Heh-Indeedy

Hunter:

Brooks, Tierney, et al take a bizarre and unabashedly elitist view of America, in which they incessantly examine the normal, mainstream, middle-class that makes up most of the country as if it were a paleontological specimen before pronouncing, after ten or twenty minutes of deep thought, that their most recent primitive discovery indeed has opposable thumbs, listens to music, or prefers lemon scented dishwashing soap.

They write about mainstream America, and they write about mainstream America from the view of top-tier editorial newspaper columnists sitting in the very midst of the political powerbroker class, every one invited to the correct parties and appearing regularly on the same small set of television shows, and they tell us patiently that their view from this distant closed-circuit perch is much, much more illuminating than the view from our own cars and sidewalks and porches. Because we, living in that mainstream America, don't understand.

Of course, Tom's right about the second half of that, too. These incessant columns aren't directed at any of us, at all; they're directed at the other cocktail-party pundits opining on the exact same fuzzy images of what middle-class life must be like, an unending parlor game of theorizing and counter-theorizing about those odd little people that do not have columns in major newspapers or attend dinners with Colin Powell.