And yet Rachel, I do not see a campaign ad from the left accusing conservatives of being "rednecks" or "uneducated." I do see ads from the right accusing liberals of being elitists. And for what crime do they deserve this label? Eating arugula and drinking wine.

What is arugula? Greens, just like everyone eats. It's a weed that grows on the side of the road in Italy. People walk around in the evenings and pick it for their salads. Wine is the preference of anti-elitist winos everywhere.

Yeah, I've condescended in posts. When some one calls Obama a Muslim or Arab or scary I can't help but feel that our public schools should have done just a little better job of teaching critical thinking and research skills.

I'm hardly among the elite. My parents were lower middle class, I attended public schools, I spent a career in the military, I'm still working my way through college. So I'm thinkin' (See? I drop my g's. That means I'm a woman of the people.) if I can figure this stuff out then your average American should be able to also.

I receive emails at least once a week from cowworkers and friends who tell me Obama is a Muslim who attended a Madrassa and wasn't born in the US. Is it really condescending to point out these fallacies to people?

Rachel, I think you may mistake frustration for condescension.

No, pointing out that Obama is not a Muslim is not condescending.

However, if you were to get into a debate with a coworker or friend and you told them they just didn't understand the complex issues involved, or didn't read enough to understand - that would be condescension.

I think you may mistake Larrimore for objecting to the first episode, when she is objecting to the second.

You further my point for me. Who was it that kept saying his opponent didn't understand the complex issues involved during the first presidential debate? That would be John McCain.

Personally, I have never told any of my cowworkers that they simply don't understand, but when someone says that Obama is a Muslim or he wasn't born in the US or that he's scary then it very well may be that they don't understand the not-so complex issues involved.

That or they are too lazy to do their homework.

Ms. Larrimore wasn't responding to accusations that Obama or McCain were being condescending, she was responding to the attitude adopted by Ms. Lapidos and Ms. Valbrun in talking about the lack of intelligence of Bush and Palin.

And there are plenty of people out there, not only Republicans, who are "too lazy to do their homework" and are happy to believe things, without sources, that confirm their beliefs.

The reason this is even a partisan discussion is because it's obvious that one party puts wonky eggheads up front and the other one derides them.

Don't say that there's an equivalence on this issue when there clearly isn't.

That may have been the beginning of the conversation, but I am posting to the paragraph below. When Rachel says, "...when elites and intellectuals condescend to everyone else and belittle their views..." she does not mention Palin or Bush but "elites" and "intellectuals."

This conversation moved beyond the limits of Bush/Palin into elite and intellectual. Granted, there are some pretty obnoxious conservative elites too, but I challenge you to find one who is identified in the media, any media, as such. Bush is wealthier than Kerry but he's not elite. McCain is wealthier than Obama but he is not elite. Bush went to Yale and Harvard and Adover but he's not intellectual or elite. Go figure.

I'm just catching up on the Palin-Bush "I.Q." discussion, and there is just one point (OK, maybe two) I wanted to address. Juliet, I don't know anyone who feels a "nearly blood-thirsty anger against people who read books," and I think it's an unfair characterization. What makes people angry, and blood-thirsty, if we must go there, is when elites and intellectuals condescend to everyone else and belittle their views. (A point that Melinda makes astutely in her latest post.) In this democracy of ours, we all get a vote. It doesn't matter if you have read the complete works of James and Faulkner or if the highlight of your week is the latest issue of People magazine

to speak of your fellow employees as "cowworkers." They're human, for heaven's sakes.

You're right. It's a nod to Dilbert since his cartoons are fairly descriptive of my workplace.

As I said, when people insist Obama is a Muslim and not born in America and scaarrrryyyy, which 99% of my fellow employees do, then I tend to be condescending.

/giggle

I’d like to see Obama’s Birth Certificate posted online, studied and certified by independent experts, but I’m a redneck.

Can you be an intellection if you ignore the consensus of experts in economics, as does Obama when it comes to his Keynesian economic plan? Or do Obama’s irrational economic policies just make him a close-minded dogmatic leftist?

Is it elitist to prefer more government over less government, because the masses are to ignorant to enjoy unalienable civil rights, free market liberty and constitutional protections?

Dearest, you can be an "intellection" all you want and you just never mind those nasty old liberals.

Sheeple is still a little too harsh, I guess, and dittoheads has been claimed by the Rush Limbaugh crowd. That leaves cow-words to work with.

A couple of weeks ago, I watched a "tea bagger" candidate who's going to seek the GOP nomination for Governor of Maryland tell his audience that Democrats should be given a frontal lobotomy.

The sad thing is the hypocricy of conservatives who eat this stuff up and then cry like stuck pigs at even the mildest criticism from the other side.