My daughter reminded me of a core
divide in America that has existed all my life and has never changed.
There is the East Coast Elite and there are the rest of us.
I
got a scholarship to the University of Chicago in the early 1950s
because I'm from the West Coast. There was conscious geographic
affirmative action in those days. But it never worked; at least 55
years later it still hasn't.
I've often walked around
Harvard and other sacred elite spots and been highly aware that we
outsiders don't fit into the East Coast elite. They really don't know
we exist. When a major conference is put on, a few non-East Coasters
are invited as an after thought... even if the subject is China, Daoism,
Japan or East Timor.
The East Coast elite is still about
footnotes, policy, International Relations, academia, clubs, proper
behavior, 'good' schools.
This remains true despite the
end of the hereditary upper class, the death of the elite's beloved
Europe and its replacement with high tech Japan and globe busting
China, the birth and explosion of the computer and Internet giants on the
West Coast.
The continuing seriousness of this divide is
evident in the elite hatred of Fox TV (Los Angeles) and Sarah Palin
(Alaska); the most outside of outsiders.