I’m convinced that picking on other people is one of the very oldest forms of communication.  Many children seem to adopt it without ever being taught how; the taunts, the funny faces, the name-calling, leavened with shunning and occasional episodes of physical brutality, begin early, persist late, and, crucially, never seem to subside altogether.  Sometimes the abuse becomes more sophisticated, transforming into often unstated, contemptuous opinions of others.  At other times, it transforms into something more monstrous and insidious.  But very often, both the tone and character of teasing tactics remain remarkably similar to those employed by, say, ten-year-olds.  For plentiful examples of the latter, I suggest the reader attend any Yankees/Red Sox game.

Or, for that matter, pick up a newspaper or watch the news on TV.

In essence, there’s no difference between a second-grader calling someone a poopy-head and a news anchor saying that Barack Obama is an elitist.  In neither case is the term particularly well-defined, let alone accurate, but constant repetition renders such objections moot.  One could remind people that, say, Obama actually earned his modest fortune through sales of his books while Bill Clinton was peddling his influence (oh, er, I’m sorry, collecting speaking fees) to the tune of a hundred million dollars, and John McCain was marrying into a beer distribution fortune.  One could point out that his socioeconomic background is arguably more modest than Hillary Clinton’s, and undoubtedly more so than John McCain or, Christ on a cracker, George W. Bush, that great man of the common folk.  How about the fact that, again, unlike Bush, Obama went to Harvard on merit, and not family influence?  But making any of these arguments seems to carry about as much force as calmly informing one’s seven-year-old tormentors that in fact, no, your head is not made of fecal matter.  The reason is that the term “elitist” as used in Washington-ese has nothing to do with any form of privilege that actually matters. Instead, it’s become a code word for “uncomfortably intelligent.”

This, too, is straight out of the childhood-torment textbook.  Perhaps it’s different in some schools, but in every one I attended, being called a “smart kid” was little better than being stricken with the evil eye.

On the surface, it’s hard to see why such name-calling catches on among journalists, many of whom, one would assume, at least think of themselves as being pretty smart. 

But as I’ve mentioned before, it’s evident that much of the news media communicates in a sort of code that is concerned less with truth-speaking than with capturing—or, in many cases, manufacturing—the maximum dramatic effect of any given story.  By maximum, of course, I’m referring to quantity, not quality.  The “scandals” that the issues-brokers are liable to trot out on any given day—lapel pins!  Fiery preachers!  Less-than-one-hundred-percent factual campaign speeches!— are not exactly King Lear-level high drama.  Regardless, a thread of gossip or a bit of name-calling can easily generate considerable interest and perturbation, and effectively drown out all but the most visceral arguments.  It’s no use complaining about the existence of gossip; it’s old as copulation.  But it’s vital, from time to time, to point out the distinction between gossip and real news, and to demand a swing of the pendulum back to the latter.

This can be difficult to do when otherwise reasonable people decide spend all their time talking smack.  Take Paul Krugman, for example.  Krugman is notorious for heaping abuse upon people who disagree with him either in style or substance.  That is to say, he rarely deigns to merely disagree with anyone; rather, he feels he must prove that they are wrong.  This is a very important distinction, and one that seems lost on many people in our stubbornly Manichean-struggle-obsessed culture.  To state that one disagrees is to admit that there might be limitations to one’s knowledge and insight—that one is basing a judgment or opinion on one’s knowledge or experience up to this point.  Ideologues, on the other hand, are apt to tell someone, no, you’re wrong, you’re foolish and ignorant, and attempt to wield their perceived Truth like a cudgel.  Thus, we are treated to playground tirades like, oh, I don’t know, every single piece Krugman has written about Barack Obama in the last year.

