I kind of agree with the LATimes article.

In any case, the droppings of Millbank in WaPo and the Dowd's columns in the NYT, etc., strongly suggest that Democrat is the new Black among the elitists of the media.

You're right; it's a conservative thing. It's also a Hillary Clinton thing. Or are the two the same thing now?

Kevin,

I agree with you re the LA Times quote, but am not sure how that point has anything to do with the Sullivan quote.

I will point out that Obama himself denied the elitist thing was racism when asked, he said instead it was politics.

The comment about elitism and Obama is one degree removed from comments like the 'boy' one made by Rep. Geoff Davis (R-KY) for which he had to profusely apologize. The elitist comment was not a casual aside, it was well thought out before Clinton or McCain spoke about it, and if its potential to be considered a racist comment was not considered, then those who are prepping the presidential candidates are not doing their jobs.

Actually, contrasting Obama's background with the sterling backgrounds of both Hillary and McCain, makes the remark all the more ludicrous.

You've probably already seen this, but Eric Alterman did a great dissection of this "Liberal Elite" nonsense in the Nation.

I think Shipler is stretching things a bit. For example, he writes;

"A white is assertive, a black is aggressive; a white is resolute, a black is pushy; a white is candid, a black is abrasive; a white is independent, a black is not a team player. Prejudice is a shape shifter, adapting to acceptable forms."

If you substitue man for white and woman for black, you get exactly what I have personally experienced for the last 30 years.

The elitist = arrogant = uppity is a bit of a stretch.

John Stewart's comment on "elitism" on the daily show on 4/14 were devastating.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIu38d3ehVY

Don't even get me started about MoDo today. She's worse than Kristol. Kevin's right about the elitist thing. The GOP always does it and the media elite always falls in line. But so what? Is that what really sunk Kerry and Dukakis? No. Just like it wasn't "value voters" who played the crucial role in 2004, either. Believe it or not, voters make their decision for other stupid reaons then whether someone's an elitist. This sort of thing works around the margins. But it's easy for the media to process and the Dems are so rattled after losing the White house tome and again they'll believe anything.

When "elite" is used disparagingly by politician/pundits, I think it's code for "mister smarty-pants who worked his way through grad school and now thinks he knows everything but probably can't tie his own shoes." It's anti-intellectualism, pure and simple.

Lost in all of this (and something that Sully barely touches on in his quote) is who's pushing this "media firestorm": the Village Elite themselves. And I'd think that It'd do all the candidates a favor and push back against the Punditocracy that is trying to make this crap stick.

(unless, of course, you're John "Free Ride/eight houses" McCain)

Oh, racism, pooh pooh. Elitism is a charge leveled against Democrats all the time (see John Kerry, wine and cheese liberals and so forth.) Only Republican elites are good ole boys. Democrats must be made to look as somehow or other against the small guy, and Republicans are always for the small guy, regardless of actual behavior.

I think that unfortunately Clinton has learned from the Republican playbook, so she sounds like a Republican, which is a big turn-off. Too bad, Hillary, we kinda liked ye.

Sorry. That was me at 12:34.

I'm with Joe. The two quotes aren't really comparable. Sullivan isn't talking about race at all. He's talking about Beltway elites: talking heads who want to define the campaign narrative.

count me in the camp that elite is NOT a racist codeword. It's an attack on education and intellectualism, pure and simple.
as for the sullivan quote, he's right. it's only the beltway pundit elite who cares about this stuff. the polls are all suggesting that most people were unaffected by obama's comment.

Gotta agree that turning over the "elitist" charge does not reveal definite racism. Like Snarkworth says, it's anti-intellectualism, or, as is probably more accurate for Republicans, anti-85-or-better-IQism.

I have been interested, however, to probe the thoughts of the people who've been calling Obama "arrogant," a very different word than "elitist" (Shipler's argument notwithstanding) and one that doesn't seem to apply to the way Obama conducts himself. Usually these people can't say why they think he's arrogant: "He just is." Occasionally someone says they just "don't think he has any business running" and declines to go further into that.

