Burleigh's "The Best and the Rightest"

Nina Burleigh, best known to "outsiders" for her reporting on the Amanda Knox saga in Italian courts, is an adjunct professor in Columbia University's Graduate School of Journalism as well as a journalist and writer. Her impressions of young women who are  activist conservative speakers are posted on ELLE.COM under the title "The Best and the Rightest," with an excerpt posted on RED ROOM.COM under the title "Meet the Baby Palins."

The title of the  ELLE article [Sept., 2011] is an obvious variation of the colloquial cliche, "the best and the brightest." [Also a book and film title]  Given the human mind's tendency to associate opposites, even though one is reading the word "rightest" (which already has negative connotations in our liberal culture), the real operative word ("dumbest") that will inevitably occur reflexively to many readers who will make the title actually read, at some level of awareness, "the best and the dumbest."  Of course, even without this association of opposites, equating "right" with "dumb" is a long-standing stereotype among cultural elites like Ms. Burleigh.  Thus, the title's clever phrasing, alone, indisputably establishes her as an exceptional master of subtlety and suggestion.

The body of the article consists of several cameo portraits of what she dismissively calls "right-wing girl Millennials" aspiring, in her opinion,to be the next Sarah Palin. This loosely organized if not rambling prose comes off as both satirically and flippantly written. Her unflatteringly animal-like descriptions of her subjects' appearance and behavior ("honey-colored mane"and "twitchy" cat movements)  and her calling them "girls" and "goddesses" are early red flags alerting readers that the tantalizing verbal hor d'oeuvres she is serving us will be generously seasoned with both crafty satire and subtle bias.

Her satiric wit and catchy images are all amusing, charming and clever, but before one is entirely lost in delightful fantasy and reverie, a disturbing thought crosses one's mind, like a dark cloud welling up in otherwise clear blue skies or a gathering squall roiling up the water's once mirror-smooth surface:  these are actually real people like you and me, not just some scientific specimens to be dissected, analyzed and classified by some detached, self-appointed superior intelligence like Ms. Burleigh.

Her elitist and high-brow arrogance suggests she sees herself as an omniscient God looking down on others as though they are mere ants pathetically scurrying about in complete ignorance of their total insignificance in HER private universe.  "But look," observes this Burleigh God, "some of these insects are actually trying to disturb my realm, and I shall crush them immediately before they become too uppity.  That'll teach these Specks of Nothing to remain in their proper place."

Let's pause to reverse roles for a moment and see how Ms. Burleigh would like to be similarly placed under an unsympathetic microscope for merciless dissection, have every little flaw magnified, every movement satirically  distorted for its laughable imperfections, and then, for example, described in demeaning horse imagery or have or her human worth as an adult woman questioned by being diminutively called a "girl" ("Hey, Burleigh girl!") for an observer's afternoon entertainment.  Now that it's you pinned down for description in a biased portrait, it's not so amusing, is it Ms. Burleigh?

In the Red Room.com excerpt, Ms. Burleigh's penchant for subtle animal imagery appears immediately in the title, "Meet the Baby Palins."  Although her bio notes that she comes from the midwest, apparently somewhere along the way in her upbringing and education (maybe Chicago was her undoing), she either never became conversant with key midwestern colloquialisms or she chose to use them quite insensitively if not offensively.  But given the sophisticated satiric phrasing she deftly wields elsewhere in this article, one finds it unlikely that she would be any less conceptually "nimble" here.  Thus, whatever deficiencies one might find in her thinking and writing, innocent naivete is definitely NOT one of them. [NOTE: The left-leaning Red Room site banned this review for bias while at the same time highlighting for weeks an article on Christian fundamentalism using the name-calling term "fundies" and heavily drawing upon the tired old stereotypes of observant Christians as (1)irrational and/or dumb, (2) lacking a social conscience and/or emphathy for others and (3) racists and (4) hating and/or blaming God for anything "bad" that happens.

To any reasonably aware and authentic midwesterner, the three-word colloquial phrase "the baby___________"(anything) would invariably be completed with the name of an animal species that has litters, such as baby pigs or baby mice. For example, one's farm neighbor might phone and say, "Come over and we'll show you the baby pigs." Conversely, no midwesterner, unless entirely tone-deaf to the meaning of this colloquialism, would say, "Could we come over and see the baby Goldbergs?"  In astonishment, the Goldbergs might justifiably reply, "Did you think we had a litter or what?"

