Lileks Dissects Matthew Engel
One of the advantages of being a fawning Lileks sycophant is that occasionally he smashes a bad guy, and you get to imagine that he's doing it just for you. Thank you, Fearless Leader!

What is especially nice to see is that Engel's work has been so thoroughly eviscerated out in blogland. Since I live here in Birmingham, I overlook a lot of crap that gets written about us, and there is a lot of it. Some of it we bring on ourselves--for this, we deserve whatever we get. But for the overwhelming majority of the other crap, the only excuse is the mindless hypocrisy of those who see themselves as morally superior.

In the end, Engel's article has nothing to do with Birmingham, or Alabama, or the US as such. The article has everything to do with whining about being marginalized by a bunch of yahoos. 'How dare they, those ignorant buffoons--don't they know we gave the world the Renaissance?' That little part in the article "Of course, Birmingham has an elite who travel all over Europe... " tells me what this is all about. If you don't travel the world, you are not one the elite; if you are not one of the elite, you have no business trying to run things. Little did we know that The New World Order will be run by whoever has the most frequent flyer miles.

The inaccuracy in the whole equation is that not only does Birmingham have an elite who travel the world, but Birmingham, like the rest of the United States, has a bunch of non-elites who travel the world, too. We stand around Piccadilly and talk really loud and say stuff like "Hey Mama, look at that old buildin' over yonder! Don't look like they have built anything new since Churchill was in charge!" We take photos and go home and tell everyone about all the neat stuff we saw and all the peculiar people who act all snooty. Then we go back to work--life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Stuff even us non-elites get to do, by the simple accident of birthright. So sorry if we offend elite sensibilites by not being properly servile. If I may ask one favor, take a very deep breath and hold it while I work on the problem--I'll get back to you in a bit.
posted by Terry at 10:28:00 AM