An argument against his record? Maybe--people do make that case--but then why not just say so? So is it against his youth? Race? The nerve of him running this year when it's Clinton's "turn"? Depending on who's talking, it touches on some or all of the above, but to what extent we'll never know...and under the circumstances, it may not matter in the end.

Yeah, it's pretty dumb seeing "elitist" as "uppity".

Someone needs to go back to the Idea Store before writing again.

Arrogant is a codeword for I don;t like him but I can't point at anything so I call him something no one can prove

Like Hillary is shrill, you know

shortstop: probably more accurate for Republicans, anti-85-or-better-IQism

Now that's elitism! Not saying you're wrong or anything...

"Elite" and "uppity" are not synonymous! "Uppity" implies someone who "forgot where they came from." Elite implies someone who never knew.

Yes. It's a conservative thing. But it's also unfair and stupid. So if Obama supporters come up with a workable retort, I don't care how stupid it is. Let the #$%$% republicans try to give answers to pointless questions for a while. "Sen. McCain, you've called Obama elitist. But can you prove that you're not being a racist?" It isn't fair, but once you go down the stupid path, you don't get to complain about the blow back questions. (I feel the same way about Sen. Clinton's irratible responses to questions about the last time she's shot a gun or been in church.)

I'd suggest it's a topping and a floor wax.

LOL....Good one BGRS.

It's possible though that you never knew because you forgot where you came from. Sorta like memory loss or something.

If I sound like I'm on drugs today, it's 'cuz I am. I had emergency oral surgery yesterday.

I agree with you for the most part, or to a degree ( yes- the right always portrays liberals as elitists, and yes racism runs much deeper and deserves not to be used as a straw man) ... but there certainly have been incidents and exchanges, particularly one I recall a week or two ago...Buchanan, Matthews and some other dolt had gotten wound up in a similar fashion, possibly associated with this...but it was about Obama, and his petulant arrogance...which could have easily been replaced with "uppity". It was a disgraceful exchange. To his credit, a few weeks prior to that little out burst of absurdity, Bill Press out right called Buchanan a racist on the Mathews show, right to his face...outstanding. I have not seen those two appear together, but I am sure they know how they feel about these issues.

Racist thing or conservative thing?

I'd say that's a false dichotomy. It's actually BOTH. Racism has always been a big part of being conservative in this country. Hillary's just positioning herself as the more conservative of the two Democratic candidates. Thus, the coded language.

Hey BGRS, hope you're feeling better!

I'd really like to see this silliness stopped.

I agree with you Kevin, but it won’t stop. People are looking for it, and justifiably so. And each of us believes that we are good at spotting genuine racial bias.

I’ll give you an example. Me. I’ve lived among African Americans most of my life. Politics-wise, I’ve not only voted for them, but campaigned for them, even recruited them to run for office. According to me, I outgrew my racial prejudices long ago, realizing that a human is a human and every race has all the pluses and minuses of every other race.

Note that word “minuses”? Along with outstanding Black politicians, I have observed some big disappointments. Surprise, surprise, Black politicians are just like White, Brown, and Yellow. I’ve seen them play the race card many times. The fact that White politicians have historically been able to play the race card much more successfully and ruthlessly (on the whole) does not mean that they have a monopoly.

I think it would be a great idea if you were to reexamine your own posts regarding the race card. You are a very reasonable guy. But like a lot of observers, I think you missed the elephant in the room with regard to race in this campaign.

Your first comment regarding this subject was posted on January 11, in the wake of the New Hampshire primary. You mentioned the following “code words”: shuck and jive, kid, pickup basketball in Harvard, lynch him in a back alley, and it took a president to get it done.

Let’s take them in chronological order:

Pickup basketball at Harvard: Karl Rove quoted in the Wall Street Journal. My thought is that he wanted to stir up trouble among the democrats. Of couse, his buddy Dick Morris also tried to hem the Clintons in by (so impressively) predicting that racial code words would slip out of the Clinton campaign.

Lynch him in a back alley: a sports lady taking about Tiger Woods.

it took a president to get it done Thoughtful people like Kevin Drum and Josh Marshall exonerated Hillary on this one, but it no doubt contributed to the “too many incidents to be a coincidence” meme.

