I'm sorry, but no matter how much you might protest you are an intellectual. Frankly your post illustrates nicely the bizarre rhetorical and ideological game Republicans have played for years now (and which have reached their zenith with Sarah Palin's nomination). Nothing is more strange than watching articulate, educated, affluent conservative media intellectuals (and if you have a place at the table then you probably are one) denigrate being articulate, educated, and intellectual. Sure, if you decide to define "intellectual" in the narrowest and most ideologically frought possible way (wine sipping, cheese eating, evening wear wearing, ivy league college professors and journalists who write for Vanity Fair) then you probably are not one (and by that deffinition there are probably only about 200 in existance). If you were being honest, though, you would cop to being what you manifestly are by any reasonable yard stick: an intellectual. I've read your peices, and you have about as much in common with Sarah Palin as Batman, I don't care where you grew up. Being conservative does not make a person stupid, but by the same token they don't get to disqualify themselves from being intellectuals because they have a soft spot for people who like Nascar and shop at Wal-Mart. Grow up and own it.

Bravo

Very nicely and consisely written

The point is she is NOT claiming that she IS an intellectual and her opponents are a bunch of inbred hillbillies if they disagree with her - that is a game the left likes to play.

And there's no shame in being modest. One should sit at the foot of the table, and all.

Lefties don't claim to be intellectuals. We value intellectual curiousity. It is conservatives who claim that this is the same as intellectual elitism.

No there is no shame in being modest. But Palin and GWB are hardly "sitting at the foot of the table". If anything, Palin's failure to "blink" despite really not having the requisite qualifications or knowledge is the antithesis of sitting at the foot of the table.

That's the kid jumping up and down yelling "ooh ooh ooh Pick ME!! Pick ME!!! OOOHHH! He Picked MEEE!!!!

mattcable. Just because you are rich and educated does not mean you are an elitist. This is the part that you don't get. I will try to explain my view of elitism to you, perhaps it is similar to the view of others that view elitists as a really annoyance and threat to society.

An elitist is not somebody who has succeeded, you can have a degree and still be grounded. An elitist is a person who thinks that the degree makes them something special. A PHD means nothing as far as the quality of a person or his knowledge of a certain job goes. People with PHD's can be just as bad as those without degrees, child molestors, rapists, thieves, and liars. Nor does a PHD mean anything in the realm of intelligence, as much as it means you had enough money to go through the program, and you were willing to spend your nights reading the book until you could impress the professor, and eventually you were able to write a book. Did you actually learn anything, or prove yourself smarter than another person? No not necessarily. Yet, some of the educated, especially the wealthy leaders of the democratic party go around claiming that because they have a piece of paper with their name on it that they are smart, and know more than the average person. Granted I only got a B.A. But I can tell you that it was not all that informative. I got through by reading until I understood, and studying until I could pass the tests, not because I am somehow smarter than anybody else, and once I graduated I didn't suddenly change into a superior human, amazingly I was the same old me with the same flaws and strengths. A college degree gives you membership into the good ol boys club, I am first in line to get jobs over people that do not have a degree, even if it has nothing to do with the field I am in, Other graduates look at me with more respect, are more willing to see my failure as the fault of the system, and not my own fault, they are more willing to help me, give me a chance, and become my friend. In the eyes of many of the educated (not all) that peice of paper makes you a 1st class citizen, and the rest are 2nd class losers, who should go to college.

@Mattcable: Excellently put. The biggest liars in this business are the conservative elites, be they in politics or the media, who consistently use the shorthand "liberal media" or "eastern elites" to trash the other side. The Sarah Palins and Ann Coulters, who certainly know better, are intentionally using the hatred of the non-elite against their opponents. All the while, the conservative elites at Goldman Sachs have been robbing them blind.

@patron002: Your argument abounds in the red herrings and strawmen that are the biggest problems with this pointless culture war. I know of very few people that actually believe, "X has a degree, and is therefore a better, more intelligent person than Y." You use your own experience of getting/having a BA to prove your point, but let me explain where your argument gets muddy:

When choosing an employee, most bosses don't necessarily decide based on whether this person knows more about the field or is more intelligent than the other candidates, rather that they can be depended on to show up and work hard, and be willing and able to learn the rest. Your holding a BA from a known university automatically tells a boss that:

a) You showed up often enough to class to get credit.

b) You did the work, then learned and retained enough to pass tests over it. And most importantly

c) Day in, day out, you did what you were told when it mattered.

Like you said, this doesn't make you a better person, or even a smarter one, but it means you are more qualified for a job than your fellow applicants who didn't do these things. No one faults bosses for making decisions this way.

When you extrapolate from here to PhDs who know nothing, your argument goes from apples and oranges to silly. A PhD in a field isn't about having money and a lot of reading and then magically "writing a book." A PhD says that you have focused on a certain topic, learned (yes, learned!) and digested everything that has previously been done in this area, and then added uniquely and originally to this body of knowledge. And then you've passed through the gauntlet of a highly knowledgeable committee poking holes in your work, coming through with dignity intact. All of it points to the highest level of academic achievement and a reliable marker of being an expert in your field.

Again, this is about qualification. We want PhDs with relevant expertise to be making decisions about our most pressing and complex issues, and we can only hope that the people with the money and power respect the opinions of those experts. Yes, climate scientists with PhDs can have a certain ideological slant, but it is correct to say that their opinion is more valuable than say, Andrew Schlafy's, in matters regarding climate change.

Where this entire culture war hs gone off the rails is when the Sarah Palin's of the world can say, "I'm not one of those people who [fill in the blank with a certain mark of achievement]," and this counts as expertise and qualification. It is not; it only evidences a lack of respect for the people who know things. It shows that were she making decisions of great importance, loyalty and ideology would matter more than expertise. This is how faulty wars come about, and how nations get run into the ground.

Nope. An elitist is someone who has a better education than you and who opposes your ideas. So you want to discredit their ideas but lack the intellectual horsepower to do so.

so you call them elitist as a way of using ad hominem and guilt by association to taint their idea.

A college degree gave you the opportunity to get an education. That you did not take advantage of it at the time, is not the University's fault.

You do have a point about the doors a Uni degree opens - but in a "marketplace of ideas" it does so because the odds are that you are a much more productive worker than someone without a degree. And absent other compelling indicators, that statistical reality will take the day.