year colleges nor most university faculty, especially at state schools. It also includes researchers affiliated with elite think tanks like the Hoover Institute and Brookings. The proportion of academic who have any discernible impact on national or even state level policies is again vanishingly small.

It is also important to distinguish between “academics” and “intellectuals”. The former is a much smaller and more exclusive group who have doctoral or other professional degrees and make their livings by pure research and teaching. The latter group is much larger and much less well defined. Many of those you have pointed to are what I would call “psuedo-intellectuals”, people who pretend to know what they are talking about without any actual credentials or demonstrable expertise. This definitely includes David Brooks and William Kristol. Others, like Noam Chomsky or Friedman, have developed some degree of expertise and understanding (whether we agreee with them or not). Most pundits are not academics and many are psuedo-intellectual hacks. Krugman and Delong are exceptions and there are a few others. Our elite pundits, with their exorbitant salaries, obviously have allegiances close to those of the actual economic elites.

Please do not confuse any of these with actual elites, who constitute at most the wealthiest 1% of the population (and possibly as little as 0.1%). Intellectual elites may or may not influence policy (and as has been pointed out, most of the think tanks exist to promote various ideologically driven policies favored by the real elites). The economic elites actually determine policies for the most part.

For the record, I teach full time at a third tier state university, have never made the national median income, am a socialist, prefer drip coffee with cream and sugar, have never been asked my opinion about any policy issue by any public official at any level, and am lucky to get my letters to the editor published.

I just don’t get why you purport to hate identity politics but are eager to reduce class analysis to a particularly petty form of identity politics. What do you hope to accomplish by divorcing class from economic status like this?

DJW, that’s not my aim. Nevertheless, you gotta admit that there is an inventory of cultural .. uh, I dunno, signifiers on both sides that often coincide with economic status.

(As for my own tribalism — well, that’s one of the reasons I hate tribalism: one person’s tribalism inevitably incites another’s. I do try to resist mine but what can I do when posts like Farley’s provoke it?)

Look, the Gawker people set me off. Just like, I dunno, Hee Haw probably sets off Roy Edroso. Of course Hee Haw also sets me off (though I have learned to appreciate its kitch value), but then I’m stuck between both worlds. Maybe baseball is a better example, because even coastal people *not* from NY can identify with a flyover’s person utter hatred of the NY media’s baseball coverage, and of the NY teams’ fanbases’ awful, entitled attitude. I know Robert’s a Reds fan, and Scott liked the Mariners before he turned to evil and started liking the Mets, but I dunno your team. Anyway, if you’re a fan of a non-NY club (I should throw Boston in with them), then you too can understand the righteous rage against elitism, snobbery, a godawful sense of entitlement that almost seems calculated to inspire Jacobin sentiments. Ok, now take that feeling and transfer it to other areas of life.

As for Robert being anti-hippie but also anti-war, ok then. Still, those days haunt me and that kinda “ZOMG I have to be for the war because International ANSWER and the Free Mumia people are against it!” attitude, even if not followed to its natural conclusion (iow, as far as Yglesias and Ezra Klein took it), still chaps my ass. How many times has Farley rightly bashed Hitchens for bullshit contrarianism? Yet what was his DFHphobia but bullshit contrarianism?

Just like, I dunno, Hee Haw probably sets off Roy Edroso.

This seems like a misread of Roy’s entire shtick.

The first rule of class analysis: Don’t conflate “people you find annoying and pretentious” with class enemy (even if they’ve got a few more bucks than you in their paycheck).

you gotta admit that there is an inventory of cultural .. uh, I dunno, signifiers on both sides that often coincide with economic status.

But only in the most indirect, weak-correlation kind of way. Seattle is teaming with flat broke hipsters, and as these people move toward economic security, these cultural markers tend to fade (and be replaced by others you probably wouldn’t care fore either, think REI).

But even I grant you a weak correlation between your cultural signifiers and economic status, it’s the wrong economic status for meaningful class analysis in 21st century . The (slightly) upper middle class elites like college professors aren’t the real class enemy now. Sure, a few of them do the intellectual dirty work of the actual elite, while plenty of others criticise this work and this elite (you might miss the latter if you’re not looking for it, but that their work doesn’t show up in think tanks and on op-ed pages much is hardly their fault). The vast majority do neither.

