Or a Tourette parrot. Or as we call em here, a total galah.

http://clubtroppo.com.au/2008/06/05/civility-of-the-elite/#comment-279333

But elites are a dirty word in other areas.

Well yea, especially when you had people like Foucault praising Khomeni.

We also had the interesting case of the Alan Sokal hoax with the deliberate written drivel getting published in a scholarly journal

Arguing that quantum gravity has progressive political implications, the paper claims that the New Age concept of the “morphogenetic field” (not to be confused with the developmental biology use of the same term) could be a cutting-edge theory of quantum gravity. It concludes that, since “physical ‘reality’ … is at bottom a social and linguistic construct”, a “liberatory science” and “emancipatory mathematics” must be developed that spurn “the elite caste canon of ‘high science’” for a “postmodern science [that] provide[s] powerful intellectual support for the progressive political project”.

Yes, the common touch is important in politics. But then that’s something relatively new too. Mr Menzies’ appeal was that he was a ‘better’ sort of person than the average Aussie and so he was respected for that. (Though he was regarded as insufferably up himself earlier on – which suggests that some of this is whether or not you can sell yourself once you’re in the job.)

But I think there’s a kind of resentment in a lot of people because they know they’re being lied to most of the time. They may tune in, but they still somehow know that it’s all a show. That politicians lie to them and that journos are pandering to the very worst in them.

They don’t respect themselves for it and they resent those that play the lead in that process.

Elsewhere, they don’t really care about elites. They like sports elites. They’re OK with good teachers and professors (so long as they’re not too up themselves – better a scientist or law professor than a sociologist) and doctors.

So there’s my little bit of amateur psychoanalysis. People resent the farce that they’re in as far as the way they’re governed – they know it’s a product sold like soap powder, and this stuff about elites is a kind of psychological epiphenomenon of that state of affairs.

Rudd’s turn with Mel and Kochie was no conjob. That is exactly who the priggish philistine is.

If we use your definition of “elitism” above, you could be forgiven for thinking that “elites” were the top 1% or 2% of a population if you just ordered it from least competent to most competent in a given field.

However (and I never knew this until just now), the word “elite” is derived from Latin meaning “to elect”. In other words, the elite are a selected group. The goal may be to pick the best of the best, but the method for choosing elites is (as it must be) subjective rather than objective.

But who picks the elites? Generally, the elites themselves, or former elites.

Sometimes, this isn’t a problem. For most elite athletes, ways to accurately rank their performance are fairly obvious. There are still subjective evaluations to be made (resilience under pressure, likelihood of injury, etc.), but since the self-selecting process creates results that are open to external scrutiny, people can object to elite choices using facts.

It used to be similarly “obvious” that elected rulers were best placed to choose their own replacements (divine right, aristocracy, plutocracy etc). But now the political process actively tries to minimise the ability of those elected (literally, the “elites”) to act in self-preservation and/or to elect their successors.

Anti-elitism occurs when people feel that elites have a disproportionate say in who gets to be an elite. It’s the “who died and made you king?” factor.

This same idea applies for non-political elites, by the way. When talking about “arts elites” or “chattering classes”, what people object to viscerally is the self-selection: the idea that you can only be an “elite” if the “elites” let you in.

Easy, is it not?

In my opinion, people who are elite are the likes of olympians, Don Bradman, John Monash, Nobel Prize winners, JJ Bradfield etc.

However, he used it as a label for upper middle class left leaning persons.

Therefore, when we discuss elitism now, it is not a real discussion of ‘elites’ more a code discussion of the place of what previously would have been termed the upper middle classes.

Mind you, those in that class who hated JWH probably thought it a good thing in the Aussie tradition that had the Rats of Tobruk not minding the Germans calling them ‘rats’ in WW2. I suspect that those previously labelled as upper middle class thought ‘elite’ a better epithet.

I must admit I sometimes use the term “elite” in the same sense as I do those constructs such as “teh” and “just saying”. (For those who don’t “do” irony – my apologies ;).

Isn’t that part of our national fabric derived from our roots. Even relatively newly arrived South Euro immigrants have a healthy disrespect for “elites”. Nearly all of us either escaped or are the product of people who left Europe that was steeped in elitism.

It’s the healthiest thing about both societies.