What's Dumb About the "Elitism" Debate

Yesterday on MSNBC's Morning Joe, the eponymous Joe Scarborough and his colleague Mika Brzezinski were having an intellectual smack-down over Hillary's emblematic gas tax holiday scheme, and whether it grew from the candidate's desire to help the little guy or her own political future. Personally, I think it's the latter, but I was impressed by the heartfelt and persuasive arguments on both sides -- that is, until Scarborough launched into a familiar and tired GOP talking point. People who've gone to "Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia..." he lectured -- in other words, "experts" -- think they know so much more than people who haven't. This was an attempt to shut down his co-anchor with a truthiness-rich but fact-poor argument that Hillary, Yale Law Class of '73, has been making a lot lately. It didn't work, and the subject changed, but how I wish someone had said this:

You know what, Joe? There's a good chance that graduates of the best universities in the country do know more than people who haven't. Or maybe they don't. It depends on how well they were paying attention, how hard they worked and how smart they were to begin with. But mostly, it depends on their attitude toward the facts they pick up. Because if there's one thing we've learned over the last seven-plus years, from a Yale and Harvard grad who's made it clear he doesn't believe in them, a supposed real guy who shoots from the hip and decides from the gut, is this: Facts are not bad things. We should not have an aversion to them, or the people who take them seriously when forming policy. And I can't take another day of listening to talking heads championing the virtues of knowing nothing.

Maybe I shouldn't get so steamed about the subject. Maybe it's better just to laugh. Jon Stewart did a riff on this subject last week in a Daily Show segment on the federal government's 11-year-long, $1.3 billion abstinence-only education program, and how it's failed. Inevitably, a Republican Congressman referred to the "people who maybe have degrees in this field" as "elitist" because they think they know more about the subject than parents. To which Stewart added "And I don't like these elitist airline pilots with their locked doors and ability to fly planes. I think I know how to fly my own children through the air!" What more can you say? Snap.

Okay, how about this: Since when did real life experience and education become mutually exclusive? This line of unreason gets trotted out every time a candidate has an unpopular or unworkable idea to sell, or needs to defend a bad plan that predictably didn't pan out. It's a dead giveaway that the policy in question is bull (read: gas tax holiday). When we hear a candidate say that "experts don't know anything," or "I'm not throwing my lot in with the experts," we should vow to do the opposite of what the speaker wants. It's that simple.

But suppose the person making the argument for being uninformed defends it by saying that "Highly-educated people don't know how real people live, because they've spent their lives in ivory towers." In that case, you'd want to know that the candidate backed by the experts understands the concerns of working people. So Sleeping Beauty? Don't vote for her; she doesn't get the pain at the pump. But say the candidate is someone raised by a single mother in the heartland; has worked hard all his life; traveled throughout the world from an early age; and has overcome adversity to gain entrance into one of those hallowed halls of higher learning so decried by Joe Scarborough. No one could call that person "elitist," could they?

Comments

[RRonin]

This country was founded by elitists. A bunch of smart fellows with much more education that the average joe of their time. Smart fellows who relied on "experts" like John Locke. Thank God for those elitists we came to call the Founding Fathers!

[moda31]

what ISN'T dumb about the "elitism" debate?

[KillTheMessenger]

The weird thing about the gas tax debate is that educated people know for years that peak oil is upon us (since 1956 to be more precise), that they have the intellectual ability to say "Party is over" and then to move on with their lives, that they have the chump change to buy a hybrid and the mindset to do so because it is good for their finances and the environment.

Meanwhile Joe Blue has neither the time or the background to inform himself (yes, it does take some logical skills to understand how oil exploration and geology work and it does take time to browse the internet and go to the library), often enough lacks the foresight and means to plan ahead and then gets caught in some perfectly avoidable perfect storm for which he does not have the economic standing power to get through without major damage to his life.

At the same time the same Joe Blue has a built in aversion against authority and does not like to listen to those people who actually could help him EARLY and effectively because they KNOW and have figured it out a long time ago.

So Joe gets hammered, yet again, without even understanding what hit him, which will make him ever more weary of listening to anyone but his equally uninformed "friends" who are suffering the same fate.

It's rinse and repeat from there.

[sharpz111]

Whereas we should champion John McCain who brags about coming bottom of his (elite) naval academy class with oh so folksy charm.

Being President of the United States of America is all about being strong of character, a leader, a good decision maker, and yes in this world of global peril it doesn't hurt to be educated.

This is a case of 'reverse-elitism' were parents desperately try to give their kids the best education possible, so that they can be intelligent and prosperous, go to Ivy League universities if it's what they are good at, work hard and live enjoyable lives.

But if they should use their education for good, sometimes in order to advise others from their own experience and expertise, well I'll be damned...that means they think they are better than us!

How wrong.

[KillTheMessenger]

You would be surprised how many parents thereare who operate on the premise "My sun/daughter will NOT know more than me!" and "My grandfather was a miner, my father was a miner, I am a miner and, so God help me, being a miner is good enough for my son!".

I did not believe it until I heard it from several people my parents know.

[holleyc]

Amen! Obama should call her out on this. He needs to ask voters if she is going to pluck one of the beer swilling nascar loving uneducated "working class" white men from Indiana to be her secretary of state. treasury, justice department, war, housing, head of important government agency, etc. I sure hope not. I like to have people who know what there doing running things. For the last 8 years we have experienced "If I say it is so" leadership and what do we have to show for it? You wouldn't let someone give you a heart transplant who never went to medical school would you?