24 October 2010 Funny, I don’t feel that elite from here!

The tea party warns of a New Elite. They're right.

The tea party appears to be of one mind on at least one thing: America has been taken over by a New Elite.

- By Charles Murray

“The discomfiting explanation is that despite need-blind admissions policies, the stellar applicants still hail overwhelmingly from the upper middle class and above. Students who have a parent with a college degree accounted for only 55 percent of SAT-takers this year but got 87 percent of all the verbal and math scores above 700, according to unpublished data provided to me by the College Board. This is not a function of SAT prep courses available to the affluent -- such coaching buys only a few dozen points -- but of the ability of these students to do well in a challenging academic setting…”

“We know, for one thing, that the New Elite clusters in a comparatively small number of cities and in selected neighborhoods in those cities. This concentration isn't limited to the elite neighborhoods of Washington, New York, Boston, Los Angeles, Silicon Valley and San Francisco. It extends to university cities with ancillary high-tech jobs, such as Austin and the Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill triangle.

“With geographical clustering goes cultural clustering. Get into a conversation about television with members of the New Elite, and they can probably talk about a few trendy shows -- "Mad Men" now, "The Sopranos" a few years ago. But they haven't any idea who replaced Bob Barker on "The Price Is Right." They know who Oprah is, but they've never watched one of her shows from beginning to end.

“Talk to them about sports, and you may get an animated discussion of yoga, pilates, skiing or mountain biking, but they are unlikely to know who Jimmie Johnson is (the really famous Jimmie Johnson, not the former Dallas Cowboys coach), and the acronym MMA means nothing to them.

“They can talk about books endlessly, but they've never read a "Left Behind" novel (65 million copies sold) or a Harlequin romance (part of a genre with a core readership of 29 million Americans).

“They take interesting vacations and can tell you all about a great backpacking spot in the Sierra Nevada or an exquisite B&B overlooking Boothbay Harbor, but they wouldn't be caught dead in an RV or on a cruise ship (unless it was a small one going to the Galapagos). They have never heard of Branson, Mo.

“There so many quintessentially American things that few members of the New Elite have experienced. They probably haven't ever attended a meeting of a Kiwanis Club or Rotary Club, or lived for at least a year in a small town (college doesn't count) or in an urban neighborhood in which most of their neighbors did not have college degrees (gentrifying neighborhoods don't count). They are unlikely to have spent at least a year with a family income less than twice the poverty line (graduate school doesn't count) or to have a close friend who is an evangelical Christian. They are unlikely to have even visited a factory floor, let alone worked on one…”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/10/22/AR2010102202873_Comments.html



Cassi Creek: this article does have some foundation in truth. I’m glad it does. I’d hate to look in the mirror and discover that I have somehow become the person Murray claims to be the “normal, real American.”

Murray seems to feel that “Real Americans.” So defined by him, along with Palin, Beck, and the rests of the theocrats/pseudo-patriots, should all be evangelical Christians, rabid supporters of professional athletic franchises, and should aspire to live in rural, small towns.

I did not intend to live or work in small towns when I graduated university with a degree in laboratory medicine; paid for with scholarships and a watered-down Vietnam –era GI Bill. What I learned, by actually working in and trying to live in multiple small towns is that people who move into town may never achieve membership. Unless one belongs to the local country club or the dominant local church, one remains a stranger. In rejecting the country music, high school football idiocy, NASCAR mania that pervades such places, one is rejecting the town as well.

While Murray may find that he can attend a university to obtain education and then ignore that education for purposes of living, life-style, recreation, dining, shopping, and socialization; I have to wonder as Murray works for a right wing think tank that is based in the DC metro area. Like Palin, Beck, and all the other Tea Party non-leaders, the pull of dollars and city lights is easily overwhelming the “down-home” real America he proclaims normal and mainstream.

The “new elite” are very much aware of rural America, corporate sports, religion controlling education, negating science, and whatever MMA signifies.

I worked in a profession with many acronyms, most of which stand for things Murray’s real America mind can’t begin to fathom.

I never really viewed myself as a member of an elite. I find, reading his column that I’m happy someone else considers me to be of the elite. Thanks, Murray, for reminding me how hard I worked to avoid being like you, Beck, Palin, and the rest of the lumpen proletariat.