Think Global. Slur Local

On Sunday, I linked to the WSJ’s Tom Wolfe profile, in which he said:

But as to “this business of my having done the unthinkable and voted for George Bush, I would say, now look, I voted for George Bush but so did 62,040,609 other Americans. Now what does that make them? Of course, they want to say–‘Fools like you!’ . . . But then they catch themselves, ‘Wait a minute, I can’t go around saying that the majority of the American people are fools, idiots, bumblers, hicks.’ So they just kind of dodge that question.

Not necessarily–as I wrote, they didn’t dodge it all at the end of 2004:

I rarely disagree with Wolfe’s assessment of most topics, but think back to the period between November of 2004 and Bush’s inauguration the following January. The media were collectively depressed enough about the election’s outcome to really let the mask slip, and let language that normally stays inside Manhattan cocktail parties out onto the air.

Tim Blair observes that it’s a phenomenon that definitely transcends the United States.