Elite world of hypocrisy

lewleadbeater.com

notes from the edge

Home

Email Me

				THE
Column Archive				VIRGINIA GAZETTE
				WILLIAMSBURG, VIRGINIA
Elite world of hypocrisy				September 13, 2008

By way of a true confession, I must admit that I would like to become a member of the Eastern media elite.

I have no idea who the Eastern media elite are, but the nomenclature is so snazzy, so haut mondeish that I figure these people are where it’s at mediawise.

What really got me interested in the Eastern media elite was the fact that at the Republican convention three speakers in a row - Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Sarah Palin - all agreed that what was blitzing honest, debt-free, God-fearing government was the Eastern media elite.

It’s not the administration of George Bush, or the war in Iraq or our insuperable deficits that are gutting us. No, it’s the Eastern media elite, which must be one powerful bunch of dudes. But how do you become a member?

At first I decided that as long as I wrote for a paper in the East that was certainly part of the media I might automatically be a member. But was it elite?

I never considered the word “elite” to be necessarily pejorative, but after listening to all those peace-loving, folksy, down-to-earth Republicans snarling every time they said it, I came to realize that elite symbolized for them everything that was opposed to their dreamy proposals to make life more Edenic for the lower classes.

Evidently papers like The New York Times and The Washington Post are elite because they frequently found fault with the policies of Republicans like Richard Nixon and George Bush. The Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Post aren’t elite because they favor Republican positions.

But where does that leave the Gazette? While it certainly doesn’t oppose all things Republican, it has, like most reputable papers, vetted candidates from both parties and on occasion has endorsed a Democrat. Ergo, it must, by Republican definition, be moderately elite.

So I guess I’ve at least got my foot in the door of the high-power lunch bunch and the iconoclastic clubbies who are wreaking havoc on the Republicans’ Nirvana.

What really riled the Republicans was that the Eastern media elite were digging up stuff about Sarah Palin that the McCain machine would prefer remain in the closet with most of Alaska’s gay crowd.

While, as a quasi elitist, I think that Palin’s family situation and her daughter’s pregnancy are nobody’s business, I do find some of her ideological positions troubling. They are too reminiscent of the economic and socially regressive stances taken by people like Del. Brenda Pogge and Del. Robert Marshall in the Virginia General Assembly.

Yet, we elitists are not surprised that Palin follows the Republican line on abortion or gay rights. Or that her energy policy consists of drilling the polar bears out of Alaska. Or that she can fathom God’s will relative to building a gas pipeline in her state. Or that it is no fault of humans that global warming is gradually making mush out of Arctic ice mountains. Or that creationism should supplant evolution in biology classes.

No, what really builds a fire in my elitist belly is that, as mayor of Wasilla, Palin tried unsuccessfully to fire the librarian of Wasilla’s public library because she hadn’t given her “full support” to the mayor. According to CBS News and the AP, Palin had asked the librarian, Mary Ellen Baker, “rhetorical” questions about removing books from library shelves. Baker replied that she opposed such efforts.

And that is why I find Sarah Palin frightening.

There are two groups of people you don’t fuss with: teachers and librarians. And there are two constitutional rights that must be inviolate: freedom of the press and freedom of speech.

Librarians have always been frontliners in the battle to maintain our freedom to read what we wish. It was the elitist American Library Association that, along with others, established Banned Book Week in order to highlight the wars librarians wage against those who would impose their own ideology on the availability of reading material to the public.

In response to the Palin flap, Jim Rettig, chairman of the ALA in Richmond, replied that “Most librarians, if they got that sort of question, would be curious as to what the intent of the questioner was. We don’t allow one individual or group of people to dictate what people can or cannot read.”

Despite the efforts of the Eastern media elite, I suspect that attempts to fire a librarian will not be one of the primary issues driving this election. Yet, as an almost-elitist, I have to wonder what dark shadows lurk in the minds of putative political imperialists who feel that they have the right to run roughshod over librarians and the books they protect.

We have now had eight years of a president who makes decisions on the basis of his access to God’s ear and who finds the printed word discomfiting. Are we really ready for a potential president who trumps him in both those areas?