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The other day I ran across some right-thinking rant
about the elite media,
and it named a few: the New
York Times, of course, as well as the Boston Globe, the
Washington Post and the old Big Three television
networks.
The author of that essay obviously did not use
elite
as a term of admiration or affection, but as a
pejorative, and it made me wonder: When did elite
turn from a desirable status into an undesirable one? Just
what do these writers mean by elite
when they're
attacking the elite media
-- a term that some
correspondents apply even to me and this newspaper.
For my part, I feel flattered to be part of any elite, but also disappointed, because I had always hoped that being in the elite would mean living in a house with more than one bathroom and owning a car that was made in this millennium.
In my general understanding of the term, elite
means the cream of the crop, and by extension, something
for a small, selective group. That hardly fits the New York
Times, or any other general-circulation newspaper,
including this one. They don't restrict their circulation
to the 400 people who could fit in Mrs. Astor's ballroom --
they're available, in their cities, for pocket change.
Granted, many publications boast about the affluence and education of their subscribers, because advertisers like to reach people with disposable income who buy something beyond the bare necessities of life.
One daily newspaper brags that its regular readers
have an average household income of $234,000 and average
nearly $2.1 million in net worth.
This affluent
individual consumers
are clearly among the American
elite, since the median American household income was
$43,151 in 2000, and less than 5 percent enjoyed incomes of
$234,000 or more. Much the same holds for household net
worth, where the American median in 1998 was $55,000.
Obviously, the Wall Street Journal is a publication
designed to serve the elite, and I seldom see anyone
criticize the Journal as part of the elite
media.
The elite media
claim sounds even weirder when
applied to television networks. If they were elite,
wouldn't they cater to a small, snobbish, tasteful
audience? What kind of elite offers swill like
Bachelorette,
Wife Swap
and Fear
Factor
?
Oh, but maybe they're talking about the news operations,
not the entertainment programming. And have you noticed any
of these elite media
dealing with books or ideas,
rather than celebrities and disasters? Didn't think so, and
besides, the critics of elite media
seldom if ever
include Rupert Murdoch's Fox News.
It's obvious that what they're really complaining about
is not elite media,
but that old Republican
bogeyman, the liberal media.
It's not as though the
GOP really has anything against elites, no matter how much
caterwauling about elites we hear from conservative
candidates.
Consider one craving from the right wing: repeal of the
death tax,
more properly the federal estate
tax,
since it taxes not death but assets passed to a
new generation. It applies to only the wealthiest two
percent of Americans. In other words, repeal is a
protect the fortunes of the elite
measure, not some
measure to better the lot of the other 98 percent of
America.
Recently, President George W. Bush (a simple
anti-elitist man of the people, of course) started
promoting tort reform,
especially in cases of
medical malpractice and product liability. There's just way
too much money being paid out to poor people who have been
maimed and impoverished, and that's bad for American
commerce.
There's doubtless some truth to that, since physicians
and corporations pass the costs of their malfeasance along
to their customers. But who hands out those
multi-million-dollar awards? It's not some elite conclave
of evil trial lawyers.
Those decisions are made by
juries, average normal American citizens. It's about as
non-elite a process as you can imagine -- and yet the
critics of this aspect of our judicial system are often the
same people who denounce elites.
As the great-grandson of a Populist, I have nothing against bashing the ruling elites in this country. It's an honorable American political tradition that goes back, at least, to Thomas Jefferson and his rallying of western farmers against the Federalist coastal elites of the day.
But I do wish that the word were used correctly -- as it is, instead of bashing the elites, Americans fall right into their elitist plans.
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