"you're special and unique, just like everyone else"

I was walking out of a meeting today, passing through one of the main parking lots on campus, and I noticed a bumper sticker:

"A PBS Mind in a Fox News World."

Now, I've mentioned my distaste for bumper stickers before - mainly because of their tendency to oversimplify reality - and this is just another example of it.

Now, maybe I'm over-interpreting - reading too much into a bumper sticker that just made someone snort with laughter a little and slap it on their car, but the sticker is characteristic of an attitude that I've seen a lot lately. It's an attitude I like to call the "Beleaguered Elites." These are the people who think they are better - they think they are smarter, or more informed, or wiser, or more moral, or God knows what else, than the ordinary run-of-the-mill soul. And these Beleaguered Elites can determine their status as a person-of-quality because they like things that they perceive the rest of the world as not liking or not understanding. And they dislike and disdain the popular.

(You should hear some of the cracks I hear about NASCAR. Now, I'm not a fan - I'd rather watch other athletic competitions if I watch them at all, and frankly, I find horse racing as boring as car racing. But. I'm not going to automatically assume I'm a better person than someone just because he likes NASCAR. That's just foolish.)

The Beleaguered Elites are kind of difficult to deal with at times. They can be as exhausting as dealing with a certain sort of teenager - the kind who is CONVINCED they are extra-special-wonderful, that the world never has and never will understand a soul as sensitive and as perfect as theirs, and everyone will be DARN WELL SORRY how they mistreated said teenager when he or she is proven to be the prince or princess that he or she actually is.

(I actually remember feeling that way a bit as a child. The whole imagining I was a princess sent to foster for some reason in an ordinary mundane family, and I was sure it was only a matter of months before my REAL father the king would call for me to be returned to my rightful place. But I was also six at the time I believed this.)

Anyway. One thing I've found about people who do the Beleaguered Elite act is that they seem to be convinced of their specialness, and their uniqueness, and how the world misunderstands them so.

And they don't particularly seem to have a sense of humor about it, some of them. You can try to jolly them back into a more charitable attitude and they just LOOK at you.

And you know? Everyone's special. And everyone's misunderstood in some way. (In fact, you could argue that the B. E. are deliberately misunderstanding the NASCAR fans or wal-mart shoppers or the people who choose to drive SUVs). Just becuase you have a set of beliefs or values that happen to be different from what seems to be the prevailing reality where you live, does not (a) make you some kind of paragon and (b) doesn't mean the rest of the world should go to the devil.

Because when I see things like "A PBS mind in a Fox News world," that means to me that the person thinks (a) Fox News is something horrific and contemptible and (b) PBS is wonderful. And that both can be a sort of metonymy for humanity - that there are the Morlock who watch Fox and the Eloi who watch PBS.

(And actually? That's one of the things I hate about our society right now. The seeming need to force it into a binary, dualism nature where you are either one or the other, either black or white, red or blue, beer-swilling cretin who watches TV and burns up fossil fuels for fun or a right-thinking intellectual who disdains modern comfort because it is "wasteful." Because no stereotype is fully true. I'm pretty conservative in some ways; in others I am about as crunchy as they come. I can happily hang out with people of a variety of stripes as long as those stripes don't include complaining about and setting themselves up as superior to other, often more "working class" folks)

Because, you know? Everyone is kind of special in their own way. But it's also good to recognize that that doesn't just mean YOU are special; it means that other people share that mantle with you. And like Plato said, be kind, for you do not know what burdens others are carrying.

A simple minded example: My father's family ran a series of cottages when he was growing up. It was pretty hard work, I guess, from the stories he's told. He also worked summers at a foundry when he was a teenager and college student. He worked the "graveyard shift" usually, getting home sometime around 11 am. He also talked about how he'd have to take about a gallon of water with him to drink so he'd not become dehydrated. Well, he was coming home one mid morning and was walking across his parents' property to get to his house and have a shower and go to bed. And there was some Country Club type reclining on one of the lawn chairs with his "best girl" sitting next to him, and my father said, as he passed, he heard Country Club Type proclaim, "Ah, me! I am SO tired. I've been playing tennis since 9 am!"

And my father said he never wanted to slug a guy more right then than he wanted to slug Country Club Type. Because he (my dad) had just spent 8 hours working with hot metal - something that could kill you if you were not careful - during the time that this, forgive me, PUKE was sleeping comfy in his bed, and my dad was having to drink mass quantities of water to keep from DYING while the Country Club Type sipped a mimosa or some such thing.

Okay, I don't know how that fits in too much with the Beleaguered Elites other than that sometimes a person looks really ridiculous when they complain about what's actually a small thing. And that lots of time the "upper crust" folks don't really understand how the people who actually build their cars or their houses or cook their food or clean their buildings live. But still. Sometimes it's wisest to just shut up and realize how good you have it, which is what I guess I would have said to Country Club Guy if I had been there, some kind of angel-form of my not-yet-conceived self sitting on his shoulder.

And the whole "I'm so sensitive! I'm so misunderstood! I am the likes of which this world has never seen before" attitude that some of the B.E. take is really tiring. I kind of want to look at them and go, "You know? I remember being 14 too!" But I'm afraid my sarcasm would either be totally lost on them, or else they'd decide that I was part of that Fox News World that is apparently oppressing them so.

And you know? That's part of it. It seems too often these days people are good at taking "I disagree with..." and turning it into "I am oppressed by..." And there's a fat giant gulf of difference there. It's the difference between the local Wal-Mart playing Christmas carols during December and a person who is a Wiccan shopping there during that time, and that same person being burned at the stake as a witch. Yeah, having to listen to songs alluding to a religion you do not practice probably stinks, but it's not going to shorten your life or really do anything other than give you something new and different to complain about.

(I don't agree with Garrison Keillor on much these days - my pathetic local paper runs his column once a week and it's usually "Oh I'm getting so old and it's horrible and Bush is bad and the country's going to hell..." but last week's column did have one point that I think is well taken - about those who complain about Christmas in the U.S.: Keillor remarked: "It's a Christian culture. Work with it." Not, "you're entitled to demand we wipe the holiday away or prevent those from celebrate it from enjoying it." Not, "You are right to be aggrieved and should complain as loudly as possible." No, rather it was: this is the way it is. Most people in this country will not be amenable to changing things just to accomodate you. You can accept it or you can be miserable, take your choice. And I would add: we're not building re-education camps for Non-Christians. We're not telling you you must celebrate Christmas or can't celebrate what you want. It's freakin' "rockin around the Christmas tree" in the wal-mart, for goodness sake. Dumb modern songs about Christmas being played in a discount mart are not the same as a jackbooted thug trampling on your face for not being part of the Master Race.)


And you know what? I actually watch BOTH PBS and Fox News at times. I wonder if that would make a few heads spin among my friends if they knew that fact.