Puffin’s Place

All of the hullabaloo about Michele and Barack Obama might remind us that being among the elite is no bad thing to be. Especially when the label is applied by others.

For reasons transparently envious, the Obamas are constant targets of the unfunny (cf Joel Stein’s strained efforts to write standup in a recent LA Times piece), the resentful, the political hacks who fear competition, and all the rest of us who have been trained since the 60’s to dislike elitists and treasure the common folk holding a hotdog and perusing the Reader’s Digest.

I’ll spare both of us the tedium of definitions of the word elite, but if you want some background on the word’s use in America, check out this column by John Dean in Findlaw.

My interest here is less on defending the Obamas than on defending elitism as a characteristic whose time has come. When Hillary Clinton feels she needs to toss back shots and speak in the most opaque of cliches to conceal an educated brain, it may be time to wonder how much longer the Agnewian mantra of pointy-headed intellectuals is going to control our politics and our policies.

It’s about time we figured out a way to consistently bring to the front those among us who are bright, creative, articulate, and interested in ideas. My question is, how do we do this? How do we tell the media that we are more interested in learning about Bogota than Brittany Spears?

Frankly, I am sick to death of the common folk. And not sure I have ever met one. No Eisenhower, I do not believe “everyone is an intellectual about something.” I do, however, believe that 99% of us have something worthy to contribute to our world. To devalue this and imply—ala the media—that if you don’t rap, strip, inhale, or explore the truly tacky you are not worth notice is repulsive.

And so I suggest an operational definition of elite: to be thoughtful, demanding of one’s public figures in that they must genuinely contribute positively to public life, to be attentive to the entire world and astute in evaluating policy proposals, to notice cliches and empty phrases, to demand attention and be worth the attention, and to feel significant in all of these activities.

And to grant that seriousness and intelligence and articulateness are not only acceptable but required.

Don’t let the sophist, timid bastards get you down. Be elite.