Kid: Donna Brazile on the night of the New Hampshire primary scolding Bill Clinton. She evidently fabricated this quote because Bill Clinton did not call Obama a kid.

Shuck and jive: Andrew Cuomo the morning after the New Hampshire primary. With no reference to Obama, you obviously, you have to make some assumptions and you are left wondering. Note this got a huge amount of commentary in both the MSM and the left of center blogosphere. Note that at the same time Andrew made that statement to a reporter, Jesse Jackson Jr. was on TV exhorting African Americans in South Carolina to vote for Obama, citing a bogus reason, i.e., that Hillary had no tears for Hurricane Katrina victims. Note that the MSM and the blogosphere hardly noticed.

But I assure you that Bill Clinton noticed and he, like me, knew what was likely to happen in South Carolina as the Obama campaign fanned the race card flames. People would blame the Clintons. Bill probably thought he was pointing out the obvious when he made the Jesse Jackson comment after the primary. Obama had asked for a bloc Black vote and he got it.

Liberal children, blathering on about topics with which they are even less acquainted than with work or soap. To be called an elitist, one must actually be elite, and I don't think this beanstalk fellow with the melodious name and shady antecedents really qualifies, do you?

I have nothing against people who went to Harvard outside the legacy program, but let's not pretend that writing a book about pot-hazy dreams and making a mint off it from the more gullible patrons of the Borders $5 or less table is the same thing as having been born into one of the families that actually built this country, have always known how to leverage its resources and have kept its wartime industries humming.

Words mean something, liberal loons. Obama may have "upstart," "pretender" or "newly solvent," but he may not have "elitist."

Thanks GOD. About the only thing I'm feeling right now is my hair growing. You gave us these pretty flowers, and we made opiates from them, so...thanks!

This is a conservative thing, not a racial thing.

maybe conservatives could use that argument to defend themselves against charges of racism!

we're not racists, we're merely frauds!

Blue Girl: If I sound like I'm on drugs today, it's 'cuz I am. Hope you're feeling better, 'cuz I'm on my way over to share!

Hey BGRS - did you have to get a crown? Are you gonna have to have another fund raiser?

Racism has always been a big part of being conservative in this country.

More precisely prejudice seems to go along with authoritarism. Authoritarians make up a significant part of the modern Republican party but they are not really 'conservatives.' Before Reagan many of the authoritarians were Southern Democrats.

Lumping conservatives in with authoritarians pisses off the rational conservatives.

Norman Rogers- you should be the only commentator allowed to engage in parody. You roll me, man!

I think you're partly right about elitist (that is right out of the Republican playbook when running against Dems), but do you really think the "arrogant" meme is so racially-neutral? One could pretty easily call most presidential candidates arrogant, after all (it's pretty arrogant to think that you are the best one to lead the country). Bush seems pretty arrogant to me.

Yet it's only Obama who's being tagged with the word, and it is just the kind of code word for "uppity" that people can get away with.

Maybe I'm just imagining it. I wonder if someone did Nexus searches with "arrogant" and "name of black politician" if there would be far more hits than for "arrogant" and "name of white politician", though.

All I can say is that when I saw the hed on Will's column, "Candidate on a High Horse," it took me a millisecond to, um, connect the dots. Now, I know Will didn't write the hed--but it has the air of a collective Freudian slip of WaPo culture.

I noticed, too, that Will had no compunctions about celebrating the folks in Muncie, IN, as real Murricans and the good people of San Francisco as, uh, bitter, anti-American liberals.

Bow-tied twit. What a ceaseless plague Will is on our commentariat.

Well Norm, it is after all the meme your ilk is spreading, the fake reporters/pundits that pretend like they have some understanding of the workings that turn the cogs of nation building, and they are as phony as you sound.

; it's a conservative thing. It's also a Hillary Clinton thing. Or are the two the same thing now?
-------------

The hate Clinton crowd have long since turned into mouth breathing dittoheads, so they have a hell of a nerve saying HC sounds like a con.

