CHARLES MURRAY says in an intriguing piece in the Washington Post that when the tea-party people complain that America has been taken over by an out-of-touch elite, they are right. The new elite is based on education rather than money alone:


This sounds plausible to me. Where has there ever been a perfect meritocracy? And, yes, it would be good if some of these privileged people ventured out of their bubble from time to time. But this is no defence of the complaint the tea-partiers make. What they mean (and what Murray comes close to saying too) is that the best-educated Americans are in some way not authentically American, because they don't pick corn or flip burgers or watch soap operas (apart from "The Sopranos" and "Mad Men") on TV.

I don't think that makes them any less authentic: America is surely too vast and complex for authenticity to be appropriated by any particular social group or pattern of behaviour.  Sarah Palin claims to represent "real" American values. But how many Americans have really skinned a moose (or whatever else she claims to do)? And, really, what does it matter?

UPDATE: I failed to notice that my erudite colleague over at Democracy in America had already put up a crosser post than this.