I noticed in the mid-nineties the new buzzword was “the Information Elite,” a proposed new class that included, by definition, anyone in the media, no matter how low-level or rote/mechanical in their actual job function. And you know who couldn’t get enough of talking about the “Information Elite?” The media, of course! Because everytime they brought it up, and fretted about this new class distinction that might have harmful effects for sooociiiiety, they were of course flattering themselves by naming themselves “the Elite.”
While pretending to worry about this new class, of course they were all delighting inside. Who wouldn’t? The dirty little secret is that pretty much anyone wants to be “elite” in some way or another. So any cute new catchphrase putting you into some new elite is going to be, well, a little attractive.
Anyway, that’s how class distinctions harden, I’m pretty sure, at the lower levels of the class, among the more marginal/aspirational members of the purported class, because they want the class to exist, because they need for it it to exist — in order for them to belong to it.
The low-level line producer at MSNBC needs the fiction of the “Information Elite” as a class a hell of a lot more than, say, Steven Spielberg does. Steven Spielberg doesn’t really have to worry about his status or position in the pecking order. He has enough individual accomplishments that he has no need to inflate his ego with the accomplishments of other people, to whom he is connected only by his purported class.
Ace, “The Illusion of the “Professional” Class and the Rise of the Liberal Aristocracy”, Ace of Spades HQ, 2011-01-06
January 6, 2011
QotD: The “information elite”
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Ace’s argument pretty much explains most blogs and bloggers.
Comment by Lickmuffin — January 6, 2011 @ 17:12
But, but, but . . . we are the real elite, not those pansy poseurs in the MSM! We’re real, and um, elite, and um, everything!!!!!
Comment by Nicholas — January 6, 2011 @ 17:30