But to confuse upper middle class status (and the cultural markers that weakly correlate with it) as the real class enemy of the poor in this day and age is the equivalent of see “proletariat vs. peasant” or “lumpenproletariat vs. proletariat” as a meaningful or significant class struggle in Marx’s time. It’s the >1%ers and their Republican enablers we ought to be after. The category you seek to defend as meaningful doesn’t help us do that at all, it simply enables the misdirection.

Didn’t Trotsky and Stalin already have this debate? Who won?

Man, I’ve got this bad headache all of a sudden.

I see HTML has commented on my comment. Very politely too.
Ah I also see he has also written another comment in the thread on Brad.

I mean Fuck if I wanted civil discourse, I wouldn’t have been readling sadly no !

However, if that’s the way you want to debate, two can play that game.

update: up to a point. I had a polite reply to HTML’s polite comment on my comment. Then I read another HTML comment. I admit that, after all, I can’t play the civil debate game with HTML because he hasn’t bothered to learn the facts before denouncing Brad DeLong.

I quote from upthread “DeLong’s favored policies in the 90s of NAFTA and Welfare reform and all that neoliberal, DLC, Clintonoid crap that kicked the poor in the teeth so hard that it would have been stupid for them *not* to lose faith.”. Thus HTML asserts that Brad DeLong favored welfare reform. This assertion is false. I don’t suppose that it is libelous, but only because a court would not recognize that it is damaging. To write such nonsense, HTML must have had reckless disregard for the truth. How about a google HTML ?

http://tinyurl.com/55ahd2. Brad hates the Clinton welfare reform and writes that regularly. I don’t see why HTML holds Brad responsible for something that Bill Clinton (technically a different person) did at a time when Brad was not employed by the Clinton administration. Check his CV HTML he left at the end of 1994 (to keep tenure not in protest but Clinton hadn’t caved to the Republicans yet). He wasn’t there when Clinton caved in to the evil Republican welfare reform bill. He absolutely opposed that policy. Anyone who cared to check his views on the subject would know.

I think that HTML can not grasp the fact that someone can be for NAFTA and against welfare reform for unions for stronger environmental protection for tighter FEC regulation, contemptuous of libertarians and, in general a social democrat.

Oh well. Until I read that bit about welfare reform. I was doing fairly well at that civil business. 99% civil over at my blog. Anyway, it is now obvious to me that HTML’s incomprehensible view of Brad DeLong was based on total ignorance and doesn’t reveal anything interesting about anything.

I didn’t explain my view on Russel and Trevelyan at all well. I wasn’t saying that it was OK because they weren’t Irish. I was, uhm, suggesting that uhm … uhm … (damn this civility business is a pain sometimes) while HTML is much further from Russell than most people are, he and Russell do have something in common which is that, like practically everyone, they believe that “Obviously, there is a hierarchy for responsible people to follow.”

Civility can be so challenging at times as when I respond to “‘Brad DeLong’

Economic libertarian is not synoymous with ‘that far left.'”. I would just say that it is very hard to reconcile the uhm hypothesis that Brad is an economic libertarian with the evidence.

Oh and, by the way, HTML was polite but he didn’t support his claims about Brad’s views with any quotations or links.

So lets check. Health care

“Sin taxes (and, perhaps, someday general revenues) pay for an army of barefoot doctors and nurses and mobile treatment vans roaming the country, knocking on doors, and providing preventive and other long-run lifestyle services for free: Let me examine your prostate. Mind if I check your refrigerator and tell you how to eat healthier? Have you exercised today? I’m a Pilates instructor, and we could do a session now? Are you up on your immunizations? Anybody here have a fever and need antibiotics? Come on out to the van and I’ll clean your teeth.” The idea is to make the preventive care cheaper-than-free, to insure that nothing with a high long-run benefit/cost ratio gets left undone because people would rather get a bigger check the next April to use to buy an HDTV”

That is a huge expansion of public sector employment and a mild invasion of privacy all put together. Based on the idea that people don’t make the right choices about say how much to eat (Brad would know). That is way further from libertarian than the Obama plan, or the Clinton plan, or the Edwards plan, or the Clinton Clinton and Magaziner plan, or single payer. It is even further from libertarian than the UK health system where you have to go to a gp they don’t bug you on their own. The inspiration is clearly Mao Tze Tung (hence the word “barefoot”). On health care, Brad says we should learn from the success of Maoist China.

