Elitist, moi?

It would be laughable if we weren't in for four more years of it: the spectacle of pundits and commentators who spend their days (and their wealth) in the smarter parts of the northeast corridor, railing against "an elite" that "demeans middle American values" and so can never understand the appeal of The Infallible One.

There is no finer example of this than an article by Marty Peretz, sitting behind the subscription window in the Wall Street Journal. That's Marty Peretz, embittered spokesman for those misunderstood ordinary people in middle America -- and owner of the New Republic, with a teaching position at Harvard, a founder of the thestreet.com and holder of a zillion corporate board positions.

The article is a tendentious screed not worth your time, so we'll just note his (unintentionally) comic lurch for Pseud's Corner right after his opening salvo against those elitist Dems:

The American people have plumb busted the hearts of the country's liberal elites, and the sentiments evoked among these elites are not dolorous but actually quite nasty. So much so that they reminded me of a poem by the communist playwright Bertolt Brecht,

Brecht? He could only top that by insisting that the word elite really should be spelt with an accent on the first 'e.' One thing is clear: the logic behind his choice of editors for the New Republic looks ever clearer with time.