Elites
The reaction to Michelle Wolf is even weirder than I thought.
FULL disclosure: I have never been to a White House Correspondents’ Dinner; I will never go to a White House Correspondents’ Dinner. The American political press already has a bias toward reverence and access preservation; journalists yukking it up with powerful people whom they are supposed to cover impartially is unseemly. Partly for this reason, The Economist has for several years not sent anyone along.
Neither has the Times, since 2008. It’s true: journalists yukking it up with powerful people whom they are supposed to cover impartially is unseemly…and quite likely to be corrupt as well, at least unconsciously.
Over the past two days Washington has worked itself into a tizzy over Michelle Wolf’s unusually scathing monologue…
Matt Schlapp, a conservative lobbyist and the husband of Mercedes Schlapp, a White House communications director, tweeted that he and his wife “walked out early from the wh correspondents dinner. Enough of elites mocking all of us”—though precisely what definition of “elite” includes a stand-up comic but excludes high-ranking White House officials remains unclear.
Understated. In reality it’s grotesque for a conservative lobbyist (with ties to the Koch brothers by the way) and a White House communications director to complain about being mocked by “elites” in the form of a woman standup comic. The Schlapps are the elite in this equation.
Mrs Schlapp told a reporter that “journalists should not be the ones to say that the president or his spokesman is lying.”
Say…what? Journalists are exactly the ones to say that the president or his spokesperson is lying. It’s their job to do that and it’s also their social role to do that – they’re the fifth estate. If they don’t say it how can anyone else say it? We have to know it before we can say it, and how can we know it if journalists don’t do the work to find it out and then report it?
Ms Talev invited Mrs Sanders to sit at the head table because she “thought it sent an important decision about…government and the press being able to work together.”
Ohhhhhhh ffs – that’s not what the press is supposed to be doing.
But of course, that is precisely what should never happen, particularly with an administration as ambivalent about the First Amendment—among other norms and laws—as this one. (The Justice Department recently removed a section entitled “Need for Free Press and Public Trial” from its internal manual for federal prosecutors.)
Free press shmee press, knowwhatimean?
I’m starting to agree with Amanda Marcotte’s tweet that “elite” is just right wing code for “people who read books.”
I’d be happy with a government and press able to work together – when it’s, say, the government generating and providing relevant and accurate information and the press carefully confirming, analyzing, and disseminating that.
Working together is a fine thing, when the work is what both sides are supposed to be doing. When it’s working together at what ought not to be done, it’s not – much like the terribly cooperative relationship between Donald and Vlad.
I kinda take issue with the characterization of Wolf’s speech as “unusually scathing”. Was it more scathing than Stephen Colbert’s masterful dissection of Bush or Larry Wilmore’s glorious performance in 2016?
Actually, Screechy Monkey, I suspect “elite” is just an easier way to say “someone who doesn’t watch Fox News”
In typical right-wing usage, a struggling graduate student is “elite”, while any number of billionaires are not, particularly if they wear cowboy hats. This correlates with the other codes given…
Or camouflage with assault rifles.
Screechy, but of course. Conservatives have been attacking education since the 1980’s. They know full well that educated people are harder to govern because they ask more questions and think more critically. It’s not only awkward, it makes them harder to lead about by the nose. Worse still a high proportion become left leaning voters.
We are now at a point where intergenerational harm has been done to the west’s education systems that shows no sign of being mitigated or repaired. It is precisely because of this that the right-wing across the west has had so much success in driving the political and social agenda, which as a foreseeable (but perhaps unintended consequence) has also led to the resurgence of far right nationalists and ultra-conservative religious groups.
Even if the left won power world wide tomorrow and waved a magic wand to ‘fix’ education systems, it will take generations to undo the harm. Since that isn’t happening…
AFAIK, no one has made the most salient critique of Ms. Wolf’s presentation, so here goes:
Good material, but timing needs a little work.
Stephen Colbert and Stephen Colbert weigh in:
https://youtu.be/i8gE20TW1n4
‘Elite’ has become this era’s ‘cosmopolitan’. It signifies a cultural outlook and a tribal demarcation that transcends any race, class, or even educational concerns, and it applies to anyone who doesn’t abide a reactionary revanchist worldview.
And the actual liberal elites don’t seem to understand this very well, and instead act as if they could only cozy up to the reactionaries with the right language, they’d be able to defuse the coming conflict. For fuck’s sake, Trump held a fascist rally at which he greedily encouraged his xenophobic audience to boo the very concept of Hispanic people *at the same time* Michelle Wolf was delivering her material, but that doesn’t seem to be seen as newsworthy by the kinds of people that Sarah Huckabee Sanders would have no compunction cheerleading to jail.
Fuck.
(And I agree with Bruce: excellent material, uneven delivery, like Wilmore a couple of years back. But I imagine it’s a tough room even for a seasoned standup.)
https://twitter.com/oliverdarcy/status/991120936828112902/photo/1
“It’s why America hates the out of touch leftist media elite” tweeted Mercedes Schlapp – from a limousine en-route to an exclusive after-party organised by NBC/MSNBC.
Oh! The irony.
Asked about their own membership in the elite, Mr. Schlapp said “I mean, I’m not trying to act like I’m driving a garbage truck in Des Moines”.
They both need a good Schlapp, in my opinion.
And the left is all too eager to see itself as the elite, and Trump voters as forgotten men who only want to be part of the country.