[lbo-talk] Barbara Ehrenreich to Write New York Times Column

[Carl Remick]

>From: "Carl Remick" <carlremick at hotmail.com>
>
>Enjoy Ehrenreich while you can.

[She's off to a flying start.]

July 1, 2004
OP-ED COLUMNIST

Dude, Where's That Elite?

By BARBARA EHRENREICH

You can call Michael Moore all kinds of things — loudmouthed, obnoxious and 
self-promoting, for example. The anorexic Ralph Nader, in what must be an 
all-time low for left-wing invective, has even called him fat. The one thing 
you cannot call him, though, is a member of the "liberal elite."

Sure, he's made a ton of money from his best sellers and award-winning 
documentaries. But no one can miss the fact that he's a genuine son of the 
U.S. working class — of a Flint autoworker, in fact — because it's built 
right into his "branding," along with flannel shirts and baseball caps.

My point is not to defend Moore, who — with a platoon of bodyguards and a 
legal team starring Mario Cuomo — hardly needs any muscle from me. I just 
think it's time to retire the "liberal elite" label, which, for the past 25 
years, has been deployed to denounce anyone to the left of Colin Powell. 
Thus, last winter, the ultra-elite right-wing Club for Growth dismissed 
followers of Howard Dean as a "tax-hiking, government-expanding, 
latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, 
body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing freak show." I've experienced it 
myself: speak up for the downtrodden, and someone is sure to accuse you of 
being a member of the class that's doing the trodding.

The notion of a sinister, pseudocompassionate liberal elite has been 
rebutted, most recently in Thomas Frank's brilliant new book, "What's the 
Matter With Kansas?," which says the aim is "to cast the Democrats as the 
party of a wealthy, pampered, arrogant elite that lives as far as it can 
from real Americans, and to represent Republicanism as the faith of the 
hard-working common people of the heartland, an expression of their 
unpretentious, all-American ways, just like country music and Nascar."

Like the notion of social class itself, the idea of a liberal elite 
originated on the left, among early 20th-century anarchists and Trotskyites 
who noted, correctly, that the Soviet Union was spawning a "new class" of 
power-mad bureaucrats. The Trotskyites brought this theory along with them 
when they mutated into neocons in the 60's, and it was perhaps their most 
precious contribution to the emerging American right. Backed up by the 
concept of a "liberal elite," right-wingers could crony around with their 
corporate patrons in luxuriously appointed think tanks and boardrooms — all 
the while purporting to represent the average overworked Joe.

Beyond that, the idea of a liberal elite nourishes the right's perpetual 
delusion that it is a tiny band of patriots bravely battling an evil power 
structure. Note how richly the E-word embellishes the screeds of Ann 
Coulter, Bill O'Reilly and their co-ideologues, as in books subtitled 
"Rescuing American from the Media Elite," "How Elites from Hollywood, 
Politics and the U.N. Are Subverting America," and so on. Republican 
right-wingers may control the White House, both houses of Congress and a 
good chunk of the Supreme Court, but they still enjoy portraying themselves 
as Davids up against a cosmopolitan-swilling, corgi-owning Goliath.

Yes, there are some genuinely rich folks on the left — Barbra Streisand, 
Arianna Huffington, George Soros — and for all I know, some of them are 
secret consumers of French chardonnays and loathers of televised wrestling. 
But the left I encounter on my treks across the nation is heavy on hotel 
housekeepers, community college students, laid-off steelworkers and 
underpaid schoolteachers. Even many liberal celebrities — like Jesse Jackson 
and Gloria Steinem — hail from decidedly modest circumstances. David Cobb, 
the Green Party's presidential candidate, is another proud product of 
poverty.

It's true that there are plenty of working-class people — though far from a 
majority — who will vote for Bush and the white-tie crowd that he has 
affectionately referred to as his "base." But it would be redundant to speak 
of a "conservative elite" when the ranks of our corporate rulers are packed 
tight with the kind of Republicans who routinely avoid the humiliating 
discomforts of first class for travel by private jet.

So liberals can take comfort from the fact that our most visible spokesman 
is, despite his considerable girth, an invulnerable target for the customary 
assault weapon of the right. I meant to comment on his movie, too, but the 
lines at my local theater are still prohibitively long.

###

Carl

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