I think this quote constitutes proof that Brad is not an economic libertarian.

OK how about trade unions. Libertarians hate them. Brad supports them (he outsourced to Klein) http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2007/02/ezra_klein_on_t.html

Tighter environmental regulation check http://tinyurl.com/5zzzts

Well this is silly (as is the claim that Brad is an economic libertarian).

Yesterday I thought of one explanation for this mysterious view of Brad — Brad’s position on trade. later I thought of another rhetoric — Brad likes to talk about his admiration for the market system while advocating redistribution of income and taking a position on regulation and on the proper size of the public sector which places him on or past the extreme left wing of what is considered respectable in the USA (past actually but don’t tell Obama until it is too late).

You might have dealt with this already but there’s the difference between “Elite” (top 1% of income) and “Elitist” (people who think they are superior, which can include pretty much any income bracket, depending on the level of delusion).

Yes, defining class based on consumer preferences is wrong. But there is no denying there are people who buy into it. People who believe that the world outside of academia and large cities is populated by dangerously ignorant hordes that they have nothing in common with.

A high school art teacher in NYC may feel a sense of common identity with a corporate lawyer because they both shop at Whole Foods and subscribe to the New Yorker. But as far as policy concerns (single-payer health care, for example) the high school art teacher has a lot more in common with a farmer in the Deep South because they are in the same economic class.

And, BTW, the new nomenclature is “Creative Class”, which is annoying and nefarious on a whole bunch of new levels.

Steve “BTW, I prefer cappuccinos or black coffee over lattes — not sure what that says. . . .”

It means that you are like authentic Italians not Italian wannabees.

I personally happen to live in Italy. The idea that it is a sign of membership in the elite to call coffee milk is very jarring (latte just means milk in Italian).

If you bellied up to a bar in Italy and asked for a latte you would get either a puzzled stare or a puzzled stare and a chaser of milk (I haven’t done the experiment).

Of course the Italians who correspond to US latte drinking wannabee scenesters have their own linguistic idiocies. They like to call gestione “management” with the accent on the first e (you know the silent one).

Once some twit talked about economic growth and “educazione” (good manners or breeding). I didn’t say (in English or Italian) “You mean instruzione (means education) you twit. Like take me. I have tons of istruzione but no educazione whatsoever (demonstrate the second with my outburst and the first by hitting him over the head with my diplomas (one of which, in the glorious American tradition, I can’t read (it’s in Latin))).

I like instant nescafé made with luke warm water so I can drink it faster.

djw:

The first rule of class analysis: Don’t conflate “people you find annoying and pretentious” with class enemy (even if they’ve got a few more bucks than you in their paycheck).

I know, but look. It’s not just wingnuts who go around making fun of working class beer, getting all appalled at working class fast food/fried food/southern food/soul food, sneering at or paternalising over working class vices like playing the lottery and smoking cigs and their putting a premium on admittedly pathetic status symbols like cars or clothing. Be honest, how many people do you know who think something nasty (and I admit, funny: I am most emphatically *not* a speech or humor policeman; all I’m after here is some empathy) when they hear of a tornado hitting a trailer park? Be honest. And it’s not as if this phenomenon is confined to whites: urban blacks also often have a lot of contempt for their rural (and poorer) counterparts.

I mean, the cultural signifier thing goes both ways. All I’m saying is, the poor aren’t wrong to respond to the resentment and in turn, resent. A lot of ppl on this thread are responding as if I’m some troglodyte redneck wanting to hang the professoriat en masse. It’s not true. If anything, I share the cultural biases of the upper-middle class. But I also see its faults. The Jesus Freakery, racism, homophobia, etc, etc, that I see in everyday life around here does drive me batty. However, that’s not all I see; I also see a shitload of poverty. But urban elitists, I think, tend to only *see* the cultural traits they like, again not unreasonably, to sneer at. The class issue aspect, OTOH, they only see dimly if at all, and then only in the vague “I know it’s there in theory” sense. Remember a few weeks ago when the Obama-Appalachia thing came out? Josh Marshall, bless him, diffused a lot of the bullshit with his intial post but still, I could feel and see the knee-jerk response, and most predictable it was: the basic Tom Schaller thesis that means in practice “Fuck the poor white trash; let them have their Jesus and NASCAR.” There’s an itch, an irresistable itch in a lot of people (cf. Farley’s post) to blanketly call a bunch of *poor* people horrible racists. That way it’s easier to hate them and pretend that the Left has no responsibility to all poor Americans.

