OzConservative Mark Richardson mulls over liberalism and concludes:
[Cultural elitism] is a cheap elitism. To claim it, you don’t actually have to be elite in any field or in any aspect of personal character. You simply have to look with disdain on mainstream, working-class culture and hold to liberal, cosmopolitan views.
We won’t have a true elite until we return to more demanding, non-ideological forms of seeking distinction.
Like cricket and rugger for the blokes, synchronised diving and beach volleyball for the sheilas, no doubt. You can’t get any more non-ideological than that, can you?
Brainwash bushwa.
It’s true that it sometimes seems that the vast masses over here on the democratic and libertarian socialist left don’t appreciate the elite enough. ( On the other the red fascists build their entire political praxis around self styled elitists)
In the interests of raising peoples consciousness about natural elites rising up through the natural selection of good ideas I draw yr attention to the beautiful bloggery committed recently by Firedoglake and Talkingpointsmemo.
The military entertainment complex having failed gonzo, free range netizen journalism has stepped up big time. Rapid evolution is now deconstructing the last empire in real time. News at 11.
And now that social Darwinism ( Spencerian competition) has been tempered by the discoveries of mutual aid ( Kropotkin) and molecular genetics ( Mendel, Crick, Watson, Franklin and etc) it seems safe now to look for further rapid evolution – mainly on the freenets and wildnets – to select corporate conservativism for extinction.
Good riddance to bad rubbish.
7|-|3y r @11 t3h n006s, i w0u1d 5o pwn 7h#m!11! 1 4m 73h r331 1337!!11!
I am glad that your trolls haven’t followed you from Indy professor.
“After all, the distinction between the Labor and Liberal Parties isn’t really that important” is another Mark Richardson quote of interest.
So true presently, when both major parties try so hard to shadow each other that they equally remain stunted from lack of light. All he is saying, though, is that we should find something a bit more flash to have a fight about. Leave politics out of the loop. “Mull on sir, presumably without bong, I say Mark”.
Since Catherine Deveney is mentioned yet again, Gummo, I have the feeble excuse of providing a link to todays work. For a good laff.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/opinion/lets-put-fences-around-the-suburbs-where-petrolheads-live/2007/03/20/1174153055143.html
Mark Richardson cites a Green Guide humourist cracking a joke as an example of the excesses of the “cultural elitists”? God, that’s lazy. Elitely lazy.
In a country where sports stars and footballers are paid top dollar, footy and cars dominate the news, and a whole university (AIS) is not only devoted to elite sport but their alumni don’t have to pay HECs, anyone trying to (still) make the case for Australia being dominated by some kind of literary or intellectual elite is dreamin’.
Helen, my argument was that the intellectual “elite” we do have seeks distinction merely through adopting cosmopolitan political beliefs, rather than through a serious engagement with culture, or individual character, or matters spiritual.
Therefore, we don’t have an intellectual or cultural elite in the true sense.
In such a situation, why shouldn’t sport dominate? If it’s a choice between Catherine Deveny, who thinks she’s elite because she knows about the latest ethnic cuisine and disdains the working-class for lacking cosmopolitanism, and a footballer, who at least has to show some skill, toughness and courage to succeed in his field, why shouldn’t we focus on the footballer?
The dictionary defiines elite as: “3 a group of persons exercising the major share of authority or influence within a larger group: the power elite of a major political party.”
So, in the Right-wing universe, the elites are the university lecturers, students community activists, the chattering classes and anyone living in the inner city. But if we take the dictionary definition of elite then where do the Rupert Murdoch’s-who actually own and control the media, the right-wing columnists like Andrew Bolt whose bile spills out from major national platforms and on the airwaves, day after day after day and who are all most likely financially compensated to a much higher degree than their ‘cosmopolitan’ targets?
Jeez Chav, there you go spoiling everything by checking the dictionary. You’ve got to get with the Humpty Dumpty school of semantics old son. It’s the only way you’ll ever understand the op-ed right.
Case in point – Janet Albrechtsen’s attack on lefty “moral absolutism” in her last article. Wasn’t so long ago that it was “moral relativism” she was decrying in – you guessed it – TEH LEFT. In usage both are equivalent opposites of “moral clarity” which is what your true elites have. In spades, doubled and redoubled.
PS – I bet she’d excel in the non-ideological field of beach volleyball too. Or maybe netty.
Do we have an elite you can scorn or don’t we, Mark? I am really confused now.
The cultural elite according to you are people like Catherine Deveny, but because she’s shithouse at games and makes jokes about white trash, she’s not culturally elite.
So why do you name her as being part of the elite in the first place? Do you have a point here? Spell it out and stop beating yourself behind the bushes.