Obama & The Truth About Elitism

A hallmark of bias in all its unsavory forms is the irony that attends its authors:  They often don't recognize they have it.  Add to the list of extant prejudices that of the elitist, and for the analysis we turn to Stanley Crouch, who blindly confuses education as a method of economic advancement and the academic, intellectual elites that often issue from the likes of Harvard--that is, Senator Obama and his wife, Michelle.

Crouch writes:

It has become commonplace for the predictable millionaire puppets of Fox News and their conservative talk radio counterparts to present themselves as the voices of the working class in combat with an educated elite from places like Harvard.

But beneath those cliches fester ideas that are deeply anti-democratic.

They are anti-democratic because they scoff at this basic truth:  Education is the key to social mobility in our country.

We can stipulate that education, be it at a community college for a technical skill or a university to study business, is the most reliable guarantor of economic success.  No one, certainly not the "millionaire puppets of Fox News and their conservative talk radio counterparts," would argue otherwise.  But there's a glaring distinction between education for advancement and the arch elitism and condescension so manifest in Mr. Obama.

It's not just his profound misjudgment about the working class folks in Pennsylvania, it's the collateral condemnation of their values that his criticism reflects.  Indeed, for elitists such as Obama, religion and guns--his twin targets in his remarks to a moneyed crowd in San Francisco--are mysterious anachronisms.  For them, the former can only be parsed as a political cudgel, something to be exploited a la Reverend Wright, and the latter is a key factor in their jaundiced view of gun owners who are in the grip of a Neanderthal complex, which the left loves to vilify.

That stated, there are poor, uneducated elitists just as there are Harvard graduate elitists, the key ingredient is the craven, willful propensity see others as beneath yourself due to differences in values, paramount among them is religion, because it so thoroughly inform all others.

Honest political differences create the civic tension that keeps our Republic healthy and vibrant.  However, when the debate is infused with moral and cultural animosities based on a disdain of others, we've lost that vital thread of commonality that makes America great.  Obama might still be able to convince voters he's not an elitist, but given his recent behavior, it will be an uphill challenge.