THE SWELLS who write editorials for the Chronicle ruminate today on the swells who lately attended the World Economic Forum in Davos -- "business and political elites along with the occasional Hollywood luminary and superstar journalist," all of whom "still come and go" (talking of Michaelangelo?) "by private jet."
The funniest line in the editorial:
"Indeed we do."
This three-word paragraph follows "an acknowledgment that ordinary folks have what the therapists would call 'trust issues' with the global economic system."
The antecedent for "we," you see, is "ordinary people."
Lest you miss the point, the Chronicle editors, elitists all, are mischaracterizing themselves as ordinary people, the very folks whose ideas, values, ways, and institutions these same editors so regularly disrespect.
As a card-carrying member of the bourgeoisie, I call the editors out for slumming.
Real ordinary folks don't give a flying burrito, brother, what happened at Davos. And real ordinary folks would never, ever write this, at least with a straight face:
The New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, a frequent visitor at Davos, picked up on a troubling concern among the cognoscenti: A growing perception of what some called "political instability" in the United States more suited to a marginal state on the world scene.
Where would they get that idea?
Let's see: towering deficits and a ballooning national debt; a balance-of-trade deficit that has persisted for a generation; a political process in gridlock over an issue -- health care reform -- that was settled in most advanced nations long ago; a public education system of middling quality relative to its international competitors.
Perhaps the best thing this country can do for the rest of the world is to get our own house in order.
Where to begin?
Ordinary folks don't much care what Mr. Friedman -- he who admires the authoritarian Chinese government precisely because of its authoritarian character -- "picks up."
Ordinary folks never say cognoscenti. (And for that matter, they never say ordinary people either.)
Towering deficits and a ballooning national debt? You gotta love the idea that the Chronicle cares, but the newspaper's concern is abstract. Each time, without exception, that the president has made a concrete proposal to spend more of our kids' and grandkids' money, the editors have stood up and saluted.
The editorial ends with a polite version of one of the paper's favorite themes, that our betters elsewhere view us -- variously the United States or Texas -- as rubes. That we are a laughingstock.
How so?
Primarily, it turns out, because we didn't pass Obamacare. Instead, America is stuck in "gridlock over an issue -- health care reform -- that was settled in most advanced nations long ago."
Gridlock? To quote the president's former favorite preacher, "No, no, no, no, no!"
Killing Obamacare is not gridlock; it's political action. And it's clearly what the American people wanted to happen. Killing Obamacare is a wonderful political system doing exactly what needed to be done.
Anyway, it's really not the alleged gridlock that offends the Chronicle; it's that "ordinary people" don't want what the president and the Chronicle peddled.
The sharpest burr, however, is "most advanced nations."
First, it omits other, as in "most other advanced nations," which would at least have clearly included the United States in the Chronicle's inventory of advanced nations.
Second, who cares -- other than elitists and liberal Supreme Court justices looking for excuses to ignore U.S. law -- what the political class in Europe thinks or does? Let them run Germany and France into the ground, but keep their mitts off the U.S. of A.
America is different. We're better. Not doing what "most advanced nations" do is a good working definition of American exceptionalism.
Chronicle editors as "ordinary people?"
Nah.
* * *
(Editorial, "Decoding Davos: Headlines from the World Economic Forum," Houston Chronicle, February 3, 2010)
* * *
A newspaper with not one traditionalist or conservative on the payroll for its editorial board or columntariat cannot say "we."
Comments