Snoberry

Tip of the cap to S for tipping me off to a column written by David Brooks this week dealing with snobbery in pop culture. You can either sign up at the New York Times webpage to read it, or rely on me to summarize it.

The column takes the position that certain entertainers and popular programs are appealing to their self-satisfied audiences by acting snobbish and mining humor from looking down on others. Brooks makes a list of the usual subjects (Bill Maher) and, in an effort to make his column timely, adds a lot about Borat. (If you still haven't seen that movie, do it now! It's absolutely hilarious.) He says these entertainers take shots at safe subjects (i.e. those not likely to be in the audience or in or in a posistion to garner any sympathy from their ridicule).

I have never read Brooks before. Does the Times pay him to write about unoriginial subject matter? There isn't anything in this column that hasn't been said before.

Brooks makes references to being condescending. But his article is very condescending, as if he somehow stumbled onto some special knowledge that other Times readers do not know, and he has to share it with them in a manner that screams "A very smart person wrote this column!"

Brooks sees snobbery as a one-way street. He sees it as a class weapon, as only something the formally educated can wield, and always used with the intent to make the less formally educated people feel inferior. But as a concept, snobbery has to do with looking down on others, and nothing to do solely with the class, education, religion, race, etc. of a person. Anybody can be a snob.

You can see snobbery in effect in all sorts of pop culture entertainment, not just entertainment geared toward the "educated" classes. If Larry the Cable Guy was to makes a bunch of jokes about how foo-foo and high faultin' it is to go to the Op-err-aa, that too is a form of snobbery. But is Brooks going to point that out? Of course not. It doesn't fall into his narrow, self-serving view of snobbery.

Humor always has to come at someone or something's expense. But it is comedy. In today's culture, where people study every remark so they can find something to be offended about, and then use their assumed status as an aggreived party to stake a position of moral superiority, you could take almost any joke and use it as prima facia evidence of disrespect. But prima facia arguements don't always hold up under examination. Also, you're then missing the point, and putting far more thought (misdirected thought) into the joke than the original writer did.

One other comment Brooks made deserves mention. He cites Simon Cowell ridiculing the talentless people that audition for American Idol, as if this is also a form of snobbery. This is a bunch of crap. Simon Cowell is a professional with a proven track record of taking singers and creating careers for them. If he tells someone they stink at singing, it's a professional judgment, and given his track record, one he is qualifed to make. I have no training or inherent skill as an engineer, but if I drew up a plan for a bridge, and had it reviewed by a group of engineers, and that group told me my plan sucked, would I be justified in saying "You professionals are a bunch of snobs, and you don't know what your talking about"? Hardly. Same prinicple applies here.