In re: college professors, bear in mind where I live. A common belief is that the most cushy job there is is being a professor/schoolteacher. You can consign that to simple envy and misguided class resentment but consider: most of the superwealthy farmers here are married to teachers. And as for the larger picture, again, from a poor rural person’s point of view, what have intellectuals-professors-creative class (ppl need to stop getting hung up on the terminology: everyone knows what I mean) done for them in the last, say, twenty years?

The megarich, no one sees. The creative class/New Class, by its nature, is visible. And again, *a portion* of it is who does the megarich’s dirty work. Sure, absolutely there are liberal — even radical — professors. How many of them [I really hate to argue like this but I don’t see any other way to drive the point home] are on food stamps? And sure, a lot of them are very moral in the “fight the man” sense, and it’s done a lot of good for a lot of people, but in the end, minority/gender/sexual orientation studies only help the poor indirectly in the sense that minorities constititute such a large portion of the poor. Actually, far too much of that stuff is about culture (cf. the Ampersand-Shakesville preoccupation with inspecting art for evidence of some or other form of bigotry) rather than economics. Solve the class issue and you solve probably 90 percent of bigotry issues (the megarich are not actually bigots in any meaningful sense, but they exploit and inculcate bigotry in the lower classes as a way to divide them; please excuse my very old socialist reasoning), but that ain’t as much fun as deconstructing Simpsons episodes and James Bond movies to their ideologically satanic roots. Anyway, there is a huge cultural divide and I dunno how to bridge it. I am not saying elitist liberals should pander to something they’re uncomfortable with; I am saying that, even so, it would be easier and better for them to attempt to empathise with the poor than expect the poor to empathise with them. But it has to be done somehow. The liberal elite, to its great credit, can empathise with (poor, exploited, and yes often but not always bigoted) Iraqis. So understanding culturally retrograde (to be mean about it) people, and taking responsibility for them, is possible, yet when it comes to understanding (as opposed to demonising) our own poor, exploited, gun nutty, religious, yes, often — but not always — bigoted folks… well, fuck them. So the creative class — the non-wingnutty side of them — is disgusted by the poor on cultural grounds, and can’t identify with them on class grounds.

This bit of empathizing, from Johann Hari, is what I’d like to see more of here.

Robert Waldmann,

Yeah, the latte thing puzzles me, too, but I think it’s part of the American penchant for shortening phrases/concepts/etc.., especially those in which we don’t understand the words involved. “Scampi” means shrimp in Italian, but I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard people order (or, for that matter, seen restaurants advertise) “shrimp scampi.”

I used to like some of the coffee-bar drinks with steamed milk. Now that so many of them include enamel-murdering sugar syrups, I’ve gone back to a large cup of hot, black whatever from the lunch truck across the street from the office.

Hmm. No, grandpaw, I’m a-gonna have to conclude that you’re utterly full of shit and a disingenuous asshole, just like your buddy the Editors. It seems pretty clear he wanted to wave around his formal education “like a cheap baton” and hope that good ol’ intimidation did the trick to keep some uppity cracker from thinking that he had a right to challenge his betters just because he read some book.

You know what, in my experience “The Editors” isn’t a disingenuous asshole, either. I ultimately stopped hanging out at http://thepoorman.net because I just felt somewhat alienated from the commentary there. I guess I’m politically different from “The Editors” and also from that other guy “tweety”. I had some useful conversations with them, and then I started realizing the gulf between me and them. But they were not really assholes about it- it was just clear to me that I was in a different realm.

I know that HTML and the Editors had some kind of epic flame war, but I could never even figure out what it was all about. My impression was that most of “The Editors'” readers were less than fascinated by what the Editors had to say about it, too. There were a lot of comments of “Hmm, fascinating… ZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzz”.

The best thing for you to do at this point would be to take the Tom Joad schtick, wrap it up in pages ripped out of your second-hand copy of Manufacturing Consent, and use your pitchfork to jam it up your ass, farmer boy.

