Came here through Fray-watch so may be late to the game, but (and I'll be forward with my perspective) one thing that strikes me in this whole discussion is how easily the Conservative slant ignores the fundamentally pure-Conservative ideal of the "free market".
Of course, the job market isn't going to be a perfect "free market" (and academia can be argued to be somewhat more socialist than the corporate market) but that cheese-eating fop is gainfully employed by somebody (to the anti-intellectuals' disdain, I'm sure, though possibly earning less than many of these salt-of-the-earth business-owners despite being highly "credentialed"). How can free market economics suddenly not apply in possibly the most fundamental market that everybody has to contend with? Christopher Hitchens (earlier cited, I believe, as just such an intellectual) writes material that is highly read (and was specifically selected for a highly exclusive publisher because of his popularity) and he falls into the category of one who sits and thinks and writes. And yet he's doing (I imagine) quite well for himself because people are electing to spend time and money that they've earned through their means on material he has produced. Should he be criticized for this?
Or how about the opposite angle? Those that do produce cars or corn or whatever else? I guess it's not applicable that both industries (in America) are highly subsidized to allow the hard-working to continue making money to put into the economy (the hard-working are benefiting from socialism). Hey, in the 30s it was the hard-working blue-collar ditch-diggers (and re-fillers) that earned money to plug back into the economy to get America back on track, but it was FDR (certainly an intellectual) and his team that had the capacity to come up with and implement the recovery plans.
This discussion comes down to the economy and production and who's pulling their weight for what they get (arguably the cornerstone of the blue-collar vs. white-collar divide) and the problem is that it's difficult for white-collars (and academics) to appreciate the blue-collar effort (though they can certainly see and touch the output itself). But the other side is that blue-collars seemingly don't even realize white-collar output (which often can't be seen or touched, much less appreciated), and this is where anti-intellectualism (or elitism and all similar class war terms) comes from.
Yes, we need food and cars and places to live and things to build the places we live and stuff to power the whole lot of it. However, just as vitally, we also need the consumption of these things, the capacity to produce these things, the desire of these things, etc. etc. We can have all the cars in the world and it won't matter if nobody wants one (or a new / better one) or can't afford one etc. (Bernanke would qualify, I'd imagine, as an intellectual, and his role is facilitating production and consumption is clearly vital).
And I guess this is also why there's this schism ... blue-collar work parallels engineering in a manner (engineers are conservatives, remember?) because the tasks are often clear and the criteria for success and failure are observable and testable, which sits well with the conservative ideal of order. Intellectual work becomes much fuzzier. The tasks are nowhere near as clear and the metrics for success and failure are near incomprehensible, if existent at all (I mean, there's no schematic to managing the US economy and the metrics of success are very soft, as in unemployment, the DOW, consumption, GDP, etc.).
