redneck elitism

I find it interesting that certain habits of mine automatically make me an elitist. I prefer a good Hefeweizen over a Bud Light. I think two dollars for the liquid happiness of Starbucks is actually a reasonable price. I listen to NPR constantly and my musical tastes include Sufjan Stevens, The Postal Service and Pedro the Lion. My library includes well-researched historical monographs and classic literature.

Somehow my taste in music or beer or talk radio can peg me as being an elitist. It doesn't matter that our idea of tissues is rolls of toilet paper or that I buy my clothes at Ross or that, when I went to some site that states the reading level of a blog, mine was at the Junior High Level. My penchant for using metaphors and buying quality coffee somehow make me a snob.

I mention this, because here in Arizona, there is a sort of redneck, red state snobbery that exists. This last weekend, I kept hearing phrases like, "I only drink Yuban coffee, not that thick mud they serve at Starbucks," or "Yeah, NPR might be informative - if you want liberal news and you want to fall asleep." Or, "I bet you couldn't tell a difference between a Hefe and a Miller Light if it was a blind taste test." Or, "I don't get why people put a bunch of books on a shelf to advertise what they read to the rest of the world."

Often this redneck elitism happens in subtle ways. Someone in a big truck will allow another big truck to cut through long lines of a lane that has merged, because they are part of some secret redneck club. People will expect me to laugh at an Obama joke and berate me as being uneducated on the "real Obama," with an assumption that I only vote out of my heart and fail to use logic or reason.

Perhaps Starbucks is elitist, but Folgers is reversed elitism. Maybe buying expensive beer makes me elitist, but buying a ridiculously large truck that hogs the road is just as elitist. If it is elitist to know how xenophobia develops, it is just as elitist to know how an exhaust manifold functions.