Opinion > Guest Columnist: Dude, Where’s That Elite?”

href=”http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/01/opinion/01EHRE.html”>Dude, Where’s That Elite? By BARBARA EHRENREICH, NYTimes

My point

is not to defend Moore, who — with a platoon of bodyguards and a legal team starring Mario Cuomo — hardly needs any muscle from me. I

just think it’s time to retire the “liberal elite” label, which, for the past 25 years, has been deployed to denounce anyone to the left

of Colin Powell. Thus, last winter, the ultra-elite right-wing Club for Growth dismissed followers of Howard Dean as a “tax-hiking,

government-expanding, latte-drinking, sushi-eating, Volvo-driving, New York Times-reading, body-piercing, Hollywood-loving, left-wing

freak show.” …

But the left I encounter on my treks across the nation is heavy on hotel housekeepers, community college students,

laid-off steelworkers and underpaid schoolteachers. …

But it would be redundant to speak of a “conservative elite” ….

So

liberals can take comfort from the fact that our most visible spokesman is, despite his considerable girth, an invulnerable target for

the customary assault weapon of the right. I meant to comment on his movie, too, but the lines at my local theater are still

prohibitively long.