“Back when Dan Quayle was criticizing sitcom heroine Murphy Brown for promoting single-parenthood in a way that could negatively affect society,” writes Elizabeth Scalia in today’s “On the Square” article, The Credentialed Gentry and the Unpersuaded Yahoos , “he was roundly jeered at for referring to those running most media and most academic institutions as ‘the cultural elite’.” But he was right, she says.
The accuracy and power of the phrase was demonstrated by the vehement denials that issued from both coasts; the very rich, very insulated people who traveled from Beverly Hills to the Upper West Side to Southampton to Telluride while associating mostly with the like-minded, insisted that there was nothing elitist in their notions or their values. They were just the kinder, gentler part of the nation and the antidote to cruel moralists who would inflict their hang-ups on others, just to keep them down.
Is there an elite, and if so why, she goes on to explore.
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