Sarah Palin's Folksiness

Remarking on Sarah Palin's debate performance, Maureen Dowd surgically dissects the wording and concludes that Palin is a political jukebox lacking substance.

Ms. Dowd uses terms like "pompom patois" and "sing-songy jingoism" as she criticizes virtually every single sentence uttered by Palin. Yes, in today's opinion piece in the Times, Ms. Dowd is everybody's least favorite English teacher.

In the mix, however, I believe Ms. Dowd stumbled upon a bit of accidental profundity.

We could, following her strenuously folksy debate performance, wonder when elite became a bad thing in America.

Presumably, "we" means Ms. Dowd and her like-minded friends because it doesn't include everyone. I, for one, do not wonder when elite became a bad thing in America. It was when the aforementioned "we" made it a bad thing in America.

It's been an evolutionary process, started in the early 20th Century from DNA going back to the legend of Robin Hood and mutated by the Bolshevik revolution. The logic was that utopian free-from-want could be achieved because there is enough stuff for everybody if properly distributed. By the way, few people trumpet the fact that Robin Hood was a thief before he was a philanthropist.

In the first half of the 20th Century, young girls were sent to finishing schools to become ladies. Boys went to prep schools to become gentlemen. They were taught morality and ethics and how to be discriminating in all aspects of their personal and social lives. Not now. Present day schooling tells kids that morals and ethics are negotiable and discrimination, of any kind, is evil. Instead, they must be multicultural.

The post-war years brought political movements in social justice, economic justice and environmental justice along with animal rights, housing rights, health rights, and so on. The 1960s mantras of "take it to the streets" and "we shall overcome" pointedly demonized the haves while celebrating the have-nots.

Naturally, the baby-boomers picked up the "workers of the world, unite" philosophy during their formative years and now those same boomers greatly influence and, arguably, dictate political pursuasions within the public realm. Forget about finding any discriminating individuals schooled in classical Western subjects and values. In fact, I suspect that the media and academia are saturated with people who regularly honor Karl Marx and Che Guevara while not missing a chance to disrespect Christopher Columbus and Thomas Jefferson.

Before the 60s, kids generally were taught that if they worked hard enough and kept their noses clean, they could grow up to become rich and maybe President of the United States. Now they are taught that capitalism is evil, individual wealth is unfair and the planet must be saved or we're all gonna die.

In summary, Ms. Dowd, elite became a bad thing when socialist-leaning individuals became the dominant players in the hierarchy of the media and academia. To set an exact date is impossible since it came about through a decades-long transformation of America.

Lastly, regarding Sarah Palin's "strenuously folksy" performance, I think the only people feeling strain were yourself, Ms. Dowd, and your like-minded friends. Pretty much everyone I know is folksy most of the time and I don't think they felt any strain. I even know an English teacher who, when not teaching, is very folksy. In comparison to Ivy-League rhetoric, which can be nodworthy, folksy is refreshing.