Mark Morford: Are you an elitist?

[n2doc]

18 revealing ways to know for sure
By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist
Friday, September 12, 2008

1. You don't talk like a normal person. Only normal people talk like normal people. Sarah "no questions please, I'm Alaskan" Palin, according to House Minority leader John Boehner, she talks like a normal person... if by "normal" you mean "chillingly antagonistic toward anything resembling progress or political insight or women's civil liberties."

2. According to the GOP, lower-middle-class voters with minimal educations really like it when people who think they can run the most powerful nation on the planet and steer massive military juggernauts and immense economies and affect the destinies of millions, don't actually speak like they have any idea how the hell to do it. Honey, if the Bush years proved anything, it's that the dumber you sound, the more effective you are at leading the country. Into the sewer. Did you know this already? Typical elitist.

3. You are on a first-name basis with the sushi chef at Whole Foods.

4. You have been to Whole Foods.

5. Look at you, Mr. Fancypants, with your snobbish notion that not every piece of furniture in your bedroom must look like it came from the same 1978 Levitz fire sale.

6. The impressive dimensions of the strap-on system in your dresser would make your average Alaskan redneck hockey player scream in horror even as it openly titillated a dozen Republican senators from Colorado Springs to Idaho, though it would probably still get you arrested in Alabama.

7. You know what a strap-on is. In a good way.

8. Barack Obama's oratory power, strength of character, and subtle understanding of complicated issues have actually served to dissolve a venerable portion of the acidic pessimism that's been eating into your very soul for eight solid years, causing you to actually begin to believe that maybe, just maybe, nuanced intellectual acumen and the nearly bankrupt American experiment do not necessarily have to be mutually exclusive. Only elitist snobs know what "venerable" means. Or "acumen." Or "you."

more:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2008/09/12/notes091208.DTL

[ogneopasno]

1. "In a good way."

Heeeeeeeeeeeeeee.

[ailsagirl]

2. I love Morford-- thanks for posting!

[PDJane]

3. Love it, thank you..........

Shall add him to my favourite blogs........

[The Inquisitive]

4. Good post

I really hate the term elitist. Wouldn't you want the leaders of any society to surpass the common man in nearly every way possible? Don't you want a leader with the education and ability to think and strategize in ways you can't even begin to comprehend?

[Igel]

5. I distinguish two terms.

"Elite" and "elitist". I like keeping them separate; they mean different things. One can be elite without thinking it makes you a superior person.

However, I have no expectations that people will maintain the difference, now that it's becoming obscured. Bartoli was right, even though he had mostly phonology in mind: mergers proceed at the expense of differences. People decide language; they decide to merge the terms, to make the distinction moot, they'll either decide the distinction is meaningless (a mistake on my part, but that's their choice) or find another way to express it.