"Dude, Where's That Elite?"

Barbara Ehrenreich critiques a fashionable ad hominem in her New York Times Op Ed,"Dude, Where's That Elite?"

Ehrenreich contends that the elite-as-epithet is a meme spawned on the far left and subsequently embraced by the right wing.

Good news:

Barbara Ehrenreich will be a guest columnist for the Op-Ed page through July. Thomas L. Friedman is on book leave for three months.

Comments

[Thad]

Okay, I know Barbara was riffing on the title of Michael Moore's most recent book, but can we please get an injunction against any further variations on "Dude, Where's My Car?" Christ, the movie was four years ago, people. You might as well be saying "Where's the beef?"

[walter]

You might as well be saying "Where's the beef?"

I had a conversation with a recent college grad who had no idea what that phrase meant, where it was from or how deftly Mondale used it in the 1984 debate with Reagan. Amazing what a cultural gap ten years can make.

[walter]

You might as well be saying "Where's the beef?"

I had a conversation with a recent college grad who had no idea what that phrase meant, where it was from or how deftly Mondale used it in the 1984 debate with Reagan. Amazing what a cultural gap ten years can make.

[Sean]

It was against Gary Hart that Mondale used the "Where's the beef?" line. Nothing Mondale did against Reagan could really be described as "deft."

[Matt Weiner]

Anyone want to start a name-Friedman's-book contest? I propose "The Pie of Humility, or How can one man be so wrong for so long?"

Some of my younger grad school colleagues didn't even recognize "Mistakes were made."

Also, I think BE can be excused for the "Dude, where's my..." riff because she was hooking her column on Michael Moore, whose most recent book was "Dude where's my country?" Though I agree that it's best to try to kill it before it spreads even further.

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

Anyone want to start a name-Friedman's-book contest?

Count me in! Shall I start a thread here, or would you like to do the honors?

[Lindsay Beyerstein]

How about "Uncle Tom's Gabbin': Attitudes and Platitudes"?

[Thad]

Personally, I'm rather partial to:

If We Had Some Ham
We Could Have Some Ham and Eggs
If We Had Some Eggs

[EJ]

In her critique of the neocons' appropriation of "elite-as-epithet", Ehrenreich seems to be correct. I agree that a more accurate portrait of liberal should include factory workers, community college students, and hotel maintenance workers. The question that Ehrenreich fails to address is that at the highest levels of government and politics, both "liberals" and "conservatives" happily abuse and pawn these populations. Neither the hotel worker nor the community college student are adequately represented at those levels.

[Matt Weiner]

I like Thad's title--it seems to capture Friedman's penchant for attempting to achieve his goals in the Middle East via the Triple Bank Shot of Monkeys that Fly out of My Ass.

My blog is kind of dormant at the moment so maybe I'll try to spice it up with a name-Friedman's-book thread. Look for it at http://mattweiner.net/blog....

[Thad]

I like Thad's title

I only wish I had come up with that. I first saw it in an Atrios comments thread, and just about peed myself laughing. It's the ultimate Shorter Freidman -- it perfectly encapsulates not just his attitude towards the mideast, but his entire delusional worldview.