I mean, the cultural signifier thing goes both ways. All I’m saying is, the poor aren’t wrong to respond to the resentment and in turn, resent. A lot of ppl on this thread are responding as if I’m some troglodyte redneck wanting to hang the professoriat en masse. It’s not true. If anything, I share the cultural biases of the upper-middle class. But I also see its faults. The Jesus Freakery, racism, homophobia, etc, etc, that I see in everyday life around here does drive me batty. However, that’s not all I see; I also see a shitload of poverty. But urban elitists, I think, tend to only *see* the cultural traits they like, again not unreasonably, to sneer at. The class issue aspect, OTOH, they only see dimly if at all, and then only in the vague “I know it’s there in theory” sense.

See I feel this makes sense.

I can’t find it, but I remember that comment you made not too long ago about the rural working class feeling the contempt that urbans can often have for them. It’s more dangerous that people seem to realize.

Anyway, populist resentment does exist, and much of it is righteous. Better to understand it and embrace the best parts of it than to allow wingnuts to turn it into something very nasty.

That’s another thing horrible about Schaller’s scheme. It abandons the (he says Southern but that’s not actually true in practice) rural poor, mostly white, leaving them to the wingnuts who absolutely will exploit all of their vices to an even greater magnitude than we’ve previously seen. Why worse now? Because of the economic climate, they are angrier now, and are looking for someone to punish. Like anyone, their instinct is to punish outsiders (Anne Laurie is great on this point) they don’t like as well as people who obviously don’t like them on social grounds.

What do you do to stop it? Well, you don’t say, “fuck you [fill in the blank with racist, anti-semites, etc]”. You do spend *shitloads* of money on welfare and education, stop the goddamn free trade immediately, and you put all the blame on the people who actually deserve it: the wealthy and their enablers in, yes, the creative class.

“Captain Swing,” should he go on tour, ought to stop by a few newspaper offices and campuses after he’s visited many corporate headquarters.

LOFL You’d never guess that Yuppie Scum has a NYC IP address.

HTML I think I mostly agree with your proposal. I mean if by stop this free trade you just mean no more free trade treaties (not tearing up old ones) than we are arguing about nothing that is going to happen.

On the other hand, your framing and phrasing needs work. The latte sipper haters hate welfare. The thing to do is to expand the EITC and call it a tax cut. Obama has thought of this.

Now I would go waaaay further

My personal plan is to make sure that 65% of adult US citizens pay less than zero income taxes (and soak the rich to make up for it and balance the budget and fund education and health care and then some more just for fun).

Then the Republicans will be screwed forever. When the 4th of July is the day you get caught in a traffic jam coming back from the fireworks and the 15th of April is when you find just how huge a check you are getting from Uncle Sam then we bring back Reagan’s line “for the Republicans every day is the 4th of July and for the Democrats every day is the 15th of April.” and laugh while he spins in his grave. I promise the numbers work (I mean you have to soak the upper middle class too but they* can afford it.

That is, I claim, that making the income tax more progressive can be as radical as you want. Once people think of their 1040 as their sugar daddy the rest will be easy.

* oh shit now that the dollar has tanked my income puts me in the upper middle class but really it doesn’t buy any more over here. Well anyway I get soaked already (by the Italian treasury mostly).

Lakeesha

It works both ways. caffe-latte become latte because latte alone doesn’t mean anything in English. Similarly opera lirica became opera (opera just means work an operaio isn’t a latte sipping elitist opera goer an operaio is a worker) Piano forte became piano (means soft in Italian actually also means pianoforte in Italian now too).

Other way a “body” in Italian isn’t a body it is a body-sock “feeling” isn’t feeling it is warm feeling (when Italians say feeling they mean …. well the closest word is simpatia but that’s a real Italian word).

Someone upthread used to privilege as a verb (privileggiare is Italian privileger (sp?) is French). This is just a miss translation of plain French. The correct English translation is “to favor”. In France you don’t show sympathy for pomo or whatever theory by writing “privileger” (you might show you can’t spell).

Now as to those syrups I haven’t tried them yet. Man after this thread I am going to spend a month at a Starbucks as soon as I find one (they exist over here. Also, I hear that Paris is full of them)

Robert, for a long time now I’ve collected grievances with Dr. DeLong’s opinions. I know you’ve searched the site for my references for him (not all of them negative); perhaps, for now, you could follow the links and cites in those old posts before you assume I don’t know what I’m talking about. One day, I’ll write a gigantic entry about him but until then previous stuff all I can offer. This thread’s theme has otherwise monopolised my writing time and tomorrow I have to go back to work on the wheat harvest, so I can’t give your next to last post the attention I’d like.

