on msm elitism

Lileks rips them in his inimitable style:

Where was I? Ah, ye: I hate Elites. Which is why, whenever I am having brain surgery, or eye surgery, which is sometimes necessary due to all my non-blinking, I always hire some random Regular guy, with shaking hands if possible, who is also a drunk, scared of the sight of blood, and harbors a secret dislike for me.

Sigh. Well, let’s turn that around. I need a plumber, so naturally I call up a professor who specializes in Roman aqueducts, because what I really need when the faucet is broken is someone who can place it in the context of the ancients’ understanding of fluid dynamics and potable-water storage systems.

The term “elitist” does not mean a smart person with an area of expertise. It means a person who occupies a narrow stratum of society, usually academic – although people in think-tanks who view the world through steepled fingers qualify as well – whose Olympian perspective is usually predicated on a set of assumptions about people tinged with equal parts indulgent condescension and faint amusement, as an anthropologist might bring to the study of a Cargo Cult. It also confuses proximity to the Washington Monument with access to truth.

A man and a woman whose values we loathe and despise -- lying, rageful and incompetent, so dangerous to children and old people, to innocent people in every part of the world -- are being worshiped, exalted by the media, in a position to take a swing at all that is loveliest about this earth and what's left of our precious freedoms.

All that is loveliest about this earth? They actually have the power to destroy flowers, Mozart, sunsets, children’s laughter, dog’s smiles, the sound of crickets, and Megan Fox? They have this power?...

Once home, she phones Brother Strawman:

When I got home from church, I... called my Jesuit friend, who I know hates these people, too. I asked, "Don't you think God finds these smug egomaniacs morally repellent? Recoils from their smugness as from hot flame?"

I am unwilling to say what God can and cannot do, but I think “hot flame” is low on the lists of things from which He instinctively recoils. Naturally, the man of God heartily concurs:

And he said, "Absolutely. They are everything He or She** hates in a Christian."

It would be instructive to know why, and illustrative to find which points of Rev. Wright’s theology God loves more than McCain’s, but I suppose when you’ve taken a vow to lead a simple life everything is above your pay grade.

I have been in a better mood ever since.

No doubt; nothing gives the soul peace like knowing God hates the same people you do.

I'll only add one comment about one line the rip-ee wrote:

"Fill up a box with really cool clothes that you haven't worn in a year, and take it to a thrift shop."

Funny, the most charitable people I know vote predominately (R)*, and most of the "smug egomaniacs" I know vote straight-ticket (D) without thinking.

*with the exception of relatives of my grandparents' generation who voted democrat before that party went insane in '68 .

** p.s. one more thought: i would not put too much stock in what that 'jesuit friend' says about God if that friend hasn't read His Book closely enough to know whether He refers to Himself as a "he" or as a "she".