Gitz keeps 'chattering,' misses his own point

Gitz keeps 'chattering,' misses his own point

On Dec. 5, Bradley R. Gitz offered his opinions about the political polarization of America. He begins by stating that this is not merely a geographical division or conventional wisdom that "pits rural 'clingers' versus urban sophisticates, ... and working-class white folks against establishment elites."

Underneath this he cites a more meaningful division between the "chattering classes," a term used by controversial British journalist Auberon Waugh to describe the (British) people on the left versus ordinary (Britains) Americans (Gitz's word), mostly on the center-right.

By the way, Auberon Waugh (on the record but hopefully tongue-in-cheek) opposed anti-smoking legislation, called the anti-drunk driving campaign "police terror" and was highly critical of the Labour Party attempts to ban fox hunting. He held that while the "dangers of smoking and drinking were probably exaggerated, the dangers of hamburger eating were seriously under-reported; he frequently referred to "'hamburger gases' as a serious form of atmospheric pollution, including 'passive hamburger eating'" Serious stuff, this.

The "chattering classes," a term first used by British right-wing polemicist Frank Johnson in 1980, is sometimes used to refer to the liberal elite, but was used by Johnson to include a wider range of people in the political spectrum referring to journalists and politicians who see themselves as the sole arbiters of conventional wisdom.

Stephen Perrault of the Merriam-Webster dictionary suggests that the term has the same "connotations of idleness, of useless talk, that the noun 'chatter' does. ... These people don't' amount to much -- they like to hear themselves talk." (New York Times, April 2, 2006). Amen, Mr. Perrault.

Gitz continues, "Members of the chattering classes exercise political influence vastly beyond their numbers because they are much more intensely political and ideologically aware than ordinary Americans, as well as in a position that can be used to call attention to liberal grievances and causes." And where, I ask you, are these politically influential chatterers found? In academe, he states -- in our colleges and universities, where he, himself, is employed.

Gitz asserts that the fashionable "tropes" of leftism now originate on college campuses where ideas flow mostly outward from ivory towers to infect the rest of society and that the left's hold on these institutions is largely impregnable. Continuing, "Trustees, alumni, donors and parents either appear content with the idea of the academy as a monolithic font of leftist ideas or, more likely are oblivious of the extent to which it has become one." My Republican daddy certainly would not have sent me to that writhing pit of liberalization in Fayetteville had he known that!

I assert that Gitz is the "chatterer" here, and a polarizer of the first order, the black or white kind. His column Monday could be seen as so much blather if it were not filled with so much alienating, isolating schismatic rhetoric. He blindly chatters on. And he, like so many alienators, does not see himself in the very words he uses against others.

Gwyn Wood

Fayetteville

A college degree in the denial of reality

He isn't my president, the sky isn't blue and the sun doesn't rise in the East.

There's something about getting one of those four-year college degrees that makes some people reality deniers, or at least nonreality-based wishful thinkers.

Donald R. Short

Farmington

Commentary on 12/10/2016

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