In Defense of Elitism

Pretty Lady, being in a bit of a Mood yesterday, created somewhat of a furor over at poor dear Edward's blog. She must apologize to Edward, since he has been ever the gentleman; moreover, she is doing him the courtesy of moving her diatribe to her own space.

But move it she must. She cannot let people get away with such Philistinism.

For the fact is, people, Literacy Is Important. And Pretty Lady maintains her view that an illiterate person suffers under such a whopping big handicap in terms of ability to process and communicate issues of universal importance, that this person's opinion on such matters is innately suspect. As she controversially stated:

Judging by numbers in the 'Da Vinci Code' sense is a red herring, because we're dealing with factors other than the perception of Quality--availability, marketing, and the generally abysmal state of literacy in the U.S. these days. One glance at the blogosphere is enough to tell you that most people are unable to comprehend a basic sequence of logical causality, when presented in a coherent paragraph; are we then judging questions of literary style based on the perceptions of these people?

A more accurate test would be to take a group of people who have all proven themselves capable of explaining, in their own words and in complete sentences, the basic principles underlying our Constitution, the plot of Anna Karenina, and why a poem by e.e. cummings was radical for its time, but still holds up as literature in these degenerate days. Then you give this group a copy of 'The Da Vinci Code,' and 'Gaudy Night' by Dorothy L. Sayers, and ask them to assess the relative literary merits of each, providing support for their assertions.

I would stake my inheritance that Dorothy L. would win by a landslide.

The immediate reply to this screed was sadly predictable:

What is this elitist ethnocentric bullshit? If I haven't read Anna Karenina or e e cummings I'm not fit to discuss spirituality or transcendance with this "pretty lady"?

Even her dear friend David, who should know better, was skeptical:

PL, it sounds like a wonderful group of people to have over for dinner, but I seriously doubt they represent "the vast majority of people."

Pretty Lady hangs her head, and cries.

Because any literate member of Pretty Lady's friends will be able to spot the trick at once. That trick is, these questions are easy. Anybody who has ever BS'd their way through an examination after drinking beer in the parking lot till 3 AM instead of studying knows that.

But let Pretty Lady explain the answers, to those whose BS skills are as poor as those that Pretty Lady used on her grant application:

1) The Constitution is the basis for the U.S. government. We live in the U.S. Our basic rights as citizens are outlined in this document; therefore it behooves us to have a vague idea of what these rights are, and assert them, and defend them. These rights include things like freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, right to bear arms, and right to privacy.

For extra credit, one may mumble about 'checks and balances,' which were put in place to prevent, oh, the executive branch of government from launching foolish, unwinnable wars to satisfy private grudges and not-so-private Messianic complexes.

Eh?

2) One need not have read Anna Karenina to have heard, somewhere, that it is about a Russian lady who has an extramarital affair, and jumps in front of a train as a result of it.

3) Similarly, one need not have a degree in English Literature to note that the poems of mr. cummings are unconventionally capitalized and punctuated; one need only read a few of them to perceive that they are rather spicy. They Hold Up, in Pretty Lady's opinion, because they are still sufficiently oblique to be Teasing, rather than hitting you over the head with a hammer.

Notice that Pretty Lady did not demand that anybody understand a poem by Wallace Stevens.

Pretty Lady does not consider that people who cannot summon up even a cursory, BS'd answer to these questions are necessarily unintelligent; she can say, and boldly, that they are disgracefully and dangerously ignorant. She understands that the state of public education in this country produced this state of affairs; she has even heard rumours that this was done deliberately, by the government, to make people easier to control.

Judging by the state of the country's affairs at the moment, it seems to be working.