Charles C. W. Cooke wrote "Smarter than Thou" for National Review, a piece tearing down, as he puts it, "the extraordinarily puffed-up 'nerd' culture" liberals use to assert their supposed intellectual dominance. Obviously, this impertinent rebellion against our country's true elite could not be allowed to stand, so Salon's Amanda Marcotte took up her keyboard to bring glorious retribution upon this British-American upstart. She calls Cooke's point of view "anti-intellectual paranoia" and attributes such attacks against Neil deGrasse Tyson and his fellow luminaries to simple, unabated jealousy. Let's explore her brilliance together, shall we?
Her opening paragraph is simply a gem. She opens with an explanation of all right-wing ideology: "If there’s one belief that binds the disparate factions of the American right together, it’s the belief in American exceptionalism." So far, so neutral and objective. But she goes on: "The mythology that conservatism is about promoting excellence and encouraging strivers is found throughout conservative media and literature." Mythology, she says? Oh dear, a subtle implication that perhaps this conservative belief is not as genuine as we all hoped. Where could she be going with this? Here is where she is going: "While it often manifests as contempt for the poor and the vulnerable, in the abstract this conservative enthusiasm for doing better could, in theory, be channeled productively toward actually pushing people to achieve."
Oh. Snap.
In one fell paragraph-form swoop, she has explained how much the right wing just straight up hates the poor and simultaneously pointed out that conservatism doesn't actually do anything for anyone. Ever. You guys.
But I digress. On to the meat of this delicious diatribe.
She poses an amazing question in the following paragraph: "So why are so many conservatives abandoning this enthusiasm for the exceptional in favor of what can only be described as jealous sniping aimed at people who are actually trying to expand the world creatively and scientifically?" Note the use of "only." There's no other way to describe it. It can only be jealousy, not a legitimately-held opinion, because, actually, the liberal elite are trying to expand the world, duh. Never mind the assumptions of both conservative motives and liberal usefulness to society: she's nailed it. Why even write further? But oh, she does continue, gracing us with her radiant insight into the scummy right-wing mindset.
Why do conservative thinky-smarty-types attack the liberal intellectual pantheon? To fool their stupid audience, of course. Conservative rubes must be distracted from their true oppressors: Wall Street. As she puts it, "If you can get your audiences to hate journalists and scientists, they won’t hate the wealthy bankers who actually screwed them over." Yes, tea party members, you're being led astray from the intellectual bounty and subtlety of the Occupy Wall Street movement. Wake up, sheeple!
And thus we arrive at Cooke's piece. "An illustration of the astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson graced the cover, drawn to look self-satisfied, even though deGrasse Tyson hardly gives off that vibe in real life." Yes, the man who said, "My great fear is that we’ve in fact been visited by intelligent aliens but they chose not to make contact, on the conclusion that there’s no sign of intelligent life on Earth" is the epitome of humility and class.
On to what I consider the money quote: "Cooke knows that calling Tyson a poseur is a stretch even his extraordinarily gullible audience won’t buy, so be [sic] grudgingly admits that Tyson 'has formal scientific training,' though he doesn’t go so far as to allow that the director of the Hayden Planetarium is actually, you know, a scientist and not just some hipster in a lab coat costume." You nailed it, Amanda. Cooke just won't admit Tyson is a scientist because he's so gosh darn jealous, you guys. Never mind that Tyson isn't famous for being a scientist. Never mind that he's popular because you can put his face on meme pictures or because he rolls his eyes at Christians or says "climate change, you guys" on a TV show. He's just too smart, you gullible unscientific rubes. That's why you hate him.
The rest of the piece goes on for a while, but it's not really worth quoting, since it's just more "conservatives are wrong and jerky butt-faces." I just want to take a moment and really look at what our dear Amanda is saying. Conservatives don't like the superiority given off by liberal elites because they're jealous. Why would they be jealous? Because they're not as smart. It being the case that conservatives aren't as smart, they lash out against liberals for being so gosh darn smart. Conservatives don't hate being talked down to, they just hate being so stupid that they deserve to be talked down to!
And there it is. Amanda has proven Cooke's point almost as well as he himself does. Liberals want to paint themselves as smarter, more rational, more intelligent, with all the facts on their side. They paint themselves that way because they think they really are that way. When you think you really are that way, you look down on everyone who disagrees, because obviously they're dumb jealous haters. It's a wonderfully-constructed feedback loop of superiority that cannot be broken, impertinent self-loathing foreigners be damned.
Why would anyone hate people like that?
