Tuesday, August 28, 2007

Power of snobbery

In a moment of weakness tonight, I caught myself watching a portion of Power of Ten, a summer fill-in game show hosted by Drew Carey in which contestants try to guess Americans' opinions on, well, just about everything. Hey, the remote was out of arm's reach, and I was really trying to finish James Lee Burke's latest book, The Tin Roof Blow Down.

One of the contestants tonight was a gentleman from LA, who was doing fairly well until faced with guessing what percentage of Americans would be willing to adopt a baby of a different race. He was quick to say that he, of course, would have no problem doing so, nor would anybody he knows. But, to paraphrase, he said something about living in LA where people don't have such hang-ups. Drew encouraged his bigotry by making some comment about "people in Idaho". I knew right then the guy was going to blow it and guess too far on the low side. I wasn't disappointed. The number came in at around 60%.

Many people, liberals mostly, who live in the big metropolitan areas like LA, New York, Chicago, etc., look down on Middle America as a bunch of bigoted half-wits who can't possibly be as broad-minded as the "progressive elite" of the big cities.

I chuckled with satisfaction as the guy went down in flames.

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