Pitchfork Pawlenty’s condescending cultural stereotyping doesn’t just include Brie. Chablis is, apparently, unacceptable too:
“When you listen to the elites and the pundits talk about the Tea Party movement, or they talk about us as conservatives, they may not always say it explicitly,” he said. “But implicit in their comments are, you know, maybe they’re not as sophisticated, because a lot of them didn’t go to the Ivy League schools. Or you know, they’re from places like the heartland, not — you know, they don’t hang out at our Chablis-drinking, Brie-eating parties in San Francisco.” “And the implication is, you know, we’re kind of bumpkins,” Mr. Pawlenty said.
In fact, if anyone is calling anyone a bumpkin it is Pawlenty.
Don’t get me wrong. Neither Chablis nor Brie is a definitive indicator of bumpkinhood or, indeed, its absence. What Pawlenty is trying to do, however, is paint a patronizing portrait of the Tea Party people that ignores the reality that (as an emailer to me over at NRO pointed out) many of its supporters are drawn from the managerial classes with, I suspect, aspirations, ambitions and tastes to match. In a country once famous for its belief in upward mobility that ought to be just fine. But not, it seems, to Pawlenty.
Tea Party gear can be found at tinyurl.com/superfreedom
“Brie and Chablis” is a cliche that dates back to the late ’70s, I think. It’s from the days when brie wasn’t sold in most supermarkets, white wine was more high-class than red, and Ronald Reagan was running for President. I don’t really follow these candidates; is Pawlenty one of those “back to Reagan” conservatives?
It’s important, when complaining about being viewed as unsophisticated, to use “you know” in every sentence.
That’s true. There some blue collar but both Dems and Repubs draw from wealthy silcon valley in the case of dems and newport beach in cast of repubs.
Of course Pawlenty is ignoring reality. He’s also co-opting the left’s strategy of painting everyone on the right as a knuckle-dragger. I wonder if he’s aware of that.
If conservatives start dividing along the lines of who’s “authentically American,” then conservatives are in trouble.
And not only is Pawlenty ignoring reality, he’s in a time warp. Chardonnay replaced chablis as the tipple of choice in the 1980s.
@Susan
This struggle to show who is the most authentically American seems to be heating up since Palin arrived on the scene. She openly stated that there are two America’s one real and the other presumably fake. Pawlenty’s failed attempt at populist rhetoric is silly; Palin’s is downright frightening. She will alienate the educated suburbs where many of the swing voters live.
Chardonnay versus Chablis, that’s funny. I’m switching from red Burgundy to Pinot Noir myself. 😉
I do wonder how much of this free-floating hatred is self-fulfilling, like two sets of people getting divided up onto arbitrary sports teams; White Sox fans will forever hate Cubs fans to the point of violence. It isn’t anything that Palin actually did which causes people to hate her guts; she was an OK governor of Alaska who got in over her head as a VP candidate. W was at the receiving end of a lot of this right from the beginning; from the media one could never tell whether he was an evil genius or a total idiot. The Clintons got some of this too, and they were experts at turning this back on their opponents and making them look stupid. But in each of these cases, once the hatred would build up, it would keep building up and get ever more bizarre and counterproductive. If there were a rational opposition to Bush in late 2002, would the Iraq war ever have happened?
@Marylander
Patrick Buchanan was the first, in the past twenty or so years, I think, to exploit loudly the differences between “elites” (Jesus, I hate that plural) and “real Americans” with his “peasants with pitchforks” mantra. But then he pretty much faded from the scene. So “real Americans” didn’t have an avatar till Palin snowmobiled her way onto the political landscape. (George Bush the “real Americans” really couldn’t identify with, because they knew that deep down, despite his cowboy facade, he was really an East Coast blueblood who’d been educated at Andover, Yale, and Harvard.)
But Sarah brought the “real Americans” out of hiding. It’s her followers who bother me more than she does. Never mind her ideas–they seem to think that the yokel shtick (plus the Godliness, of course) is what qualifies her to be president.
@Chris
I have developed a deep fondness for pinot noir myself. Obviously I am not a real American, and neither are you.
I see that you addressed your parenthesis to someone other than me, but I’ll point out anyway that elites (plural) is correct. There are an entertainment (Hollywood) elite, a governing elite, an academic elite, a journalism elite, and so on. Elites are not to be confused with classes. “Elites” (plural) is both more precise and less paranoid-sounding than the singular.
@Aaron
Thanks for apprising me that the traditionally proper use of the word is paranoid. Now I must go fit myself for a tinfoil hat.