On a number of levels

There is one incident in that gloriously irreverent TV satire, The Thick of It, when Jamie, who is just as foul-mouthed as his better-known colleague, fellow-Scot Malcolm Tucker, says to a female civil servant: 

"...we're having here is a secret conversation and I'm hoping that this time you can keep the fucking secret, because normally you're about as secure as a hymen in a south London comprehensive!"

To which she replies:

"Yep, well done. That's offensive on a number of levels in a very concise way." 

Likewise, a few weeks ago, right-wing Irish journalist Ruth Dudley-Edwards (a columnist with the Irish Sunday Independent) made a comment that was offensive on a number of levels when she complained of Republican candidates like Herman Cain and Rick Perry being mocked by an "urban elite".

At one level, this is offensive, to rural Americans because it implies that they are just to naive - or even too stupid - to remark on the gaffs by these and other gaff-prone Republican candidates. It the implication is that urban people are too decent and wholesome to make fun of the crass stupidity exhibited by these candidates while urban people are snide and malicious, then that is both patronising and offensive at the same time.

We see this thread of thought taken a bit further by Dudley-Edwards' less intellectually able colleague Eilis O'Hanlon, who argued a couple of weeks later that Obama was so unpopular that he would be unelectable this November, were it not for the way in which "the media" denigrate his potential opponents.In doing so, of course, she ignores the hate-filled invective vomited out by Fox News, the most popular news network in the USA, against not only Obabma but any vaguely liberal point of view - even going so far as to implicate the Muppets in a left-wing conspiracy.

What is most offensive, though, about the views of both columnists is that they make excuses for anti-intellectualism. They almost imply that it is a sin to be clever, discerning, sceptical or analytical if that leads to dismissal of Presidential candidates who are both nasty and crass. As Isaac Asimov put it, “Anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that 'my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.'”

One of the more pathetic arguments advanced by supporters of such poltroons as Cain and Perry (and, indeed, Gingrich) is that they don't need to be acutely intellectual because they will have access to advice from smart people (this was also George W Bush's defence). In fact, what tends to happen is that these men are often  manipulated by the smart people they hire to supposedly advise them. Moreover, if this really is the case, why not vote for the organ-grinder, rather than the monkey?

Thankfully, at least Cain and Perry are out of the race now. And the Irish Times had an unintentionally amusing by-line on the latter's withdrawal:

Perry quits US Presidential Race: Texas Governor has suspended his campaign and offered his back to Newt Gingrich

Now, do I qualify as a member of the urban elite too? Perhaps not if I live in a town with a population of less than 20,000