Matthew Yglesias responds to Joe Klein's post expressing frustration with the fact that few Americans seem to understand that this stimulus money has done its job, and was not in fact wasted:
Joe Klein has a good piece laying out the truth but I also think it's a textbook example of how not to talk about gaps in the public's knowledge of policy disputes. Calling the country “too dumb to thrive” or wondering if we've become “a nation of dodos” is way too harsh. It also opens the door for basic observations about public ignorance to be caricatured as elites sneering at the common man.
There's something really ugly about journalists decrying the stupidity of their audience if the audience fails to understand a complex public policy issue. It is a reporter's job to separate fact from fiction in policy disputes, the fact that most people don't know the truth may be the result of the unemployment rate, but it's also fundamentally the failure of journalism, and a culture of reporting that privileges rote repetition of grievances from opposite sides, giving each equal weight. If Klein thinks America is "a nation of dodos," well frankly, all journalists have a role in that, including Klein and his colleagues.
So it's worse than "elites sneering at the common man." It's elites who have fundamentally failed at their task of helping to create a well-informed citizenry sneering at the common man for being ignorant. It's like a plumber you call to fix a leak who accidentally floods your entire house and then tells you how useless you are for not knowing how to fix your own pipes. Then he or she leaves you standing in three feet of water with a bill worth a few grand and mutters "sucker" on the way out the door.
-- A. Serwer