(Also you can search the site for the phrase “who murdered the Irish,” read that post, and extrapolate. I see neoliberals like DeLong as exactly the heirs Russell and Trevelyan and the unnamed economists who so horrified and disgusted Benjamin Jowett.)

I have an NYC IP, too, HTML. And I’ve rooted for the Yankees since birth. Tribalism is the refuge of an asshole, when you fall into it you do yourself a serious disservice.
Especially after asking for your feelings to be considered earlier.
And, I’m sorry, but this is bullshit

And as for the larger picture, again, from a poor rural person’s point of view, what have intellectuals-professors-creative class (ppl need to stop getting hung up on the terminology: everyone knows what I mean) done for them in the last, say, twenty years?

Nope. We don’t know what you mean, and that’s part of why some are taking issue with you. You talk about the north’s tendency to stereotype rural folk, after stereotyping large groups of urbanites.
And just because you’re being uncharitable doesn’t mean academics have existed in a bubble world.
Ever heard of the Innocence Project? Started by a fucking undergrad college class.
You’re better than this.

I’m not saying “you know what I mean” as a wink-handshake code; I’m saying it because many of my posts on this thread have given details that I was too lazy to repeat and too stupid and weary to come up with a better shorthand.

Or, for the eleventy bazillionth time, I’m not saying *all* academics.

I know that, that’s not what I meant.
I meant that you’re going back and forth between trying to make a legit point and undermining yourself.
Yes, there are asshole Yankee fans. There are also asshole Cowboys fans. Yes, urbanites can be elitist assholes. Rural folk can pretend being dirt poor is the only authentic experience of life, or that coming from a state that didn’t exist when the nation was born but did join in treason against it makes one a truer American than us “coastal elites.”
You’re judging academia in the same way academia judges the poor. You’re taking the efforts of the economic elite to foment class division as proof of a flaw in the nature of the academic/intellectual/whatever class. There are racist poor rural farmers who rape women, too. So the fuck what?

Also, “elitist” or “snob” or whatever epithet one can call the habitually flagrantly condescending, even as a blanket application with a lot of “collateral damage” is not the same thing as blanketly calling a whole class of ppl “racists” or “anti-Semites.”

After all, once can still be an elitist or snob and still be an intellectually or even morally respectable person. But nothing can redeem a racist or anti-Semite; no one can hold such views and still be respectable. See how this means that one should be reserved until the bias is confirmed in a specific example, while the other can be more readily used even to the point of generalization?

And let’s just remember something. Sure, a tiny number of academic/intellectual elites happily join in those efforts. The rural poor, in contrast, vote the economic elite, or their servants, into office and deride education.

Well no shit, Brad. That’s probably why I was talking about how wingnuts co-opt them and inculcate and exacerbate their worst traits, and how we could stop that. Christ.

Well, my problem is you keep saying you don’t mean all academics, then you make sweeping generalizations about academia.
I want to agree with you, and I still agree with the basic premise, but from my perspective you’re trying to push it too far.
And I’m not saying yay academia, or denying the validity of your criticisms, especially of the reactionary element of academic feminism and their spectacular narcisissm, but it seems as if you’re trying to indict the very nature of academia at times, and that boat don’t float.

Hey HTML

You ever watched this?

Kinda dovetails with what you’re talking about, in my view.

Oh, and there’s a sequel being created in installments.

I dunno if it’d help to qualify my words about the reactionary element of academic feminism, but I don’t want anyone to think I meant feminism, academic or otherwise, is at all fundamentally reactive. I meant a specific type of person that makes up a small but vocal percent of the group, generally the most mediocre, Camille Paglia-esque in the bunch.
I don’t mean to hold them up as evidence of a flaw in the overall project, n that’s more or less what I’m saying HTML shouldn’t do in a larger context.

*of a *fatal* flaw in the project.
All human endeavors have flaws.

It’s elitist to use the term “LSEI” like everyone knows what you’re talking about, when maybe they don’t. [hic]

HTML –
I am not sure exactly where you are, though I believe someone upthread said you are in Arkansas. I know exactly who and what you are talking about as I am a native Okie from the NE part of the state and my grandfather was a hillbilly dirt farmer in the Missouri Ozarks (never had indoor plumbing or anything but wood heat) and still refer to myself as an over educated hillbilly. The thing is academics for the most part are not your enemy. There are other segments of the professional classes (which is the group we are talking about here), who are your (and my) enemies. You need to understand that the professional classes are diverse and have diverse and often conflicting class interests. You do more damage than good attacking those class segments who are your natural allies.

