Who's a snob and who's not.

• Author: Fallows, James
• Position: Special Anniversary Section: Who We Are; What We Believe; Why We Believe It

This piece appeared in 1979

Viewed with even a modestly fresh eye, there is a staggering disproportion between problem and response in our intellectual and political world. On the one side, we have a system of government that seems to reduce all presidents to helplessness or deception and all congressmen to petty selfprotection. On the other side, we have the professional thinkers and writers and politicians, the people who are supposedly in business to deal with questions such as these, but whose main interest in confronting them seems not to be to push for new answers or to evaluate the suggestions that are already on hand but to use each new issue as a momentary platform upon which to display their deft cavorting, and from which to land a rabbit punch on someone else.

The emphasis on refined and sophisticated poses, the lack of interest in communicating with "the mass," have left their mark. This style of discussion is snobbish because of its deliberate disconnection from the substance of an issue and from the people who might want to hear an answer; it is dangerous not simply for the poison it spreads but also because of the time it wastes.

When loosing a bon mot against politicians in The New York Review of Books or chortling his way through a review of the current vulgar best sellers, Gore Vidal is more intent on turning the arch phrase than on presenting an idea; political ideas, especially, are for him mere excuses to display his exquisite moves. Garry Wills, who at times is one of the finest critics, too often seems to care more about including the extra quote and qualification that will prove his erudition than with making his meaning clear. (This is true, beyond point of parody, of William F. Buckley.) The political put-down artists-Emmett Tyrrell on the right, Alexander Cockburn on the left-can be vastly entertaining, but they care more about putting on a good show and blooding their swords than informing or understanding.

The effects of the put-down and the pose can be grave. When most people write about war or money or energy merely to strut their stuff or indulge a sneer, we end up laughing-as the society burns.

I sometimes think of a scene from World War II: the small platoon trapped in the jungle, surrounded...