The obvious point is that Ms. Burleigh's title, at a minimum, obliquely suggests that the new "girls" (her word) with ambitions to be conservative leaders are morally equivalent in her universe to a new-born litter of some animal species. Worse yet, this colloquialism conjures up images of a "litter of babies" in the Palin family itself.  Talk about demonizing and reducing your political opponents' standing!  This title clearly takes first prize in any competition of "Most Demeaning Phrase" because it completely removes one's political adversaries from the human race.

One realizes even more fully the inexcusable awfulness of "the baby Palins" phrase by citing this parallel example:  How "comfortable" would you be reading several unflattering portraits of zealous leftists, written by  a right-wing ideologue, in an article titled, "Meet the Baby Obamas."  The same reductive animal imagery (as well as demeaning images of little Obama "creatures" running around) that comes to mind would be even more horrifying to contemplate.

Additionally,for some strange, unfathomable reason, I have an irrepressible feeling that the mainstream media, and rightly so to some extent, would go, shall we say, bonkers in its 24/7 coverage of suchan offensive reference to our President's family.

Meanwhile, the writer of such unspeakable abominations would immediately be denounced as a racist and fascist, leading to yet another  agonzing and\ frenzied round of cultural self-reflections and righteous condemnations our checkered past, troubled present and uncertain future in the moral sphere.  No doubt before the uproar subsided, with Armaggeddon imminent, we would all be under pressure to do a collective national penance, and whoever wrote or uttered the original insult would have to resign whatever position he/she had in journalism, business or government  and sleek away into complete disgrace and eventual oblivion.

Strange, isn't it, that in the case of Ms. Buleigh publicly demeaning and reducing both young conservative women ("girls") and, by implication, any acutal Palin babies to "litter" status, she apparently gets to go merrily on in her subtle on-the-edge bigotry without having any accountability for her words!  It is especially appalling to contemplate that Ms. Burleigh, being on the graduate faculty at Columbia University's School of Journalism, is supposedly a model whose foremost responsibility surely has to be the setting and maintaining of journalistic standards.

One recoils at the thought of how she might be shaping the impressionistic young minds placed trustingly in her safe-keeping.  Could it be that the bigotry and arrogance of her privileged class so evident in "The Best and the Rightest" are being subtly instilled in her journalistic acolytes?  Perish the thought that anything this heretical and unprofessional is actually occurring! I've had inklings and heard rumors of journalism's imminent decline but must confess I never imagined its fall had been this precipitous.

What Ms. Burleigh, with her elite status and credentials propping up her self-assurance, is actually engaging in is a subtle but nevertheless vicious kind of cultural bullying.  Though the underlying brazenness is both astonishing and intimidating, I, along with many others, in our growing awareness of this assault questioning our very humanness, will speak up in justifiable defense of our beliefs and lifestyle.

For starters, she and all others who portray us in such condescending and disparaging verbal cameos apparently need to be reminded of certain elemental principles of decency being flagrantly violated.  We will not grant others discretionary license to suggest, even subtly or satirically, that our mothers have litters and that our daughters, speaking up for conservative values, have animalistic features and behaviors. lest in their elite self-absorption and insufferable arrogance they next consign us to the status of savages or worse in Huxley's Brave New World.  Unless such behavior is challenged and confronted, there would be no end to this leftist crescendo until we "retards" were totally eliminated as an inferior sub-species, the Neanderthals of this millennium.

If and when Ms. Burleigh writes her next article about a "foreign" culture or sub-culture, as she apparently sees the "litter" of "baby Palins" living in, for her benefit, let's hope she first becomes knowledgeable about its key colloquialisms or, in an alternative scenario, at least holds in check her liberal impulses to de-humanize her political opponents, so that she will not again, in revealing her ignorance and/or insensitivity, make a complete fool of herself as well as disgrace her profession.  [This constructive counsel comes from one who studied linguistics on the graduate level under the distinguished linguistics scholar, Harold B. Allen, who among his other credentials, is known for having written a definitive linguistic atlas of the midwest.]

To finish this review, I can not think of a more appropriate context than this one for once again asking Chaucer's age-old question, when he looked at the corruption among the elites who, similarly, in his time had the responsibility  of setting and maintaining standards in both church and state, "If gold rust, what shall iron do?" 

Any answers or other guidance for us, Ms. Burleigh, through our cultural wasteland?