I'm limbering up my typing fingers (all 3) to bring you
a piece by one of the San Francisco Examiner's better
columnists, Stephanie Salter (6/14/92):
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THE 'CULTURAL ELITE' AND THE REST OF US
Hey, I asked my lesbian friends Lucy and Ricki, how does it
feel to be a member of the cultural elite?
"What are you talking about?" said Lucy, who was trying to
get their son Little Ricki ready for a neighborhood kid's
birthday party.
The vice president, I said. Don't you read the papers? He's
found and identified "a great cultural divide" in the U.S.
He calls the two groups, "The Cultural Elite" and "The Rest
of Us."
According to Dan Quayle, I said, you homosexual parents are a
mainstay of the cultural elite, especially you lesbians
because you think fathers are dispensable.
"Since when?" Lucy said, then shouted, "Little Ricki, the dog
is NOT going to Jason's party and he's NOT wearing Big
Ricki's blue silk dress. Get it off him NOW!"
She sighed. "What was that you said about Dan Quayle? No, I
don't read the papers anymore. I don't have time. Ricki and
I are trying to raise a 4-year-old, hold onto our jobs so we
can pay our mortgage and taxes, and still keep our
relationship loving and strong. Did you know we're about to
celebrate our 10th anniversary?"
I congratulated them and said it was ironic that they had
been together as long as most couples I knew -- straight or
gay -- and yet they respect neither tradition nor standards.
"Who told you that?" said Lucy.
The vice president, I said. Those were his very words to
the annual convention of Southern Baptists. He said you
cultural elites -- his plural, not mine -- "respect neither
tradition nor standards. They believe that moral truths are
relative and all 'life styles' are equal."
Lucy sighed again.
"Yeah, like my life style and Marilyn Quayle's are equal,"
she said. "Who else is a cultural elite besides lesbian and
gay parents?"
Well, let's see, I said. Sophisticated folks are -- again,
I'm quoting the vice president verbatim -- and people in
Hollywood who may have a lot of money and influence but
don't have the power of ideas, convictions and beliefs.
People who hand out condoms in the schools or distribute
sexual propaganda to our third and fourth graders. Also
people who sit in faculty lounges across America.
"What makes that last bunch cultural elites?" asked Lucy.
Mocking, I said. They sit there and mock The Rest of Us.
"They do? Mock us -- I mean them? Why?" asked Lucy.
For talking about right and wrong, I said.
"You mean like the way Ricki and I did when we got into an
argument at the Mertx's barbecue last Saturday because
Fred said it was a waste of time to vote anymore and we
said it was still the duty of a conscientious citizen?"
Yeah, I said. And like the time you gave that woman from
Little Ricki's day-care center hell for blaming the
recession on welfare mothers instead of on a decade of
unbridled corporate greed.
"Well?" said Lucy.
But the vice president says you cultural elites sneer at
talk of right and wrong, that you're moral cynics. He
told the Baptists: "The elite's culture is a guilt-free
culture. It avoids responsibility and flees consequences."
"Don't I wish," said Lucy, then, "Let me get this straight.
If you aren't specifically providing condoms or sex
education, writing a TV show or newspaper story or teaching
college, you are a cultural elite if you are sophisticated
and morally cynical.
"Instead of ideas, convictions and beliefs you have a lot
of money and influence. The one beliefe you do have is
that moral truths are relative, which helps you avoid
responsibility, flee consequences and live guilt-free."
"Right," I said.
"Does that sound like me or Ricki?" asked Lucy. "Does it
sound like anybody you know? The people in your
neighborhood? The women who run that free clothes closet
for mothers and kids? The social action group in your
church? The folks at the AIDS hospice? Any parent, single
or married? You co-workers?"
No, I said. It didn't sound like anybody I know, love or
admire.
"So, who does it sound like?" asked Lucy.
I thought a moment.
It sounds a lot like the kind of people who would take an
Eastern-born-and-raised Yale grad who passes himself off as
a common-as-mud Texan and run him for president, I said.
The kind of people who would then take a good-looking but
shallow guy from a weathy, white Midwestern family -- a guy
who made his reputation in Congress as an ultra-hawk yet
spent the Vietnam War in the Indiana National Guard -- and
run him for vice president.
"The kind of people," asked Lucy, "who would realize that
these two guys might not get re-elected and would send the
shallow one out to decry 'the great cultural divide' with a
speech that was designed to do nothing but feed fear, warp
understanding and divide a nation into fictional camps like
Cultural Elites and The Rest of Us?"
Yeah, I said. And to do it absolutely guilt-free.