Where The Elite Meet

As for myself, I can't reckon on whether I am part of the fourth or fifth estate, but since I'm hunched over my keyboard once a day commenting on affairs of the day I can feel comfortable describing myself as part of the media. Well, not completely comfortable, because that puts me in the position of hanging out with the folks at TMZ. It also affords me the opportunity to align myself with the minds behind The New York Times. Well, maybe not the Times so much, since they need a few more funnies in their daily edition. That distinction aside, I find myself flinching just about every time I hear the phrase "media elite," or "elite media." I checked into this now barbed adjective and found its definition: "a select part of a group that is superior to the rest in terms of ability or qualities." I am pretty sure that when that epithet gets tossed around they aren't discussing fonts. 

Nope. The folks who are using that sobriquet are trying to make a distinction between "us" and "them." In this version of reality, I find myself lumped into "them," and I confess that if the company I keep is generated by the way I tend to spew my political invective, then I am resigned to that. It probably has a lot to do with using words like "invective" and "sobriquet" as well. The peculiar thing to me about this is that there is an awful lot of criticism of "the media" coming from one side of the discussion: The Right Side. Chris Christie was telling a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference about his struggles with the Elite. The governor of New Jersey told them that he has reporters from The New York Times covering him every day and accused journalists of taking sides on issues he has stood up against. "When you do things like I've done in New Jersey, take on a lot of these special interests that they support they just want to kill you and that's what they tried to do to me every day and here's the bad news for them, here I am and I'm still standing," He added that he would "continue to do what matters more," which is "knowing how to fight for the people for my state and I don't care what they write about me in the New York Times. I don't subscribe, by the way."

The sobbing sound you hear is from the circulation department of the New York Times. But what about this "elite" thing? Aren't our Special Forces an elite fighting unit? Isn't that a good thing? And even if you were going to use "elite" as some sort of slanderous tag, wouldn't you use it to describe folks who fly across the country to root for teams that are not from their home state, and sit in the owner's box? Can you guess where I found that out? The elite media. Figures, don't it?