Virgil
Elitist Night Out
by , 05-17-2008 at 09:41 AM (1935 Views)
Met up with some old college friends for dinner last night. I don't get to see them very often, thank God.One, who had moved to Wisconsin a while ago but was in town, I hadn't met in about fifteen years, or so we estimated. As far as old friends go I've always had three sets of friends. Set number one are the group of friends I grew up with in Brooklyn. They're very down to earth, rough around the edges (ok more than just the edges
I would describe them as Manhattan liberals, which if you don't live in New York you might not understand. Some people might describe them as limosine liberals, although they're not quite wealthy enough to be considered such. But their outlook is pretty much the same. The word that describes them perfectly, and it has come out in this recent political campaign, is elitism. They look down at people with different views, as if their education and urbane lifestyle gives them special acumen to the world. The word didn't come up last night, but I've heard them refer to people as "rednecks" on occaision. One writes for a magazine, another for a newspaper, another is a director at a company that assesses your personality for a career fit. My wife has never felt comfortable in their company, mainly becuase she is so anti eliitist. Well, the shock when politics came up. How could it not come up these days? They all went around talking as to why they just "love" Obama, "love him." Now they knew roughly I'm of a different political persuasion, and so they asked me who I supported. Well, were they shocked when I said I still supported George W. and wished he could continue. Their mouths just dropped. And it was almost a simultaneous reaction where they shot back a good foot backwards in their chair. The shock.
Perhaps though I've characterized them a little harshly. Obviously we have things in common or we would be friends and still meet up once or twice a year after over twenty years. We met at an Indian restuarant and they knew all the different types of Indian food, and we talked about our latest reads, and movies we had seen, and music that we liked. Actually we're all pretty much Rolling Stones fans. And we talked about some old times. We used to meet up at this blues club in Greenich Village and listen to this really outstanding blues guitarist. Of course we talked about some old friends and college days. We talked about the author Walter Mosley (if you've never heard of him, do a quick search; he writes some really good detective novels) who was on the periphery of our college group back then, before he made it big.
But yes, there is an elitist set of people in this country, and their not all from New York. But all one has to do is compare my Brooklyn friends with my Manhattan friends and you can see the difference. This split in the Democratic Party primary between the high brow types with the blue collar types is real and deep and interesting.
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