Don't Hate Him Because He's Intelligent

There are all sorts of reasons that I could give as to why I think John Derbyshire has surpassed Gore Vidal and Ron Rosenbaum as the biggest asshole now working in American journalism, but I would suggest that this recent piece of his in the National Review serve as Exhibit A. At the top of the article, he cites a recent essay by William Deresiewicz in which Deresiewicz recounts having had some trouble talking to his plumber. This inability to communicate across class levels becomes, for Derbyshire, an anecdote supporting the idea of a natural elite, based mostly, he seems to think, on intelligence. So you see, when the hoi polloi start moaning about elitism, it's really just a complaint that some folks are smarter than them.

First of all, any time you start talking about "inherited" intelligence you beg all kinds of pretty basic questions: including, what intelligence really is, how we know we have measured it, how we could ever control for various environmental influences with any degree of influence to make any sort of claim about innate abilities, and whether it is the case that intellectual skills are represented by a single trait, or (more likely by far) that some people have mental capabilities that make them good for dealing with some sorts of tasks, and others have capabilities to deal with other sorts of tasks.

But the really rich irony here is that Derbyshire has completely misunderstood (or mis-represented) the essay that he quotes from. William Deresiewicz isn't arguing that he can't talk to the plumber because he, Deresiewicz, is just so damned smart. He's arguing that he can't talk to him because he is not competent to do so. There's no natural hierarchy at play here; there's a failure of the educational system. Which any reasonably intelligent reader might have guessed from the title of the essay: "The Disadvantages of an Elite Education."

One of the ways that Ivy League schools deform their students, Deresiewicz argues, is by pampering them both intellectually and emotionally, so that they get an undeserved sense of superiority:

"There are due dates and attendance requirements at places like Yale, but no one takes them very seriously. Extensions are available for the asking; threats to deduct credit for missed classes are rarely, if ever, carried out. In other words, students at places like Yale get an endless string of second chances...Elite schools nurture excellence, but they also nurture what a former Yale graduate student I know calls 'entitled mediocrity.'"

In other words, John Derbyshire, unafraid to speak the Truth that all us cowed liberals cannot accept--that there are truly superior people in the world, who are just more intellectually gifted than all the rest--isn't even bright enough to figure out the point of the stuff that he quotes. He has taken almost the exact opposite meaning from Deresiewicz's essay than the one the author obviously intended it to have. And then he's broadcast that perverted interpretation to his readers, most of whom probably won't probably bother to read the original. So now, an insightful, provocative commentary on the relationship between education and class in modern America gets turned into some lame defense of elitism, thanks to Derbyshire. What a tool.

This isn't really media commentary, but I had to get it off my chest.