Bill Maher: Time to embrace elitism

Maher says it well: 

Say it loud: I’m elite and proud! The right-wing crusade to demonize elites has paid off. Now the country’s run by incompetents who make mediocrity a job requirement and recruit from Pat Robertson’s law school. New rule: Now that liberals have taken back the word liberal, they also have to take back the word “elite.” By now you’ve heard the constant right-wing attacks on the “elite,” or as it’s otherwise known, “hating.” They’ve had it up to their red necks with the “elite media.” The “liberal elite.” Who may or may not be part of the “Washington elite.” A subset of the “East Coast elite.” Which is influenced by “the Hollywood elite.” . . .

I don’t get it: In other fields — outside of government — elite is a good thing, like an elite fighting force. Tiger Woods is an elite golfer. If I need brain surgery, I’d like an elite doctor. But in politics, elite is bad — the elite aren’t down-to-earth and accessible like you and me and President Shit-for-Brains. But when the anti-elite crowd demonizes the elite, what they’re actually doing is embracing incompetence.

But in the Bush administration experience doesn’t matter. All that matters is loyalty to Bush and Jesus, in that order.

For the full post, see here.  If you’d rather watch it than read, click here.

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Erich Vieth

Erich Vieth is an attorney focusing on civil rights (including First Amendment), consumer law litigation and appellate practice. At this website often writes about censorship, corporate news media corruption and cognitive science. He is also a working musician, artist and a writer, having founded Dangerous Intersection in 2006. Erich lives in St. Louis, Missouri with his two daughters.

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Avatar of grumpypilgrim
    grumpypilgrim April 16, 2007 Reply

    Wow! Bill Maher hit a home run on this one. Who would have guessed that the third-highest-ranking person in Bush's Justice Department — the job that oversees the entire staff of U.S. attorneys — is a 33-year-old with no prosecuting experience. Even more amazing is that she got her law degree not from Harvard, not from Yale, and not from any other top-tier, second-tier or even third-tier law school. She got her law degree from the Pat Roberson law school. Yes, *that* Pat Roberson. In fact, the Bush Administration employs 150 graduates of the Pat Robertson law school. With such hayseeds for staff, is it any wonder Bush's policies are such disasters? Bush has turned nepotism into America's largest faith-based initiative.

  2. Avatar of Erich Vieth
    Erich Vieth April 16, 2007 Reply

    From Paul Krugman:

    The infiltration of the federal government by large numbers of people seeking to impose a religious agenda — which is very different from simply being people of faith — is one of the most important stories of the last six years. It’s also a story that tends to go underreported, perhaps because journalists are afraid of sounding like conspiracy theorists.

    But this conspiracy is no theory. The official platform of the Texas Republican Party pledges to “dispel the myth of the separation of church and state.” And the Texas Republicans now running the country are doing their best to fulfill that pledge.

    For the entire post, click here.

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