I agree that many academics seem totally unconnected to and unconcerned with the plight of poor people in general and poor whites in particular. None-the-less many of us are doing what we can. We support and sometimes testify in favor of programs to help the poor and against policies that harm them. We strongly support the broadest possible access to higher education (the best route out of poverty) and improved k-12 education for everyone. Remember that, for all our education and relatively more affluent life style, we have very little power. We are a small group who controls few if any critical resources.

Target your anger at those who deserve it. The think tank people, the pundits, and all the rest of the class war enablers deserve it.

Sure do. I grew up in rural PA but I moved to NYC because I’m actually smart, not a fucking Chomsky-regurgitating failure like you, you poseur dipshit.

You sure learned how to argue like a pro.

I like to think of myself as at least somewhat intellectual and I’ve sipped the odd latte, although I do prefer a cappa. I can’t tell you how delighted I am to find out that I’m Jewish.

I moved to NYC because I’m actually smart, not a fucking Chomsky-regurgitating failure like you

Is that you, That Fool? Long time no see, man, welcome back.

I know that HTML and the Editors had some kind of epic flame war, but I could never even figure out what it was all about.

The flashpoint was Gore Vidal, but HTML had been mildly calling him on his leftist-bashing for some time – I recall both him and Tweety showing up at HTML’s former blog at one point, but it was calm then. But he periodically goes back to it, especially with regards to Chomsky, who has apparently come to stand in his mind for everything he hates about leftism, no matter how many times it gets pointed out to him that he’s ridiculously ignorant of what the man has actually said, and no matter that the Editors has been flatly, embarrassingly wrong about more things in his short blogging career than Noam has been in a few decades of activism.

He apparently believes that Noam is connected to a rumor frequently heard about the Bosnian war only being fought to secure the area for the construction of some massive pipeline to transport oil/natural gas/etc., which is another symbol of leftist craziness that holds a totemic fascination for him, it seems. Funny thing is, I’ve never seen Chomsky say one word about that (and I’ve read a lot of him), but one person who did make some hay about it was…Michael Moore, who the Editors has always defended against his cartoonish caricature (to his credit). This kind of ignorance and incoherence, combined with a habit of being a raging jackass to anyone who corrects him, is what makes the Editors such a special boy.

Funny thing is, I’ve never seen Chomsky say one word about that (and I’ve read a lot of him), but one person who did make some hay about it was…Michael Moore, who the Editors has always defended against his cartoonish caricature (to his credit). This kind of ignorance and incoherence, combined with a habit of being a raging jackass to anyone who corrects him, is what makes the Editors such a special boy.

Oh, that’s what it was about? OK. I do remember that “The Editors” seemed to have some major, emotional beef with Noam Chomsky, which was one of the main reasons I stopped hanging out over there, actually.

Maybe I didn’t learn what the whole deal was simply because internet flame wars can be rather tedious to try to understand, if you’re not in the ‘in’ group that knows all the whys and wherefores about how they started. As I said though, most of the commenters over at “The Poor Man” seemed to find the entire thing just as pointless as I did, and subtly (or not so subtly) tended to tell “The Editors” that they weren’t interested in hearing the gory details.

I guess, to me, “The Editors” is a talented guy, but just someone that I don’t see eye-to-eye with politically. He was never an asshole to me personally, let me put it that way.

What does “anti-Semite” even mean these days? Though “Semites” includes both Arabs and Jews, it is now taken to mean “Jews” only

WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG WRONG.

Stop passing on this anti-jewish LIE propagated by jew-hating fucknuts. Anti-Semitism ONLY means jew-hating and doesn’t include arabs at all.

The term “Anti-Semitism” was invented by a Jew-hating German who only meant Jews and NEVER meant Arabs. He used the trm “anti-semitic” to separate his “scientific” jew-hating from previous religious-based jew-hating.