One used to have to go to Free Republic to see the wholesale nutjob Clinton conspiracy theories that are commonplace on lefty blogs now.

benmerc - don't diss our Normie, he's our favorite parody troll. And you really gotta check out his web site. And leave a nice compliment comment.

Quick! Get a séance started! We need to confer with Leona Helmsley on this issue...

Weenie,
If you weren't such an elitist you'd know there's only one s in "dis."

As a primary tactic, the 'elitist' tag is race-gaming, and clever race-gaming.

It's not about turning out white bigots, it's about persuading black voters to tune out.

It translates to 'not really black' or 'not black enough', and it's a transparent attempt to separate Obama from his strongest voting bloc, a demographic that, if it stays home, tilts the primary playing field in Mrs. Clinton's direction.

Well optical, he did get a bit under the skin, but Normie is probably just fallen old money, or some over educated right wing libertarian with a compound carved into the side of a mountain in Colorado or maybe just inside a Starbucks, who knows where these trolls lurk out. Nevertheless,last time I checked, it was the three hundred years of free labor and a continent of stolen land that jump started this menagerie of empire, nothing more needed then the greed of wealth. Or maybe it is a double parody, and the whole friggin' thing went right over my head, which is also fine.

If you don't pronounce it "e-light," you probably wouldn't understand.

Certainly it hurt him, but it just wasn't that big a deal to differentiate him from Beltway Juan McCain or Hillary.

matt,

Bush seems pretty arrogant to me.

Haven't you been paying attention?! W has a ranch in Texas (chich he bought months before the 2000 election). W talks like a hick (even though he was raised in Connecticut. Shoot man, even Poppy Bush said his favorite snack was pork rinds.

See when you are are rich white man you can get away with fake hickitude. Women and people of color can't do that. Hillary looked silly drinking a beer and a shot. Obama would probably look even worse.

Holy oleo, I must be having some of what optical weenie and bgrs are having!

Actually not, I swear, but typing too fast and not previewing sure makes me look dopey.

Tripp - its Thersites and BGRS who are doing the drugs today.

Weenie,
If you weren't such an elitist you'd know there's only one s in "dis."
Posted by: thersites on April 16, 2008 at 3:51 PM

My bad, I'm not well versed in street talk, cause I spend most of my free time gardening.

I guess the code words can be decoded only by those for whom they are intended. The crowd here does not seem to fall into that category in this instance.

I suspect the Republicans know every meme, word, idea or color that their electorate identify with and respect because the Republicans try to label all their opponents with the opposites.

rural...city
down home...uppity
common...elite
Conservative...Liberal
Southern...Yankee
Patiotic...Democrat

You name it they like to label opponents so the electorate won't vote for them. A voter who doesn't form their own opinions and learn independently from the Republican mouth-pieces isn't going to see the world any other way.

Of course, in light of how the Republican politicians have behaved it's hard to call them Conservative.

How can anybody in the electorate identify with people who torture or lie us into war?

BlueGal,
"Elite" and "uppity" are not synonymous! "Uppity" implies someone who "forgot where they came from." Elite implies someone who never knew.

When a white person calls a black person Uppity, does not imply they "forgot where they came" as much as "they forgot their place".
Of course there are exceptions, I heard Justice Thomas referred to being an elite uppity uncle tom
by another black man.

Yes, that is certainly true - and it has been applied the exact same way to women as well. I rather zeroed in on how the people in the rural counties where my family roots are use it - "We sacrificed to get you that education and don't you dare forget what we did for you, you little ingrate."

You are wrong in your dismissal of the racial aspect here. Calling a black man "arrogant" is akin to calling a woman "strident." One evokes historical allusions to "uppity," the other to "bitch." Note that in popular culture narratives, white men called "arrogant" bear an overt swagger and Donald Trump-ish hauteur. Black men, on the other hand, are called arrogant for a strongly stated opinion. This is history and historical association from which no American can escape.

optical weenie,

Tripp - its Thersites and BGRS who are doing the drugs today

Oops, my bad. Sorry. I'll let you get back to your (ahem) "gardening."

(Looks up and whistles softly)