Krugman’s recent columns about Obama’s bitter/clingy brouhaha are gems of willful misinterpretation and selective data-gathering.  For instance, he chides Obama for “blurring the distinction between Clinton-era prosperity and Bush-era economic distress,” noting that median household incomes in the Midwest “soared” during the Clinton era recovery.  This seems a bit preposterous coming from a self-anointed liberal prophet like Krugman.  Obama has never claimed that the economy didn’t grow during the Clinton administration; rather, he’s correctly pointed out that our trend of growing inequality in wealth distribution predates George W. Bush, and that the income gap was little better in the nineties than during Republican administrations.  Krugman could acknowledge this, but it would inconveniently damage his argument.  Besides, he’d be forced to confront his own statements on the matter.  In 2002, Krugman wrote:

Over the past 30 years most people have seen only modest salary increases: the average annual salary in America, expressed in 1998 dollars (that is, adjusted for inflation), rose from $32,522 in 1970 to $35,864 in 1999.  That's about a 10 percent increase over 29 years — progress, but not much.

Note that these figures come from 1999, when the country’s economy was still “booming.” Krugman goes on in that piece (“For Richer”) to point out that the meager gains in household income over the period in question likely stemmed from longer working hours, particularly among women.  This means that, over that period, median hourly wages actually declined for many workers.

But Krugman seems unconcerned with such contradictions.  In fact, he tries on the one hand to attack Obama for using talking points from What’s the Matter with Kansas—which Krugman admits he initially found persuasive, until some charts of voting patterns convinced him it was “incorrect”—while simultaneously browbeating him for not adopting the book’s political prescriptions strenuously enough.

Of course, in reality, Obama’s public position on economic issues is directly at odds with Krugman’s implication that he has dropped “the class language that once distinguished [Democrats] from Republicans.”  Income inequality, CEO pay, corporate abuses and so forth have been staples of Obama speeches for months now.  Furthermore, he’s vowed to cut payroll taxes for middle-income earners while increasing the ceiling on high-income earners—a much-needed progressive reform that you’d expect someone like Krugman to crow happily about.  No matter.  Either Krugman’s liberal conscience has gone to sleep, or he feels Obama is sufficiently inept or frightening (remember the “dangerous cult of personality” crack?) to justify tucking such inconsistencies away for the sake of rhetorical cleanliness.

Or, more likely, he simply doesn’t like Obama, and like any kid on the playground, doesn’t require any rational justification to continue picking at him.  As for the rest of the media establishment—well, it may be, as David Brooks claims, that many voters see such trivial matters as bitter/cling-“gate” or American flag lapel pins as windows into shared “values.”  But these supposed values are no more substantial than “cool,” no more real than cooties, and no less mean-spirited than, well, poopy-head.

I suspect that, as is often the case, Stephen Colbert was correct when he suggested that the news media stuck to the “Obama’s elitism” story out of laziness; after all, the beauty of calling people names over and over again is that you don’t have to back up your claims; you don’t have to have reasons; you don’t have to entertain an alternative point of view or challenge your assumptions about anything.

Perhaps that’s how a “scandal” can be so readily fashioned out of ill-chosen words taken out of context.  Looked at in isolation, “people cling to religion and guns” can be understood as a general statement about people’s beliefs.  But Obama was answering a specific question—why do certain demographics vote the way they do?  Any secondary-schooler studying for a reading comprehension test could see the distinction.  In answer to the specific question, it’s clear that Obama meant that “people cling to religion and guns” as issues they take with them into the voting booth, in part because they don’t feel government will do anything about their economic concerns (see again What’s the Matter with Kansas—the book may be “wrong,” as Krugman says, but it ain’t elitist).

Now, for some journalists, the claim that Obama was making a blanket statement about the character of small towns and their attitudes about guns, religion, xenophobia, etc. could be construed as an honest (if foolhardy) mistake; after all, most media outlets take a soft-food approach to the news; they add water to a story so it makes its own gravy.  But I find it impossible to believe that guys like Krugman or William (“I’m not saying Obama’s a Marxist, but his ‘clinging’ line is right out of Das Kapital”) Kristol are unfamiliar with the practice of applying context to statements.  Willful misunderstanding is one of the oldest tricks in the book; go digging, and you’ll find lively examples of it in every political campaign in the history of the planet Earth.  You expect it from politicians and tabloids, because ultimately the successful ones aim for the gut, not the cerebrum.  But for the rest—look alive, Paul Krugman—I suggest it’s time we take a break from the playground and head back to class.