Reply #16: Attacking someone as an "elitist" is a standard Republican talking point. Of course, Republican

[Karmadillo]

talking points are much more acceptable around here than they used to be.

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2005/10/b1120221...

Think Again: “Elitism? Moi?”

By Eric Alterman

October 20, 2005

A key talking point in recent political history has been the right-wing attack on what its members term “elitists,” those evil people, almost always liberal, urban, well-educated or in the entertainment business, who are always telling honest, God-fearing, NASCAR-lovin’ Americans how to behave. The “Liberalism equals Elitism” equation appears to fit almost any occasion. In a book he authored, but which was ghosted by David Brooks, Rush Limbaugh posited his own success as an example of what he terms “middle America’s growing rejection of the elites.” He defines said elites as “professionals” and “experts,” including “the medical elites, the sociological elites, the education elites, the legal elites, the science elites … and the ideas this bunch promotes through the media.”

Bernard Goldberg, who has spent a career working within what conservatives would call the “liberal media elite,” has sworn off all association with liberals “even when he agrees with them,” he says, “because of their elitism. They look down their snobby noses at ordinary Americans who eat at Red Lobster or because they like to bowl or they go to church on a regular basis or because they fly the flag on the Fourth of July.”

Radio talk show host and former cable conservative blonde babe, Laura Ingraham, has authored an entire book on this topic, entitled, Shut Up and Sing: How Elites from Hollywood, Politics, and the UN are Subverting America, in which Laura, who attended an Ivy League university, lives in Washington, D.c=, where she drops in on gay dance clubs, and occasionally treats herself to a ride on Robert DeNiro’s private plane, distinguishes between liberal elitists and what she terms “True Americans.” The latter, it seems, “believe in God, own guns, and want limited government,” and “want to place God in public schools and in public life. (p. 13) … Generally speaking these admirable folks tend to be white, southern, Christian, and Republican,” (p. 32, 63) as opposed to liberal elites who “would like to ‘murder’ America and make the world safe for terrorism” (p. 74), while living “in palaces invisible from the road outside, and fly in private jets, while their managers and assistants tell them only what they want to hear" (p. 17).

John Podhoretz, a former speechwriter for Bush the Elder, who grew up on the Upper West Side, the son of prominent liberals-turned-neoconservatives, and attended Ivy League schools before finding jobs working for Sun Myung Moon, Rupert Murdoch and George H.W. Bush, sees the world through similarly rose-hued glasses as those of Ingraham. “Bush Red is a simpler place,” he explains, after watching people at play in Las Vegas; it’s a land “where people mourn the death of NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt, root lustily for their teams, go to church, and find comfort in old-fashioned verities.”

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