However, the term antisemitism is specifically used in reference to attitudes held towards Jews. The word antisemitic (antisemitisch in German) was probably first used in 1860 by the Austrian Jewish scholar Moritz Steinschneider in the phrase “antisemitic prejudices” (German: “antisemitische Vorurteile”).[7] Steinschneider used this phrase to characterize Ernest Renan’s ideas about how “Semitic races” were inferior to “Aryan races.” These pseudo-scientific theories concerning race, civilization, and “progress” had become quite widespread in Europe in the second half of the 19th century, especially as Prussian nationalistic historian Heinrich von Treitschke did much to promote this form of racism. In Treitschke’s writings Semitic was synonymous with Jewish, in contrast to its usage by Renan and others.

Learn what you are fucking talking about before you open you fucking mouth you fucking cocksucker.

I don’t resent elites.

I fucking resent ignorant trash who are fucking dumb but think they fucking know as much as their fucking superiors. they don’t. They need to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up and do what we fucking tell them do.

They need to sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up and do what we fucking tell them do.

OK, but you need to do what I fucking tell you to do because I’m superior to you. Let’s get the fucking pecking order straight here you lumpen plebe.

Whoa..I’m still trying to get my head around the notion that criticizing “the international banking cartel” is anti-semitic. That sort of fits in with how actual anti-semites claim that “the Jews control international finance.” WTF??

OK, but you need to do what I fucking tell you to do because I’m superior to you. Let’s get the fucking pecking order straight here you lumpen plebe.

You wish.

I’m the 17th most superior person in the world and I know the list of the 16 above me and you are not fucking on it. 🙂

You made a list?! Oh, you are all SO going down.

You made a list?! Oh, you are all SO going down.

Memorized it, ate it, pooped it, and then burned the poop.

#

r4d20 said,

I’m the 17th most superior person in the world and I know the list of the 16 above me and you are not fucking on it. 🙂

The List

17) r4d20
16) r4d18
15) r4d16
14) r4d14
13) r4d12
12) r4d10
11) r4d8
10) r4d6
9) r4d2
8) r2d16
7) r2d14
6) r2d12
5) r2d10
4) r2d8
3) r2d6
2) r2d4

and

1) Brad DeLong

I know, but look. It’s not just wingnuts who go around making fun of working class beer, getting all appalled at working class fast food/fried food/southern food/soul food, sneering at or paternalising over working class vices like playing the lottery and smoking cigs and their putting a premium on admittedly pathetic status symbols like cars or clothing.

I’m from a relatively large but poor and white trashy town in Iowa. I grew up with working class beer and fast food and vices and status symbols. I abandoned all of them to move to Seattle and become a latte-sipping intellectual elitist academic. I did this because lots of working class cultural signifiers are fucking awful, from my perspective. I’m a lisping John Keats-sized fey with an aptitude for mathematics and adventurous taste buds. Of course I abandoned my roots. Cheap American beer tastes like cat piss, fast food gives me the devil shits, the lottery takes all the fun out of gambling, the smell of tobacco is foul and persistent, and car culture is fundamentally unsustainable. Don’t even get me started on the clothes. The thing about being poor is that it’s frequently quite rotten as I know from personal experience and given an alternative very few people would really want to live that way. I found life in that socioeconomic milieu stultifying and repressive, and look back on it now with no fondness to speak of.

At the same time, I don’t claim to be the victim of heartbreaking discrimination by the proles. There is a lot of racism and sexism and homophobia and anti-intellectualism and all kinds of really nasty stuff stewing away among some elements of the working classes, but then again you get the same kind of thing across all classes in America and it’s never been a significant obstacle to me personally. I have no fundamental moral or philosophical objection to the working class lifestyle, or at least no more than I do for pretty much every lifestyle, my own included. I just don’t like it much.

What on Earth do these issues of personal taste have to do with any damn thing of consequence?

Everyone shut the fuck up about lattes.

A well-made latte is a good fucking beverage, regardless of whether or not anyone else knows you’re drinking it.

Thank you, Dayv.

I like a latte or three in the morning. And I suck even worse because I get it from the Starbucks that’s 3 blocks from my house. But I don’t sip, I guzzle. Not Jewish. Plain old garden variety wasp with 2 kids, 2 car payments, a spouse and a mortgage.

Code? More like fail.

HTML, I went over there and commented on your behalf, because I tend to view things far more in terms of class than race or religion. At least one of my non-profane, non-personal comments was just plain deleted.

I know you probably won’t see this, but I think you’re consistently brilliant, and I love all the work you do.

Thank you.

What about the word ilk?